'You Feel Like You're in Your Second Family': Spinning a Relational Web in Middle School

摘要

This article looks closely at the ways in which administrators and teachers at an urban middle school worked to create a relational web; that is, a system that supported multiple connection points across the school community. As such, it illustrates and analyzes four strands of this web including codes of practice, grouping strategies, organizational structures, and discourses of diversity. Taken collectively, these strands helped to develop and sustain relationships within and across the school, and worked to define the character of the school. Because of the opportunities that become possible through the enactment of such a web, I argue that it can play a critical role in creating an asset-based school community. This article is based on ethnographic data collected over a year and a half (2001-2002), including interview and focus group transcripts with administrators, teachers, and students; fieldnotes taken during class, meeting, and free times; and curricular and administrative materials gathered from across the school.