ORIENTATION
Before you get started
The pages that follow outline an implementation framework to help organizations, states, and districts create and maintain a more intentional social capital strategy. Before jumping in, we offer some initial guidance for setting a strong foundation:
BUILD a cross-functional team
Users should assemble a team as they start to build a strategy, to inform and guide the work. This should include team members that cut across departments and/or partners to ensure a more systemic perspective on the work. For example, school or state systems might include leaders across school counseling and advising, career and technical education, work-based learning, advanced coursework, and early postsecondary opportunities. Team members should plan to walk through the three phases of the framework – Lay the Foundation, Design the Supports, and Implement the Plan – to determine who will own the work at each step.
Start where you can
The ultimate goal in this work is ensuring every student has the skills, tools, and mindsets to activate their social capital in ways that support their life goals. However, each organization will have a different starting point and should plan to utilize the existing assets and champions they have in place. We offer a number of tools to help your organization identify the opportunities for more explicit and intentional student social capital development but these were built to be flexible enough to complement existing tools, frameworks, and approaches. Start where you can, but work consistently toward the end goal: reaching all students.
Start with a low-lift entry point then embed into existing structures to reach all students
Though they started with an opt-in workshop made for a small testing cohort, the CareerWise Colorado team that participated in pressure testing ESG’s resources recognized the high-level of engagement from apprentices and the note of relevancy from staff. This led to updates to Business Essentials (a required course for all apprentices) and a review of the entire apprenticeship journey to identify other opportunities to reinforce social capital skill development. This integration will result in all CareerWise Colorado apprentices benefitting from explicit and intentional social capital learning all along their journey—from orientation through the end of their apprenticeship, including:
- A discussion on the importance of both strong and weak ties during apprentice orientation, before they start work
- The inclusion of LinkedIn, “Elevator Pitch”, and resume basics into Business Essentials
- The creation and distribution of quarterly supervisor supports to remind supervisors that they should support their apprentice in developing their social capital and suggestions on how to do so
- The addition of 3-4 professional networking opportunities for apprentices with partners in the Denver region
Learn more about ESG’s pressure testing and the work of CareerWise Colorado.
Adapt for your organization
There are many types of organizations—states, districts, intermediaries, student-facing organizations—doing critical work to prepare students for their futures that can more explicitly and intentionally center social capital in their work. Strategies should be contextualized and customized to the needs of an organization or community.The resources on this site offer strong guidance and are intended to be flexible and usable across different contexts and organizational structures. We encourage all users to adapt our tools and resources, as needed (and report back!).
Grounding Principles
The following principles have shaped the development of our resources and the on-the-ground support we’ve provided to different communities. Every organization should take the time to reflect on what they believe about social capital in order to ground themselves in these beliefs and come back to them as they continue to improve upon their strategy.
Learning to activate one’s social capital isn’t just for “some” students or those on a pathway to a four-year college. It involves the development of mindsets, skills, and tools that are essential for navigating a continuously evolving labor market and for easing inevitable career transitions. Strategies and resources may need to be adapted to better reach particular groups of students but the expectation should be that every learner will develop this skill set and receive the support to actively build their network.
Students should have access to meaningful opportunities to build social capital that are aligned with their goals and interests. Centering student voice and choice can ensure that the skills and connections they are building are directly connected to where they see themselves in the future. Building networks with intentionality can bring greater clarity and purpose for students than simply adding connections for connections’ sake.
No community is starting this work entirely from scratch. There are pockets within every school or system in which students are building relationships—whether with peers, school staff, or community partners. Leveraging these existing spaces, expertise, and partnerships can strengthen and accelerate this work, while building a more cohesive thread across these efforts.
Regardless of their background or circumstances, every student has a network and those relationships can carry value in a variety of ways. Avoiding assumptions about who a student might or might not know and judgement about the value of those connections opens the door for more productive and asset-based conversations about the importance of social capital. Students should be encouraged to examine their networks for strengths and opportunities, with the understanding that their connections are already valuable, but networks can always be enhanced to better support their goals and aspirations.
There’s a risk that conversations about social capital can be seen as transactional and inauthentic when talking about its value. Encourage students to think about the importance of investing in and maintaining relationships before needing to call upon them. Invite them to reflect on the ways they serve as a resource and support, often without expecting anything in return. Relationships should be continually fostered, as networks grow and change over time and connections may be called upon for different types of support over the course of one’s life.
It is important to emphasize for students that the practice of building their social capital is a lifelong one. The skills they are developing will serve them throughout their educational journey and career. As such, this work cannot be limited to one program or course. Education leaders should work to connect the dots across the different social capital-building experiences students participate in all along their secondary path, including revisiting conversations and continually reflecting on their growing networks.
