Step 2. Shore Up Support Networks: Ensuring Every Student Has Access to a Web of Supportive Relationships

Both K–12 and postsecondary systems are increasingly focused on provisioning “wraparound” supports to ensure students have the resources they need to learn. Some integrated student support programs attribute their success to the idea that educators are better able to serve their students academically when they have a better understanding of their personal lives. As a result, teachers’ academic decisions can be sensitive to the non-academic factors present in students’ lives. For example, one evidence-based integrated support model called City Connects provides non-academic and academic support to low-income students by assigning coordinators and existing staff members to assess each individual student’s needs and connect them to in- and out-of-school supports.

Support can be delivered in a manner that ignores students’ strengths and focuses on deficits if it discounts existing assets in students’ homes and communities. Factors like race, class, sexuality, and gender all contribute to students’ identities; but mentorship and support models do not always recognize or address these facets head-on in how they train or support mentors or staff. Additionally, if programs broker new connections between White mentors and non-White mentees or students, they may be urging students of color to assimilate to dominant culture rather than recognizing and investing in their own culture. Instead, a Critical Mentoring agenda to brokering support recognizes the assets in both students’ existing networks and identities, while providing deliberate opportunities for students and mentors alike to celebrate the strengths, cultures, and values within that network.

Some schools and institutions have already invested in systems that build close student-to-student and student-to-staff connections, such as advisories. Deliberate designs and measures can ensure advisory becomes a vehicle through which every student has a robust support network within school. For example, EL Education’s Crew model involves engaging with the same peers and crew leader on a regular basis (daily or multiple times per week), and they often remain together year after year. You can scale student support without advisory teachers or full-time staff members by connecting students with their peers and near peers. This untapped source of support can be quite effective because similar age and circumstances can inspire greater confidence and trust. Peers can also foster a sense of accountability. For example, the Atlanta-based Forest School enlists peers to support one another through its Running Partners approach, which pairs students with an accountability partner to help them set and reach their goals.

Investing in stronger support networks in school is often well-intentioned. But it can backfire if these investments occur absent clear diagnostics identifying whom students are turning to within and beyond school in the first place. Programs can leverage the strategies in Step 1 to gather reliable information on the staff, family, community, and peer connections already providing support to students before adding new relationships to that mix. From there, they can empower students to lead conversations with their support networks. For example, Achievement First’s Greenfield school model has implemented a structure called Dream Teams, also referred to as a “community of champions,” composed of students’ parents, caregivers, extended family members, or neighbors. Dream Teams meet quarterly with students and their teachers. The approach specifically focuses on building student agency; students lead their quarterly Dream Team meetings to update their web of support on their goals and progress.

As more systems have tried to improve student support models, many have created student or learner profiles where relevant information about students’ goals, challenges, and experiences can sit alongside academic data. To make these part of a more coherent web-of-support approach, systems can ensure that multiple stakeholders have access to the learner profile and the ability to contribute to the profile over time. This can decrease coordination costs across the student’s web of support.

To maintain student privacy, prior to engaging in this work, stakeholders should think deeply regarding the information they are collecting, how it will be used, who has access, and how it is stored. Information should be circulated across students’ support networks on a need-to-know basis that is appropriate in a given context. In instances that involve sensitive information, individuals can be empowered to encourage extra support for a student without sharing specifics. For example, law enforcement may use the phrase “handle with care” to indicate to school administrators that a particular student may be experiencing a difficult situation.