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Relationships
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People are inherently social, and we all benefit from developing strong relationships with those around us.
Relationships refer to all interpersonal connections in the school community that when strong, create trust, buffer stress, and elevate the potential of each individual to thrive in the school environment.
What can I expect from fostering safe, supportive, bidirectional relationships?
Improvements in school relationships are associated with:
- Decreases in bullying perpetration and victimization (Thornberg et al., 2022)
- Increases in a sense of belonging (Ulmanen et al., 2016)
- Increases in school engagement (Klem & Connell., 2004)
- Decreases in risky behavior (Rudasill et al., 2010)
- Academic improvements (Battistich, Schaps, & Wilson, 2004)
Within each element you will find a definition, guiding questions to consider as a team or individual, critical mindsets, essential skills & practices, as well as resources for further exploration.
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Relationships are centered in the values, vision, and mission of the school.
The importance of relationships is embedded in the culture of the school.
The school prioritizes all students having a trusted adult.
Relationship skills are explicitly taught, supported, and practiced.
Relationship-Centered Discipline
Discipline practices center relationships.
In order to be a mission driven organization, the school or district must ensure that all stakeholders and decision makers act in alignment with the overall vision, mission and purpose of the organization. An essential component of each school’s mission is to be supporting and developing supportive relationships for all students and staff.
- Stakeholders and decision makers are aligned to vision, mission, and purpose of the district/school.
- The mission includes developing support relationships for all students and staff.
- The mission and vision evolve and change over time.
- In what ways do the school's values, vision, and mission emphasize relationships and the importance of relationships?
- How are adults encouraged and enabled to create and sustain relationships with each student? With other adults?
- How do staff support and scaffold student relationships in developmentally appropriate ways?
Mindsets
- Staff believe in the importance of relationships.
- Staff understand that relationships are bidirectional. In other words, staff and students both agree the existing relationship is healthy and both are working to maintain it.
Skills and Practices
- Leadership communicates the importance of relationships through words and actions.
- Leadership creates opportunities for staff to develop relationship with students and each other.
- Striving for Relationship-Centered Schools: Insights From Community-Based Transformation Campaign (Learning Policy Institute)
- Mission, Vision, and School Culture (Colorado League of Charter Schools)
- Examples:
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The school culture refers to a collection of beliefs, assumptions, values, language, actions, and artifacts which provide the identity of the school and a sense of shared identity among its members. School climate is multi-faceted and refers to the environmental, relational, and instructional factors that support students cognitively, socially, and emotionally. Both the climate and the culture need to reflect that opportunities for relationship development are paramount for the success of all.
Culture includes the following to provide a sense of shared identity for a school community:
- Beliefs
- Assumptions
- Values
- Actions
- Language
- Visual environment
- How does the school climate and culture prioritize relationships?
- How does the culture prioritize skill-building, vulnerability, authenticity, normalize mistakes, growth, and repair?
- How are staff encouraged to build relationships with their students?
- How do staff interact with their students?
- How do adults interact with other adults (colleagues, families, administrators, etc.) in the community?
Mindsets
- Staff believe that no matter where a student is in the school building, they should feel connected to someone.
- Staff believe that time spent prioritizing relationships isn't lost time but a valuable investment.
Skills and Practices
- Staff weave relationship building strategies and opportunities throughout their instruction.
- The environment facilitates relationships - there is a staff lounge, cafeteria, workspaces, library, etc. that are accessible for youth.
- There is time in the day for students and staff to connect.
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Practices for Fostering a Positive School Climate Where Students and Staff Feel a Sense of Connection and Belonging (Greater Good in Education -UC Berkeley
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A trusted adult is a person that an individual feels comfortable opening up to, someone that listens, supports and encourages them. Every person within the school needs least one identified, trusted adult that they can go to for support, connection and meaningful conversations about the past, present and future.
- Does every person have at least one trusted person that they can go to?
- Does the school support all staff having at least one other staff member they can reach out to for support?
- Does every student have a trusted adult in the school or community? How would the school know which students have meaningful connections with others in the community? How would they know which students don't?
- How does the school prioritize relationships and connections?
- Staff know that supportive adult relationships are key for developing student resilience.
- Staff believe that every student needs and deserves respectful, appropriate, reciprocal relationships.
- Staff know that being a trusted adult includes modeling and respecting appropriate boundaries.
Skills and Practices
- Schools have a system for identifying and discussing which students do and do not have connections within the community.
- Teachers actively work to build connections with all students over the course of the semester or year.
