This article explores how relationship-centered practices can overcome learning barriers and re-energize academic intervention, despite limited funding and instructional time constraints. You’ll find real-world strategies like “getting centered” rituals and strength-based family insights that help students feel truly seen. By rethinking purpose and prioritizing connection, we can move beyond remediation toward genuine growth for all children.
Re-thinking Academic Intervention
The way we think about intervention might be part of the problem. For years, it’s focused mostly on remediation and test scores. While skilled specialists make a difference daily, something is missing: intervention is too often about fixing what’s broken instead of removing barriers, sparking motivation, identifying strengths, and supporting meaningful growth---the very reasons many of us entered education.
It feels like we’ve lost sight of the whole child. Slowing down to build relationships that guide intervention would benefit both students and educators.
Why It’s Not Working (If It Ever Did)
The conversation about improving outcomes has become circular. Schools blame parents; parents blame schools. This loop feels endless and gets us nowhere. I’ve worked with families from very challenging life circumstances and families who have been blessed in the way of resources. When I’ve taken time to hear their hopes, there isn’t one that doesn’t want a bright future for their children. All parents want their children to grow up to be healthy, independent contributing adults.
image copyright Christine Parr, PIT PRODUCTIONS
How can we help all children soar?
Students Remember Connection, Not Just Content
I live in the community where I teach and often run into former students—at the store, park, or gas station. They’re excited to say hi and always share what they remember most.
It’s never the intervention block. It’s always something like this:
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“Remember when we ran that bookmark business in social studies? I’m in business now!”
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“You taught me to sew four patch pillows during the fractions unit. I still use those sewing skills.”
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“That book we read? I told my niece. Now she’s reading it, too.”
They remember doing something real. They remember the connection. It’s not just about phonics lessons, though phonics matters. It’s about being seen, known, and accompanied. That’s what builds the safety students need to take academic risks.
This doesn’t have to mean big overhauls. It starts with relationships and knowing the whole child. Here are simple ways to connect and to improve results.
Practical, Relationship-Centered Approaches That Actually Work
Academic intervention success starts with relationships and seeing the whole child alongside the data. What if we built in simple, ongoing rituals to hear directly from families and students? When we tap into their strengths and interests early, we create partnerships that make learning more personal, more motivating, and more effective.
Families know their children in ways we don’t always see in school. Family engagement is essential for students’ success in school. Use their frame of reference to better understand each child’s strengths and to spark curiosity.
Family Insight #1: Identify Interests and Aspirations When School Starts
Before the year begins, try sending home returnable postcards (or offer them at open house) with just two simple prompts:
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What three specific tasks or activities could your child do without noticing time? (At least two non-screen options.)
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What three jobs or careers can you imagine your child doing in 10 years?
These questions do more than gather info, they send a message: I believe in your child’s future. The first reframes success as engagement, not just academics. The second opens the door to possibility.
Ask families to hand you the card directly. I know it can feel easier to collect this data in an electronic form; however, there is something magical about that tactile piece of paper in this instance. That first moment of personal exchange is small but powerful. You can thank them and look at their faces and smile. Then follow up with a warm, curious question:
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“What kind of Legos does your child build?”
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“Where does your child like to ride bikes?”
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“What specific kinds of books or games light them up?”
Be curious. Be brief. Listen. Tiny beginning-of-the-year moments like these create a shift. Families feel seen. Kids feel known. And trust begins to take root.
Keep those cards. Bring them to the library. Help students choose books that match their dreams.
Family Insight #2: Go or Call, Especially with Hard-to-Reach Families
Email can’t do all the work. When language, schedules, or past school experiences have created distance, we may need to step forward first and reach out. As a successful youth development person once told me, “Be an outreach organization, not an in-reach organization. That’s how you make a difference!”
That might mean showing up at a community event or doing a brief home visit with a few simple, curiosity-driven questions in hand. I’ve brought bubbles and jump ropes to community dinners, tools that don’t require words, just smiles and shared space.
A Story: Connecting with Parents Over Dinner Made Teaching Easier
One of my most meaningful connections started at a dinner I almost skipped. Life was busy with my own children at home and my second-grade teaching job occupied all my working hours. At the last minute, I still mustered the half hour to attend a community dinner that our principal frequented.
I sat next to a mother who barely spoke during IEP meetings. Her son had complex needs, and those meetings were often tense. The rumor was, she was an angry mom.
But that night, as neighborhood teens kept swinging by our table asking for keys, I finally asked, “Why do they keep coming over?”
She grinned. “I love Mario Kart. The kids all hang out at my apartment to play. They’re waiting for me.”
I laughed. “So…do you have a dozen shoes clogging the doorway, too?”
She smiled even wider and added “Yah! What’s the deal? When we were kids weren’t we taught to put the shoes by the wall?” Laughter ensued.
We spent the rest of dinner bonding over cluttered doorways and noisy living rooms. We met as people. After that, the classroom experience changed for me and the son, because mom and I were connected. At meetings, she smiled more. If we’d had a tough day, she answered when I called. She started visiting him at lunch when she could and he loved it. Her son, one of my most challenging students, began to understand: we were on the same team.
