By: Iliana Gallego

For Greg Leland, understanding students meant stepping beyond the school walls and becoming part of the community. 

During his years as principal of Lathrop High School in Lathrop, California, Leland made a point of being present in the community where he worked—not only at school events, but in everyday life. He and his wife would shop at local stores, run errands around town, and inevitably cross paths with students and their families.  

“These everyday encounters gave me a different way of understanding the students and families we served,” said the former principal. 

Students do not leave their experiences at the school door. Every household has its tensions, its sources of support, and its worries. A teacher who understands that context is better equipped to respond to students’ needs and engage with the community in a deeper and more meaningful way. 

Dr. Alberto Ochoa, professor emeritus in San Diego State University’s College of Education and PIQE’s co-founder, said: “If a student comes to school with well-formed experiences, how is the teacher going to use those experiences to support that student’s development?”  

He explains that what students know, where they come from, and the relationships and communities that shape their lives can also become sources of knowledge for the classroom. 

“If I know my students, I can use examples that they can identify with,” he said. 

According to Ochoa, most teachers and administrators commute to school without having much opportunity to engage with the surrounding community. This can create a gap between educators’ understanding of their students and the communities in which they live. But spending time in those communities can give educators a different perspective. 

One way to develop that understanding is through a process often referred to as a community scan or community mapping. It can begin with simple questions: What does a child see on the way to school? What people and institutions do they encounter? What pressures or sources of support might exist before the student ever enters the classroom? And what expectations will meet that child when they arrive at school? 

The answers can give teachers a better understanding of the experiences students bring into the classroom—and provide tools for making lessons more relevant and helping students feel seen. 

But that knowledge cannot always be found in a student’s file. That kind of understanding often comes from being present in the community. It may come from a conversation with a parent, a visit to a neighborhood, or time spent at a local business. 

“I think people recognize that you care about the community when you make yourself visible and available. You’re not someone who shows up to work and leaves 15 minutes after the school bell rings. Being out there, letting people know who you are, and making yourself available so they’re not afraid to come up and talk to you—that visibility makes a difference. It creates trust,” Leland said. 

“The first thing I did when I got to Lathrop was join the Rotary Club, because I wanted to connect a civic organization to our school,” he said. 

Through those connections, students were able to donate their time and services to support the community, while school staff had the opportunity to better understand the community. 

Ochoa and Edward M. Olivos recently published an article on community scanning, arguing that authentic care begins with educators caring about their students’ well-being and seeking to understand the conditions shaping their communities. Drawing on Angela Valenzuela’s work, they frame authentic care as meaningful, reciprocal and culturally sustaining relationships among schools, minoritized students and their families—distinguishing it from “aesthetic care,” a more superficial form of attention focused on bureaucracy, standardized measures and institutional outcomes. 

However, according to the authors, believing in authentic care is not enough to spur transformative school-community relationships. Educators must also comprehend the historical, political, and socioeconomic barriers specific communities may encounter, as well as the ways community members navigate daily and long-term challenges. 

That understanding begins with recognizing that schools and communities are not separate worlds. Schools do not—and cannot—exist outside of the communities they serve, Ochoa said. Students experience both at the same time. 

That perspective can also change how teachers understand families. Rather than viewing parents primarily as people who need to be contacted when a problem arises, educators can approach them as people who possess knowledge about their children that schools may not have. 

For Leland, that meant finding opportunities to connect with families in unexpected places—even at a crosswalk. 

During his time as principal, development around the high school brought heavier traffic to the area, creating a safety risk for students. Leland began hearing from families he encountered in local stores about the traffic, and their observations prompted him to take action. 

“I went out every morning and afternoon and did the crosswalk, and it really made a difference. But the side benefit to that was that I met many of our students and many of our parents at a deeper level, and I heard their concerns just by standing outside. And that’s a connection I never would have had if I hadn’t done the crosswalk,” he said. “It’s just one more little thing to do to connect with the community, and it is one of my fondest memories.” 

Leland’s experience illustrates how community connections can give educators insight they might not otherwise have into the lives of the students they serve. In the classroom, that understanding can shape teaching in subtle but meaningful ways. A teacher might draw on an example from a student’s life to explain a difficult concept. A student’s language or cultural knowledge might become part of a lesson. A parent might provide context about something happening at home that changes how a teacher responds to a student’s behavior. 

The student, in turn, may recognize something familiar in the curriculum, seeing a piece of their own experience reflected in what they are learning. That sense of recognition can make the material feel more relevant and give students a familiar starting point from which to build new knowledge. 

That is where the idea moves beyond simply “knowing the neighborhood.” 

For educators who practice this approach, however, the starting point is not necessarily a research question. It is a relationship. 

“I always told my staff, I don’t care how much you know; the relationship you build with those students is what really matters,” said Leland. 

A teacher does not have to live in the same neighborhood as their students to teach there well. But taking the time to understand where students come from, what matters to them, and what experiences they bring into the classroom can help them feel seen and understood. And when students know that their teacher sees more than just the student who walks through the classroom door, it can change how they see themselves as learners.