ANCHOR TOOLS
The framework outlined in this site provides a comprehensive process through which systems and organizations can build, strengthen, and mobilize students’ social capital. ESG has also built a number of customizable anchor tools that work together to support organizations in systemically integrating social capital into their pathways. While these are referenced throughout the site, we describe them in greater detail below.
Social Capital Scope & Sequence
The Social Capital Scope & Sequence provides a four-step progression—Introduce, Map, Equip, and Empower—of learning objectives aligned to typical competencies for secondary students, alongside activities and resources that can help educators guide students as they build their social capital knowledge, strengthen their skill sets, and activate their networks.
Each step in the progression includes:
- Objectives
- Student activities
- Lesson plans
- Templates
- Assessment guidelines
- Practitioner tools and resources
Educators are encouraged to adapt these to fit their own needs and those of their students, create additional lessons and activities, and/or seek out other resources that can enhance student engagement and understanding. The Scope & Sequence also offers suggested timing by academic year to help educators in their planning.
The objectives in the Scope & Sequence are referenced within relevant sections in the Pathways Integration Strategy (described below) to make clear where and how they can be met.
Companion Tools:
The Social Capital Lesson Plans are an additional resource for educators who are making their way through the Scope & Sequence. The eight lessons are organized under the four steps—Introduce, Map, Equip, and Empower—and designed for 50 minute sessions. There are recommendations for how to level up for students moving at a faster pace. Each lesson plan is a starting place for delivering social capital content to students and can and should be adapted to the needs of different students and contexts.
Students can record their reflections, connections, skills, and goals as they progress through each step in the Scope & Sequence in the Social Capital Individual Student Plan. This spreadsheet is accessible through a browser and students are invited to make their own copy. Students can also adjust settings to allow their parents, teachers, mentors, and other supportive adults to view the plan. Educators and counselors can incorporate this tool into existing individual career and academic plan (ICAP) activities, if applicable.
Pathways Integration Strategy
The Pathways Integration Strategy provides a multi-step roadmap for integrating the Scope & Sequence into existing high-quality college and career pathways for all students across three types of experiences: foundational planning and academics, customized pathways offerings, and extracurriculars.
All high school students across the country generally share certain common educational experiences. Because most students across grade levels can be reached in these spaces, they are the most ideal for introducing social capital concepts, supporting students in mapping their current networks and documenting changes year-over-year, and equipping students with the skill set needed to build their networks. Career and academic planning sessions are best suited for this work but schools or districts might also incorporate social capital into core academic courses, like 9th grade English, or a grade-level cohort opportunity. These include:
- Career and academic planning
- Academic core courses
- Additional advising and exploration periods
Students have opportunities along a pathway to practice and demonstrate social capital growth in a way that’s contextualized to them. Embedding social capital skill development and growth in these experiences ensures students graduate with tools they can leverage and a network they can build upon for the rest of their lives. This includes:
- Early career awareness and exploration activities
- Career and Technical Education (CTE) and other pathways courses
- Early postsecondary opportunities (EPSOs)
- Other electives and advanced courses
- Work-based learning (WBL) experiences
- Attainment of credentials of value
Additional opportunities outside of academic and pathway experiences exist for students to learn about or practice applying their social capital skills. Students often voluntarily participate in these experiences, depending on what is available in their school and community. This may include things like:
- Career and Technical Student Organizations (CTSOs)
- Student clubs and sports, and volunteer activities
- Mentorship programs
The Pathways Integration Strategy references relevant objectives from the Scope & Sequence to help make the connection between the two tools and provide guidance on what the work could look like at each layer. As with all of these tools, organizations are encouraged to identify what assets they currently have and start their work from there, while looking for more opportunities to strengthen delivery of social capital learning to students.
Professional Development Modules
In partnership with the Clayton Christensen Institute, ESG built a set of four professional development modules and a facilitation guide to help organizations build their adult capacity. These modules are designed to be highly engaging, inviting audience participation and reflection, while building on participant knowledge and connection.
- Define social capital
- Describe how relationships provide resources
- Reflect on the importance of social capital
- Identify at least three ways they can help students build social capital
- Adopt an asset-based mindset when it comes to working with young people
- Identify and describe different types of support
- Reflect on the type of support they currently provide to students and could provide in the future
- Think about which of their students are being supported, in what ways, and by whom
- Identify at least one change they’d consider making to an existing practice
- Identify at least one new activity they’d consider implementing with your students
- Describe outcomes and goals in this work
- Identify one to two social capital indicators of interest
- Make a data plan