If you can’t go off-site, call instead. Invite families to school events ahead of time or schedule a ten-minute conversation. In our district, peer or literacy coaches sometimes cover classes so teachers can make those quick, meaningful calls.
Quick but Powerful Ways to Connect with Every Child At School
Each week, maybe Sunday night, make a list of the students you work with. Who didn’t come to mind right away? Start your Monday by checking in with those students.
Here are a few easy, low-prep ways to build connection:
Personalized Greetings
Whether it’s a jazzy handshake or a quiet high-five, that moment at the door matters. Go beyond that, too!
Two-Minute Rituals
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Invite a student to walk beside you in line. “What made you laugh today?” “I’m sensing you’re having a big feeling or two today.”
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Chat with them while waiting for lunch. “Who made your lunch?” “I didn’t know you love mayo!”
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Give them a classroom job and let them choose a peer to help. Monitor and heap on the affirmations, especially if they ask questions about the tasks.
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Anywhere you can… ASK!: “What’s new?” or “I noticed you were really into ____. What grabbed your attention about ______?”
They don’t always open up the first time, but in time they always do.
For Students Who Need a Little Extra
Sometimes, the student who takes the most energy needs a different kind of relationship. These are the students you always list first because they are a handful.
Start a small notebook just for the two of you. Title it “20 Things We Have in Common.” Add one thing a day together. Glue a photo of you both on the cover. It becomes a small but powerful relationship anchor, something to come back to when things get rocky.
A 60-Second Writing Ritual
This is the simplest, most effective daily routine I’ve found for understanding what each child is generally feeling and thinking. I learn what matters and what makes them tick. It works in both classrooms and small group settings and is especially powerful as a “get to know you” activity in summer or out-of-school programs. Over time, it reveals patterns, like who’s consistently happy or sad on Mondays due to family rhythms.
Each day at a designated transition into a new subject, students complete this sentence in a journal: “Today I am feeling _________ because I am thinking about ________.”
If they leave it face-up, it tells me I can read it. If they turn it over, I just glance to confirm it’s done.
This routine builds emotional awareness and gives me a quick read on who might need emotional support or who might be thinking about something that connects to our learning goals. This daily practice gets their pencils moving and their heads and hearts connected for learning. It’s an academic bonus when they improve by writing complete compound sentences.
Strong interventions don’t always require new programs or big initiatives. Often, it starts with showing up, asking the right questions, and making space for shared humanity. Relationship-centered rituals are simple, sustainable, and transformative. And they remind students, and us, that we belong to each other.
A Story: Hanging Out Occasionally Isn’t a Luxury—It’s a Strategy
During my happiest years of teaching, I’ve set aside 20 minutes once a month for a “reward hangout” with table groups that transitioned well or collaborated respectfully. As I look back over my 37 years in the classroom, the years I didn’t make time for this, I was more drained.
At lunch or recess, they each get a sticker that says, “We get time with Ms. Strom!” (This might not work with older students, but the little ones love it.) Sometimes we just eat and chat. If a child isn’t talking, I prompt, “Hey _______. We haven’t heard from you yet. What are you thinking?” Eventually, over the year, the children notice when someone needs to be included. I get to eat and listen.
Sometimes, academic intervention success starts with a question and someone who listens.
The students love asking “Would You Rather?” questions, too. The questions they make up crack me up and reveal so much:
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“Would you rather sleep in a treehouse or a fort?” (I learned who is afraid of heights!)
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“Would you rather listen to Taylor Swift or Beyoncé all day?” (Opinions are strong!)
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“Would you rather eat pizza or burgers?” (I learn about parents with grilling skills and am sometimes surprised to hear students help make dinner.)
One quiet boy once asked, “Ms. Strom, if you could bring anyone back from the dead for lunch, would you rather see your dad or your dog Mugsy?”
He’d been listening to my storytelling examples. His empathy floored me. I used his question as a prompt for our next writing task. Though small motor skills were anything but a strength, up until that point, his writing output had been an area needing work. That day, his story was full of voice and detail and so much heart. I also gave him quiet leadership roles, like helping set up indoor recess, something that happens too often during winter in Minnesota, where I live.
He had such a gift for empathy that he noticed and remembered what activities classmates were interested in. He carefully chose just the right puzzles, board games and building sets to get out for each classmate. Indoor recesses, a teacher’s nightmare, were calmer.
What if we prioritized self-awareness and helped each student discover their unique potential? What if we used what we know about students, their backgrounds, strengths, and interests to fuel engagement and achievement? Ironically, this might reduce the growing need for academic intervention by making learning more meaningful in the first place. No need to wait! We can start right now in the classrooms we already have. Learn more about this whole-child approach in Academic Intervention Success: A Whole-Child Approach to K–5 Achievement.
To go from stuck to soaring in academic intervention success, we must return to what matters most: relationships and relevance. They are the foundation. Let’s join with children and families to ask what’s possible. When we do, we all rise.
