A lack of belongingness is an area of concern for developmental math students due to negative implications for academic outcomes. Many college students placed into remedial math courses lack a sense of belonging within the math classroom. This study identified evidence of factors of belongingness among freshman college students who participated in a corequisite course for math remediation. The corequisite consisted of a college level math class paired with a math support course. As the instructor for the course, I implemented an intervention to foster students' sense of belonging during the support course. This intervention involved students writing in a weekly reflective journal regarding their feelings and experiences in the math course. In turn, I provided weekly written feedback with the goal of offering an empathetic response to foster each student’s sense of belonging. Findings from this study demonstrated that a teacher can implement a weekly student reflective journal as a medium to provide empathetic feedback and thus foster a student’s feelings of belonging in the classroom. Through the data analysis, I observed that as the semester progressed my written empathetic feedback shifted from sharing my personal or academic stories to acknowledging the student in various ways. Evidence of factors related to a student’s sense of belonging were noted in students’ written responses to my feedback. Other findings of this work demonstrated that student interactions with peers during the math class and support course were essential in fostering belongingness in the math classroom. This study adds to the field through providing concrete ways to portray teacher care through written empathetic feedback. Further research on the use of written empathetic teacher feedback is necessary to refine the practice and better understand its role in fostering a student's sense of belonging.
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