What Happens After a Trusted Adult Survey?
A trusted-adult survey should lead to a shared process for recognizing relationships, noticing students who report no connection, supporting patient relationship-building and asking students again. That is the work T/A Connect is being developed to support.
As I developed this initiative, I kept returning to the people behind the responses. A student naming an adult is sharing something that deserves care. A student reporting no trusted adult is giving a school information it needs to consider thoughtfully.
The survey begins the conversation. The work continues through the people who respond to it.
Start with every student's voice
The planned T/A Connect process gives every student an opportunity to identify trusted adults twice a year, at the beginning and end of the school year.
Students can select up to two adults on campus and identify one person at home or in the community whom they can turn to in a time of need.
The campus selection process draws from the school's employee roster. That includes teachers, food service, coaching, facilities, administrators, office staff and other adults on campus. Students may trust someone whose role places them outside a classroom.
The searchable roster is designed to help students find an adult by name, position, title or identifying details supplied by the school. It is intended to reduce confusion that can come with spelling differences and nicknames.
Throughout the experience, students decide whom they trust and what they disclose.
Recognize relationships with care
In the planned workflow, campus staff are notified when students identify them as trusted adults. Community selections are recorded, but those adults are not contacted.
That notification gives a staff member an opportunity to recognize the importance of a relationship and continue showing up with care.
It does not turn student trust into a staff score. T/A Connect is not intended to rank adults, compare popularity or evaluate personnel performance. Students' choices need to be treated as their perspective on their own relationships.
A useful question for a school team is: How will we help an adult understand this responsibility without making the student's selection a measure of that adult's worth?
Notice students who report no connection
An important part of this work is identifying students who report having no trusted adult and considering how to support them.
That calls for thoughtful human attention. Schools also need to distinguish a student's reported absence of connection from information the student has chosen not to share.
T/A Connect's intended school partnership includes a school liaison and Connection Team, professional development, and ongoing coaching. Together, those supports are meant to help school teams coordinate responsibility and consider appropriate next steps.
People can take responsibility for offering opportunities to connect. They cannot assign a student someone to trust.
Relationship-building may begin with ordinary, appropriate interactions that develop slowly. The student's experience remains central as adults consider how to be present, approachable and consistent.
Support the work around the survey
A school needs time and support to put information into practice. Staff learning can help establish shared language. A liaison and Connection Team can help organize the work. Coaching can give the team opportunities to reflect and adjust.
The supporting digital platform is being developed to organize student selections, changes and follow-through. Technology has a supporting role within that partnership.
One of our founding promises is: "Technology supports our mission. Relationships belong to people."
The platform cannot create trust. The people in the school do the human work, and students decide how they experience those relationships.
Ask students again
The second survey gives students another opportunity to identify their trusted adults and change their selections. The intended process records additions and removals so schools can revisit reported connections over time.
Those changes deserve careful interpretation. An increase in students identifying a trusted adult describes a change in student responses. By itself, it does not prove that the program caused the change.
I want T/A Connect to help schools keep listening and following through while being clear about what the information can tell them.
Where T/A Connect stands
The digital platform remains a local prototype tested with synthetic data. It is not a production platform deployed with real student data. School implementation is targeted for September 2027, subject to readiness and capacity.
For a keynote or professional development conversation about student connection, explore my speaking.