Promote Social and School Connectedness

Recommended practice #1

Foster a positive and protective school culture

Overview

Schools have a unique opportunity to create an environment that can help students learn important life and character-building skills like how to communicate with others, regulate their emotions, solve conflicts, become more resilient, build healthy relationships, and grow in all areas of life. By focusing on a positive and supportive culture, schools invest in the future well-being and success of their students.  Teachers and school staff are crucial in creating a safe and supportive environment for students.

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Fostering a positive school culture in which students feel more connected and protected may look like:

• Promoting and modeling inclusivity
• Implementing equitable classroom management
• Developing mentorship programs
• Encouraging peer-led initiatives
• Supporting peer assistance groups
• Establishing collaborative community partnerships¹

Evidence Base

Learn when to Use it in your School

Your school already has a culture, which is best described as the daily interactions and environment within a school. Since that culture is shaped by the experiences and attitudes of all individuals in the community, each school has a unique atmosphere and specific needs. It's important to regularly assess the current climate to understand the identities, values, norms, and expectations of everyone involved, including students, parents and caregivers, staff, administrators, and the school district. This can help you determine if your school would benefit from additional or targeted programming to help foster a more positive and protective culture. These assessments can be done informally or formally. Some methods to consider may include:

• Conducting anonymous surveys to understand the perceptions of safety, belonging, and support among students, staff, and parents and caregivers. There are many companies that can assist with conducting anonymous surveys.
• Having conversations with willing students, staff, parents and caregivers, and community members to gather insights that go beyond numbers.
• Taking a look at your school’s policies, practices, and curriculum with an eye for any inequities in student experiences and outcomes.

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CONSIDERATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION

Creating a positive and protective school culture can start with strategies that build respectful and healthy interactions among everyone in the school. Teachers and school leaders do this by modeling showing mutual respect, resolving conflicts in constructive ways, and providing constructive feedback. Here are some other actions supported by evidence or shown to be promising practices:

• Ensure students understand that behaviors like bullying, harassment, or discrimination are unacceptable and that there are interventions in place both for students who are targeted by these behaviors and those who engage in them.
• Assure students that they have a voice.³ When youth feel like they're being heard, they are more likely to buy-in to initiatives that impact them.
• Communicate explicitly about and apply schoolwide rules and expectations consistently and equitably.
• Ensure disciplinary approaches include reinforcing when students are engaging in positive behaviors, and not just disciplining negative behaviors.
• Consider the needs of all students. Some youth needs are more visible than others. While services should be made equally available to all students, it’s important to deliberately include youth who often feel left out. This can include, but isn’t limited to, LGBTQ+ students, students with disabilities, students who are economically disadvantaged, English Language learners, youth in foster care, and those experiencing housing insecurity.

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Recommended practice #2

Strengthen student-adult relationships

Overview

Strengthening student-adult relationships is a key component in supporting overall student well-being and success. Having even one caring adult to turn to can change the trajectory of a student’s life.  When students can quickly name at least one adult they trust and are likely to confide in when they have a problem, it’s more likely that they will turn to an adult when they are worried about themselves or a peer. Young people often notice a friend's declining mental health before anyone else. Strong connections between students and adults increase the chances that an adult who can support a struggling student will be informed.

Evidence Base

LEARN WHEN TO USE IT IN YOUR SCHOOL

Just like your school already has a culture, students and adults in schools already have relationships. The nature of those relationships depends on whether or not schools intentionally support and foster them. Without doing anything, relationships may be strained or inauthentic. In taking steps to enhance them, those relationships can be supportive, authentic, and caring. Deciding whether your school could benefit from enhancing youth-adult partnerships starts by exploring a variety of indicators that reflect the current levels of student engagement, well-being, and achievement. You can start this process by:

• ‍Analyzing school disciplinary data. The information you can gather from the data is key in understanding the broader context of student interactions within the school environment, and in identifying opportunities to provide intervention and support. A few examples of information you might look for includes bullying, violence, inequitable application of disciplinary practices, and substance misuse.‍
• Reviewing academic performance metrics, especially achievement gaps between different student subgroups. This analysis can reveal potential inequities in school policies, practices, and resources, which youth-adult partnerships might help to mitigate.‍
• Considering teacher well-being, particularly if there is notable staff burnout or turnover. It may indicate a need for more training, support, and resources for staff to support in their efforts to facilitate building the school environment young people need to thrive.

