While this article from the New York Times, by David Brooks, focuses on the traditional student-teacher relationships though a personal experience he had with some of his own students, we know in out-of-school time that positive relationships between youth and adults are at the core of what we do.
And though these questions, again are posed to schools, youth-serving organizations would benefit from asking ourselves these questions, too.
"The bottom line is this, a defining question for any school or company is: What is the quality of the emotional relationships here?" And yet think about your own school or organization. Do you have a metric for measuring relationship quality? Do you have teams reviewing relationship quality? Do you know where relationships are good and where they are bad? How many recent ed reform trends have been about relationship-building?"
For organizations looking to deepen relationships between youth and adults, or would like a tool to share with staff, consider this developmental relationship framework from The Search Institute.
