Step 1. Take Stock: Getting to Know Who Your Students Know

There’s a simple reason why mapping relationships is a critical first step to investing in students’ networks: visualizing their own network can ensure that students learn about networking through a personal and asset-based lens. 

Teaching students about “networking” is often a component of career preparation curriculum and activities. But teaching networking to first-generation students, students from low-income families, and students of color risks devolving into sending the message that their current network isn’t good enough. For example, Opportunity Network operates a six-year college and career program for underrepresented students across New York City to succeed in postsecondary education and careers, starting in high school. For Opportunity Network’s President and CEO AiLun Ku, having students map their networks is aimed at “helping [students] see that their lives are already operating in networks.” A physical drawing of their networks, in Ku’s words, offers a student “a visualization of their existing robust, dynamic networks.” The activity also includes group discussions among students to share with one another how social capital might be exchanged in their existing network, and how somebody might need something and somebody might be able to give it. That exercise is meant to serve as a hypothetical and safe way to explore how social capital is built and exchanged in our everyday lives.

As the curriculum progresses, Opportunity Network not only encourages students to continuously reflect on these assets, but also applies a culturally-responsive lens to discussing networking and social capital: coaches discuss dominant norms around network building and also emphasize to fellows that they have agency in choosing how they build and maintain relationships in school and careers. As Katherine Hanson, Opportunity Network’s Associate Director of Decision Sciences said, “In 11th grade, as they prepare for a speed networking event, a huge amount of students’ time is spent analyzing professionalism.” In this lesson, coaches and students reflect on the ways in which “norms vary by industry, and norms in those industries are determined by those with historical and structural power. Those norms are unspoken but nonetheless rewarded and your reward depends on your personal proximity to historical and structural power.” For Opportunity Network, these reflections offer students agency in how they adapt to different contexts. “Ultimately your goal is not to code switch but to know your desired industry’s norms and then decide how to engage with those professional norms,” said Hanson.

Particularly in light of the pandemic, schools are focused on belonging and support as crucial ingredients to helping students thrive. Instead of assigning support, relationship mapping offers the opportunity to first ask students whom they already feel they can trust or depend on. For example, Making Caring Common (MCC), which offers a relationship mapping strategy, has more recently created and piloted a strategy to collect data from students themselves by having them list all of the adults in school they feel connected to; or, if schools don’t want to collect staff names specifically, they can poll students about the number of adults at school they’d feel comfortable going to if they were having a hard time or facing a personal problem.  

In some school communities, MCC has found that it’s important for people to understand what the data is, how it will be used, and what will happen to it after. Moreover, it can be important to frame the exercise to educators as an exercise to build support networks, rather than a popularity contest. “We’ll then plan for action,” said Glenn Manning of Making Caring Common. “We’re saying a student doesn’t have anybody, anyone on staff willing to reach out to her with a show of care and support. Then also consider systemic obstacles to certain kinds of students linking up with adults. They then mark dates for the follow-up for a cohort of adults committed to this work.”

Larger schools and institutions may prefer to move through the process one grade level or department at a time. From there, schools that identify students who lack trusting relationships with adults or faculty can direct additional connections and resources accordingly. For example, watch Ted Dintersmith’s Innovation Playlist to see relationship mapping in action at Jamestown Public Schools.

Building a network doesn’t just have to be about students meeting new people; it can be about students having new types of conversations with people they already know. To increase the odds that students will feel motivated to engage with the relationships they identify in their map, relationship mapping should be tied to a goal or opportunity that students care about. For example, at Beyond 12, a college success nonprofit, coaches ask students to identify people they know who can help them tackle real-time challenges they’re grappling with at college. At Big Picture Learning, students are asked to suggest “opportunities” in their existing networks—in the form of prospective internship sites in their communities—that reflect their interests. 

In other words, mapping their networks is a chance to reflect on the specific connections that could offer specific types of support or opportunities in service of students’ goals and interests.

That approach has research in its favor. Researcher Brian Lightfoot, who’s studied social capital across schools and nonprofits, has found that authentic social capital-building often comes from connecting “real stakes and purposeful action” to building networks. “There’s a definitive connection between youth voice and putting young people in leadership positions and developing their social capital,” said Lightfoot. By that logic, educators should strive to connect mapping to a goal or context that matters to students, not just to programs’ own goals for students.

Schools and career centers often look for ways to expand students’ professional networks by inviting guest speakers, mentors, and the like to meet their students. While those new connections can be helpful (see more in Step 3), this approach tends to ignore the professional networks that may already surround students. Most schools approach employer partnerships by either relying on formal partnerships with companies or local chambers of commerce, or leaving educators, counselors, or career offices to nurture their own networks. 

Urging students to think across multiple domains of their life can expand the sorts of professional connections they name and activate. For example, at the organizations Social Capital Builders, DeJesus urges young people to think about what he calls “gateway assets” as a way to identify connections beyond their immediate, closest contacts. “By understanding social network analysis, a young person’s developmental connection, like a former coach who works as a warehouse manager, can easily connect the young person to the head of any department within his company. Through quality social network analysis, young people self-discover that those people who they thought were not normally in their network actually are,” DeJesus said.

Another curriculum, Connected Futures, likewise urges students to think in this way: in one of its network-mapping activities, students trace out the chain of connections their networks could unlock. The activity prompts students: ”Put the names of some people you know or are in touch with in the top row. In the row below, list anyone they know who may be able to get you closer to your goal. As you network with each person in the second row, list any other relevant people or resources each person might be able to connect you to in the rows below.”

Not only does relationship mapping provide more detailed information regarding whom your students know and turn to—it can also surface relationships that you could enlist more deliberately to expand supports or opportunities at your institution. Make sure you have a shared contact database where you can store these connections so that they remain within reach for your community to tap into in the future.