It’s also important to look at challenges in involving families and community members in school activities and decision-making. Youth-adult partnerships can be essential in bridging these gaps and cultivating a shared commitment to student success.

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CONSIDERATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION

Including and elevating student voices builds stronger schools and communities. To create thriving youth-adult partnerships, there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Partnering with youth is critical. School is a place where youth can feel seen, heard and respected (or not), individually and collectively. Young people’s perspectives need to be included in decision-making to help them be invested in the outcome.
2. Training and support for teachers and other school staff can improve their ability to build positive relationships with students. Ensure that staff have the skills they need around cultural competency and trauma-informed practices, as well as support to continue to develop their own personal responsibility, resilience, and interpersonal skills.
3. Authentic skill-building opportunities are important for both youth and adults. This is most effectively done through meaningful projects that have real-world impact, such as organizing a food drive or going through training to become a peer mentor. These types of experiences help youth see that their efforts are making a difference.

It’s also important to recognize that youth-adult partnerships don’t exist in a vacuum. They need the support of the whole school community to flourish.

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Recommended practice #3

Promote engagement and participation

Overview

Providing opportunities for student involvement can have a profound impact on student mental health and well-being. Engagement opportunities contribute to the development of a strong sense of self and identity, positive self-esteem and confidence, and cultivation of resilience and coping skills. Investing in student engagement not only benefits individual students but also contributes to a positive and thriving school community. Promoting student engagement can take many forms, such as:

• Using student-centered teaching methods
• Offering a variety of extracurricular activities to bring students together around common interests
• Encouraging student leadership and decision-making
• Promoting a culture of collaboration and teamwork
• Recognizing and celebrating student achievements
• Providing opportunities for experiential learning
• Establishing partnerships with community organizations

Evidence Base

LEARN WHEN TO USE IT IN YOUR SCHOOL

Providing students with meaningful opportunities to engage and participate within the school community is vital to academic success and personal growth. When students are actively involved in their learning and are meaningfully engaged within the school community, they are more likely to develop a love for learning, take ownership of their education, and reach their potential. Determining whether your school would benefit from enhancing engagement relies on a number of key indicators. Here are a few things to look for:

• ‍Limited community engagement: Lack of collaboration between school, families, and local organizations can point to a lack of critical pathways for assuring positive youth-adult partnerships in and out of school.⁶‍
• Homes experiencing ongoing stress: Some students come from homes facing continuous challenges and stress that is both outside of their control and unknown by staff. Building trusting relationships can help provide students with someone to whom they can turn to have an open conversation.‍
• Need for increased equity and inclusion: Ensuring that all student groups feel included and valued highlights the importance of fostering more inclusive youth-adult partnerships to promote equity and belonging. If you’re unsure how to start measuring this, you can begin by analyzing discipline data to identify potential trends around exclusion.

CONSIDERATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION

Building students' and adults' skills to form positive relationships promotes engagement and participation. To do this requires finding ways to create opportunities for students and staff that reflect mutual authentic trust, care and respect. Here are a few strategies that help:

1. Tailor instruction and support to individual students' needs, interests, and preferred modalities of learning.⁷ Providing training on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can help teachers incorporate this into their classroom as part of their everyday teaching practice.
2. Provide opportunities for youth-adult collaboration beyond the school setting. These are particularly powerful when youth are invited to work alongside adults in creating and/or carrying out school-community partnerships.⁸
3. Create authentic leadership opportunities that allow youth to work with adults in meaningful ways.
4. Create youth leadership programs that aim to engage young people in community-led experiential learning and leadership development. These programs enable them to gain skills and work as active agents of change.
5. Invite students to hold impactful leadership roles, such as serving on school committees or organizing community service projects to help foster a sense of ownership, collaboration, and mastery.⁹

These strategies, when implemented consistently, can help schools create a culture where positive youth-adult relationships are valued, nurtured, and sustained.

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