- Improving Students' Relationships with Teachers to Provide Essential Supports for Learning (American Psychological Association)
- VIDEO: Every Opportunity - The Power of Relational Interactions in Schools (Atlanta Speech School)
- Tapping Into Compassion When Students Push Your Buttons (Edutopia)
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Developing supportive relationships requires that adults within the school possess both internal and external skills. Therefore, schools provide time, resources, and structures to learn and practice skills and strategies for building positive relationships among students, staff, and families, including modeling, training, and ongoing coaching.
Adults have internal and external skills and schools provide opportunities to learn and practice building positive relationships among:
- Staff
- Students
- Families
Skills include but are not limited to:
- Starting a conversation
- Active listening
- Conflict resolution
- Empathy and compassion
- Setting boundaries
- How does the school facilitate understanding and provide resources that adult SEL and adult well-being are necessary for high-quality relationships?
- Does the school climate and culture use a relationship-focused mindset – a strengths-based mindset, curiosity about experiences and behaviors, consideration of individuals having skill deficits first, depersonalizing the behavior?
- Do staff have and utilize skills necessary for relationship building? Are staff supported to use effective relationship-building skills? Which skills are commonly seen in the building? Which skills are still emerging?
- What supports are provided for staff to develop positive relationships - possibly including time, training, modeling, and coaching?
- Do you understand where the skill gaps are (are there common skill gaps or lagging skills) among grade levels or other groupings?
- Do you model regulation and co-regulation strategies?
Mindsets
- School staff know that developing relationships takes skills, some of which they may possess intuitively, and some of which may require instruction and practice.
- School staff know that learning to build relationships with students is worth the investment of time and money.
- School staff acknowledge that we can all get better at building relationships - a growth mindset.
- School staff know that our skills will change from day to day, depending on other factors in our lives.
- School staff know that mistakes are part of being human, and that repair is an essential relationship skill for both students and staff.
- School staff believe that they are culpable in relationships.
Skills and Practices
"Internal" Skills
- Tuning in to self
- Flexible thinking
- Self-reflection
“External” Relationship building skills:
- 5:1 Praise: Correction Ratios
- Recognize, Appreciate, Notice
- Active Listening
- Asking questions
- Empathy
- Validate
- Normalize
- Emotion Coaching
- Problem Solving
- Relationship Skills in the Classroom (The Social and Emotional Teacher - Blog)
- Building Relationships as a Foundation of Trauma Informed Practices in Schools (The National Child Traumatic Stress Network)
- A Trauma-Informed Resource for Strengthening Family-School Partnerships (The National Child Traumatic Stress Network)
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Relationship-centered discipline refers to trusted and authentic adult-student relationships where any underlying needs of student behavior are understood and growth is supported through inclusive and non-punitive approaches, where students feel safe to make and learn from mistakes.
- Which elements of discipline are handled in by the classroom teacher? When does behavior warrant administrative support?
Mindsets
- Staff believe that all behavior is communication.
- Staff believe that most challenging behavior is a matter of a skill deficit, not a will deficit.
- Staff believe that all students have the right to a free and appropriate public education.
Skills and Practices
- Staff utilize restorative circles and practices.
- Administrators use inclusive alternatives to suspension and expulsion.
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Members of the school community consider power dynamics that are influenced by cultural, economic, sociological, structural, generational, and identity contexts to inform policies, practices, and procedures to support equitable connections.
Power dynamics refer to differences in authority, influence, and control between two or more individuals. These differences are often complex, context-dependent, and are impacted by the intersectionality of identity.
- In what ways are relationships in the building aware of and responsive to context and power dynamics that exist within individual relationships and relationships with and between systems?
- Are there specific structures to build awareness and knowledge and facilitate vigilant awareness on personal, group and systemic levels of oppression and harm?
- Are there specific structures for repair when harm is done?
- How do staff maintain appropriate boundaries while being warm and nurturing?
- How do you assess and analyze bias and assumptions around expected behavior?
- What role does control play in the ways you engage in adult/student relationships inside and outside the classroom?
Mindsets
- School staff understand that racism, discrimination and oppression are active problems in our schools and communities.
- Staff are committed to equity.
- Staff know that our conscious and unconscious biases appear in our everyday actions.
Skills and Practices
- Staff listen to the experiences of youth.
- Staff reflect on their own positions of power and privilege, as well as the ways in which they may be marginalized.
- Staff apologize and model repair when they make mistakes (Circle back).
- 7 Ways to Promote Equity in the Classroom (USC-Rossier)
- Improving Students' Relationships with Teachers to Provide Essential Supports for Learning (American Psychological Association)
- Book Recommendations:
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