Let’s be honest about the moment we’re in. Schools are being asked to improve attendance, address behavior, deepen engagement, and accelerate achievement, all while priorities shift, resources stretch thin, and so much sits outside our control.
But there is one lever every educator, every school, and every district can pull, every single day: the strength of the relationships our students experience. Relationships are not the soft side of this work. They are the work.
Too often, we treat relationships like first-day-of-school exercises, first-week-of-school activities, and then we get down to business. We build them in August and September and assume they’ll run on autopilot all year. And for many children whose cultures, languages, and histories schools have treated as obstacles, the quality of those relationships decides something essential. It decides whether school feels like a place that claims them or a place they simply have to survive. But relationships require a very specific level of attention, and consistent attention.
So I think about a random Tuesday, or a February day after vacation. Is relationship-building still happening then? Call it the Ordinary-Tuesday Test. Because if the kids feel it on those days, that’s a sign we’re making real progress. If they only feel it in August and September, we have more work to do.
I recently had the joy of moderating an Education Week webinar with four educators who live this every day: Dr. Esther Deth, school wellness coordinator for Long Beach Unified in California; Connie Michael, a 5th grade teacher on the Crow Reservation in Montana; Tom Whisinnand, a 5th grade teacher in Omaha, Nebraska; and Laressa Dent, a school counselor in Mesquite, Texas. Practitioners speaking to practitioners. Sanford Harmony brought us together to dig into how relationships are built in schools and districts across the country.
Their stories have stayed with me because each one reminded me that relationships are cultural work. They live in how we greet, how we gather, whom we notice, and whose ways of being we choose to honor.
Who’s making the weather?
Tom gave us a great image: The adults create the weather in the room. When someone turns up the thermostat, I start peeling off my sweater. Turn it down, and I respond differently.
Classrooms work the same way. The climate we create shapes how children show up, how they treat one another, and how ready they are to learn.
Connie’s weather begins with a predictable morning. Many of her students are being raised by relatives. That is not a deficit story. Kinship care is a long and powerful tradition in Native communities, as it is across the African diaspora, and Connie’s consistency honors it by adding one more set of steady hands. Every day starts with breakfast together, followed by the same affirmations, the same chant, and the same stretches. By the end of the first quarter, the children know the routine so well that they lead it themselves when a substitute arrives.
Connie also rotates classroom jobs on a schedule, and her students take those tasks so seriously that they tell their families not to make dentist appointments on their special helper day. As educators, we spend so much time worrying about how to get kids to school. Here are children asking their families to protect the day they are needed. That is not compliance. That is belonging. Children come where they matter.
Esther shared a moment when students began setting the tone for one another. During a third-grade Meet Up, a classroom practice in the Harmony curriculum, a student acknowledged her partner for how he handled a situation at recess. In September, that same moment might have turned into a fight. This time he made a better choice, and a classmate noticed and celebrated it.
That’s what I find so powerful about adults setting the tone. When we create the weather on purpose, children eventually start creating it too. They take responsibility for their classroom, notice each other’s growth, and hold one another to higher expectations. Many cultures already have language for that. The South African idea of ubuntu is often translated as “I am because we are.” A classroom that lives that idea does not need to be policed. It is held together by its people.
From one great classroom to every classroom
I won’t sugarcoat this part: getting from one great classroom to something every student experiences consistently is hard. Relationship building is its own discipline. It will not happen by accident, and it cannot rest on a handful of gifted educators who do it by instinct. Children should not have to be lucky to be known.
Consistency starts with what we choose to measure. Esther has seen boards and superintendents put students’ sense of belonging in their strategic plans, right next to reading and algebra. She also pointed to research linking student connectedness to lower chronic absenteeism. Our panel’s own numbers tell the same story. Connie’s students, who averaged about 65% attendance in earlier grades, average 85 to 90% in her class. Laressa described a teacher whose discipline referrals have dropped every year for nearly a decade.
Leaders, this is where we come in. When we look at belonging data by student groups, we see whose relationship with school is fraying, and we can ask why. When we bring families in as true partners in shaping the school, not occasional audiences, we learn what no survey will tell us. And when we invest in our adults through time, reflection, and care, we make it possible for them to extend a warmth they have first received themselves.
Pebbles that ripple
I’m a tinkerer by nature. I love the small things with big impact, the pebbles that ripple out in ways we may never see but that last in the life of a child. I asked each panelist what someone could start tomorrow:
- Ask a quick question. Esther and Connie both use Quick Connection prompts that get students talking to each other. It’s a fast track to belonging.
- Say their name, and say it right. Laressa serves nearly 600 students. Their delight when she knows their name is everything. A name carries family, lineage, and hope, and pronouncing it with care tells a child this place was built with them in mind.
- Notice your colleagues. Tom challenged us to tell a peer their lesson was great, or that their kids were amazing during the fire drill. Students watch how we treat each other, and they learn more from that than from any poster on the wall.
I’d add one more of my own from the lens of a mom: make the first call home a good one. Families who hear joy before they hear concern are far more ready to stand with us when things get hard.
I say this all the time: relationships are the heart through which everything flows in our schools: attendance, engagement, achievement, and a child’s sense of who they can become. So pick one pebble this week. Then check back on an ordinary Tuesday.
I invite you to watch the full conversation and hear these educators in their own words. Their stories hold far more than I could fit here.
Dr. Ruby Ababio-Fernandez has more than 23 years of experience in education and leadership, including senior roles at the New York City Leadership Academy and the New York City Department of Education. She currently serves as Superintendent in Residence at McGraw Hill. She holds a doctorate in urban educational leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University.