The Number One Thing to Look for in Your Child’s School

About seven years ago, I had one of those twilight zone moments: the kind where you realize you’re hearing something important, a truth you’ve been circling for months but couldn’t quite name.

I had two of them, in fact, just weeks apart. In separate and unrelated conversations, two of the educators I respect most in the world described the cornerstone of their schools’ success using the same phrase: “relational culture.”

Since then, the phrase has gained some currency, but not nearly enough to become the widely recognized educational north star it should be. And it has rarely been well-enough defined that schools truly know what they’re aiming for when they claim to have it.

What Is a Relational Culture?

In education, a relational culture is one in which the quality of human relationships is prioritized as the foundation for teaching, learning, and community life. It goes beyond policies or programs. It is both an organizing principle — shaping the nuts and bolts of the school day — and a powerful undercurrent, running from classroom to lunchroom to faculty lounge, and all the way up to the parents’ section of the bleachers. It is an ethos.

It would be easy to mistake a school that boasts “good relationships” for one that has an actual relational culture. But there’s an important distinction.

Consider this story:

A student I know attended an elite high school with wonderful teachers, known both for excellent pedagogy and strong personal connections with students. She was a leader in the school, well liked by many, students and teachers alike. She had many good relationships to rely on.

However, when an issue arose that threatened not only her sports team but the reputation and connectedness of the wider student body, she felt at a loss. A mentor nudged her to turn to one of the trusted adults in her life — a teacher, an advisor, a coach. But she hesitated.

Why?

Because while one of her teachers was a brilliant historian, dazzling in the classroom, he wasn’t connected in a larger way to the student body or to school culture outside his subject. Her advisor was caring and approachable, but — in her eyes — not invested in the school’s institutional identity. Neither, she felt, would take responsibility for or have influence over matters of broader cultural importance.

This is the difference. A truly relational culture is not built on isolated connections between individuals. It is a network of bonds so strong and so woven into the daily fabric of school life that they form the context in which everything else happens. In such a culture, when a matter of real consequence arises, students know instinctively that there are many adults connected to both their peers and the decision-makers. Responsibility for the strength of the community is widely held, not narrowly contained.

What Does It Look Like in Practice?

This isn’t just theory. As a parent, teacher, and board member, I’ve been drawn to schools with strong relational cultures, and I’ve seen how they’re intentionally built.

Sometimes, it’s as simple — and as powerful — as the daily schedule. At St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., for instance, every high school student and faculty member eats lunch together, every day, in one common dining hall. Tables are mixed by grade and paired with rotating faculty members. Over the course of a year, every student and teacher has sat down with dozens of others they wouldn’t otherwise know.

That ritual — sharing meals, one of the most relational human acts — strengthens bonds across grades, among teachers, and between students and faculty. It also signals something vital: at this school, community is not accidental, it is designed and protected. Teachers forgo the comfort of a quiet lunch to preserve the fabric of the whole.

But relational culture is not the domain only of small, private schools with large dining halls. At Washington Latin, a public charter school, the shared language of “the Latin Way” expresses and transmits values across the community. At Everett Middle School in San Francisco, the “Golden Owl” culture plays a similar role. In both cases, intentional culture-building — reinforced through common language and shared values — creates a web of relationships that bind students, faculty, and families into something larger than themselves.

Why Does It Matter?

Because one of the ineffable truths of humanity – and the core principle of human development – is that we are born into relationship, and it is the fuel that sustains us. Literally. From birth, we survive in dependence on others, and in life we flourish only in community. Education is not separate from that truth — it is a chapter in it.

So what does that mean, practically, for your child in school? It means that, yes, more than curriculum and more than pedagogy, relationship is the single most important pre-condition to successful learning. Relational trust not only fosters the cognitive engagement required to learn, it is the prime motivation for children to engage, to strive, and to persist. It is also, quite simply, the basic context for any learning exercise. Only a tiny fraction of school learning happens through strictly solo endeavors like reading or working unassisted on a problem. Most learning happens through dialogue, scaffolding, and guided interactions in which relationship with the teacher or relationships among peers facilitated in a strong classroom culture make learning possible.

And while individual relationships can make a school good, it is relational culture that makes a school great. When a school both centers and multiplies the power of its relationships, everything else is amplified: learning, trust, shared responsibility, institutional strength. A friendly school with good teachers becomes something more — something truly “thick,” reinforced and force-multiplied in its potential.

✨ Does your school have a truly relational culture? What relationships have helped your teen flourish and how? Hit reply or leave a comment—I read every one.