Promoting Positive Adult-Student Connections
Identify and engage disconnected students with relationship mapping
Research shows a lack of a meaningful connection to school can lead to chronic absenteeism, academic struggles, and dropping out of school. Fortunately, that connection can be as simple as having an adult who knows a student and cares about his or her well-being.
Administrators at Washoe County School District in Reno, Nevada, realized that meaningful adult-student connections are too important to be left to chance. As part of a broader social-emotional learning campaign, Washoe County implemented a simple exercise to map out the relationships between adults and students at school. This exercise serves as a powerful strategy to identify and engage students who may otherwise pass through school unnoticed.
This resource provides a step-by-step guide with templates to help schools conduct their own relationship mapping exercise and identify students who may be disconnected and disengaged from school. The toolkit also suggests a range of strategies for adults at school to better engage with students who may be at risk.
Step 1: Convene school staff
Gather all school staff together once a year to discuss each student. Attendees should go through the entire student roster while answering a short series of questions to determine how much they know about each student.
Step 2: Map student-staff relationships
Staff can indicate how well they know each student (the quality/depth of their relationship) with a checkmark to answer a prompt with a “Yes”. This creates a visual representation of relationships that allows attendees to quickly identify students in need of support.
Step 3: Discuss and plan follow-up
With a complete map, identify students with no strong connections to school staff and match follow-up interventions to each student’s needs when necessary. An intervention is not required for every student—simply paying more attention to that student and making sure they are noticed and included by adults can make a difference.
Relationship mapping workbook
Download this ready-to-use relationship mapping template and a sample trusted adult list.
This resource requires EAB partnership access to view.
Access the tool
Learn how you can get access to this resource as well as hands-on support from our experts through District Leadership Forum.
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