New View EDU Episode 70: The Role of Schools in Cultivating Healthy Relationships

Available April 8, 2025

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Relationships are central to the work educators do in schools: how educators connect to their students, and how connected students feel to their communities. As students leave their schools and go out into the world, their ability to relate to others, understand social nuances, and navigate everything from collegial relationships to friendships to dating will have an impact on their success and their well-being. But what role do educators play in helping them develop those interpersonal skills? How involved should schools be in educating students around different types of relationships, and how should educators be thinking about the messages students may be absorbing from the school environment? Health educator Shafia Zaloom joins NAIS President Debra P. Wilson to untangle the tricky dynamics.

The conversation begins with a question many adults have been asking: What has changed for young people, when, and why? Shafia discusses the role of technology access and digital communications in how young people are navigating relationships now. “Be filters, not sponges” is a mantra she shares from her extensive work with teens and young adults. Kids need to learn, Shafia says, how to take in information from the digital world and critically examine and sort it instead of taking it all in. She encourages adults to help students understand that their attention is currency, and that they have only so much budget to spend; where and how they place their energy will impact them in different ways. 

But what about real-life relationships, once kids look up from the screens? Shafia says COVID, with its increased dependence on digital communication, has had a cascading effect on face-to-face relationship-building and socializing. The work of helping students learn, or re-learn, how to communicate and be with one another in real life starts from the earliest ages and moves through the K-12 landscape. And whether it’s working together in a group, building a friendship, or learning to set healthy boundaries in a dating relationship, Shafia says it all begins with the foundation of “how do we treat each other?” She gives examples of how schools can work to help kids build strong relationships across all grade levels, starting with “friends, feelings, fairness” in kindergarten and working up through self-regulation, understanding space bubbles, naming and recognizing feelings, and—crucially—transitioning from the Golden Rule to the Platinum Rule.

As kids grow from elementary into middle school, Shafia says, we need to begin teaching them that respect does not mean “treat others as you want to be treated.” Respect, as we develop into young adults, means “treat others as they want to be treated.” In her work, she notes, most high school and early college-aged students report that they have never been taught that framing. But attunement to others and the ability to shift our relational behavior in response to their cues is a life skill that can be applied to the classroom, the workplace, interpersonal dynamics, and healthy relationships of all kinds in all spaces.

Understanding that as kids grow, they have more complex needs and questions around relationships and that schools may not feel equipped to handle all of those concerns, Shafia says she is writing a new book based on deep research with schools across the country. She says she has realized, through this work, that schools and teachers need more guidance; the responsibility to educate kids around relationships and delicate territory like dating doesn’t start and stop with health class. She points out that in a school environment, kids are sending and absorbing messages all the time, even in “in between” spaces like the hallway or playground. Without a clear understanding of how to handle everyday moments outside of a prescribed curriculum, teachers and administrators may flounder or feel like they can’t step in effectively when kids express natural body curiosity, or have concerns about boundaries, or are talking about dating, puberty, or sexuality. 

Are those topics that we can, or should, be wading into in schools? Shafia argues that we can’t avoid them, as they’re natural parts of development that kids will bring with them into school spaces. Her guidance aims to help schools handle sensitive topics in a caring, affirming, and nonjudgmental way, listening and understanding where kids are coming from, and providing the support and information they need to make good decisions. Helping them navigate questions, big and small, about relating to others in a healthy, balanced way is part of growing students who can confidently enter the world beyond our schools.

Key Questions

Some of the key questions Debra and Shafia explore in this episode include:

  • How does the digital world impact the way kids are connecting and relating to others right now? How has technology changed real-life relational skills?
  • What behaviors and communication modes can parents and educators utilize more when talking with kids about relationships? What helps? 
  • When we think about teaching and modeling healthy relationships in the school setting, what does that look like at different grade levels? What does it include, and what does it not need to include?
  • What motivated the research for the new book, and what have you learned from talking with educators from across the country?

Episode Highlights

  • “More than ever, especially with the increase of the digital world and its prevalence in their lives, they're just inundated with this onslaught of information. They're sort of drowning in it. And so they're starving for guidance and to understand what real connection is, and all the things that make us deeply human that they think they're understanding and connecting on, but they actually aren't.” (4:43)
  • “We all need spaces free of judgment, ultimatums, and assumptions to share with open honesty, right? I think that's really important, and shame in particular, which is what a lot of judgment leads to. And so as adults, taking care of, with our own peers, what we need to work through so that we can be present in a nonjudgmental way. And to get really curious and ask strategic questions of kids that let them be the experts of their own experience.” (21:40)
  • “I'll have a classroom of a hundred 18-year-olds about to go to college. And I'll say, how many have been taught to respect yourselves and others your whole life? Every hand goes up. And I'll say, OK, who can give me a definition? Every hand goes down. And they default to the Golden Rule. Treat others how you'd want to be treated. But if I'm a touchy-feely person and I'm going through the world thinking everyone else is touchy-feely, too, am I honoring their right to consent? No, because as we get older, come out of the elementary grades and into the middle school grades, respect means treating people how they want to be treated. And how would you actually know that? You have to pay attention and listen. You have to ask.” (32:24)
  • “This stuff was coming up outside of the classroom, and we know this, right? It's happening everywhere, typically during transition. So like the in-betweens, it's happening when your kids are walking in a line and waiting outside the gym to go to P.E. It's happening when they're waiting in line to wash their hands before they go to the lunchroom. It's happening during recess when there's, you know, a random game of tag going on and it's girls up against boys. … It's happening in the in-betweens, and it's people who aren't trained to teach this in a classroom necessarily. It's not the school counselors who are in their office doing one-to-one support.” (36:05)

Resource List

Full Transcript

  • Read the full transcript here.

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About Our Guest

Shafia Zaloom is a health educator, parent, consultant, and author whose work centers on human development, community building, ethics, and social justice. Her approach involves creating opportunities for students and teachers to discuss the complexities of teen culture and decision-making with straightforward, open, and honest dialogue. Shafia has worked with thousands of children and their families in her role as a teacher, coach, administrator, board member, and outdoor educator. She has contributed articles to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and numerous parenting blogs. Shafia’s book, Sex, Teens and Everything in Between, has been reviewed as “the ultimate relationship guide for teens of all orientations and identities.” Shafia is currently a health teacher at the Urban School in San Francisco, teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and develops curricula and trainings for schools across the country. She was honored by the San Francisco Giants Foundation in 2018 for her work with Aim High, a program that expands opportunities for students and their teachers through tuition-free summer learning enrichment. She was also recognized as CAHPERD’s Health Teacher of the Year Award for 2021. Her work has been featured by many media outlets, including The New York Times, USA Today, NPR, KQED, and PBS.