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Professional Readings includes reviews of recent publications and highlights of reports on current issues that affect schools. Your contributions are welcome. Send them to principal@osu.edu. Please indicate if we may use your name in the “contributor” credits.
Being in the Zone: Community Mapping as the First Step
toward Mobilizing Your Community
Nancy Nestor-Baker, Ph.D., Director, P-12 Project, The Ohio State University
When you hear the term “in the zone,” you may think of runners or golfers or artists who are tightly focused and operating at peak performance levels. Keep the idea of a tight focus in mind because in this article about being “in the zone,” we will talk about how to get focused on your school community. But also keep in mind the idea that the school community itself can be thought of as a zone—a geographic entity with identifying characteristics. So let’s get in the zone, both literally and figuratively.
What Is Your Zone?
As a principal, your community mobilization zone has two primary components. The first is your school’s physical surrounding—its neighborhoods, its attendance areas, its environment. The second is the people within that environment-the staff, families, and community members. Together, these people and settings make up your community mobilization sphere of influence. That is your zone. The zone provides your greatest opportunity for leveraging community resources. Understanding your zone increases the likelihood that you will be successful in developing strong community involvement. You will improve your chances of success even more if your efforts within the zone are based on the planful gathering of information. You want to be comfortable and focused when you are operating in the zone: you want to be a member, not a visitor or a stranger.
Mapping the Zone
Whether you are new to a community or native born, the process of mapping your zone can be a powerful knowledge builder. Mapping consists of identifying places and information on a map. It also includes compiling various contacts, resources, and information gathered through observation and conversation. Perhaps you will choose to list those or to create webs or Venn diagrams. However your maps take shape, they help you identify assets and challenges that can be overlooked and allow you to think more clearly about how resources can be leveraged to strengthen your school and the community itself. So get some maps and markers and let’s get to work.
Old-Fashioned Footwork
Part of community mapping is comprised of good old fashioned footwork. Get a street map of the neighborhood surrounding your school and street maps of the neighborhood(s) where your students live. Before you write anything down, spend some time walking or driving around. Try to avoid letting your preconceived thoughts intrude. What is located where? What aspects of the environment are particularly noticeable? Are there sidewalks and front porches or highways and high rises? What are the architectural styles? What are the lines of demarcation between neighborhoods? Who do you see on the streets? What is the balance of commercial and residential property?
Now you are ready to do some actual mapping. Mark the locations of any major employers, retail sections, government buildings, parks and recreational facilities, schools, colleges, major religious buildings, hospitals and clinics, libraries, museums, social agencies, etc. This helps you get an overall feel for the resources of the community by understanding the type and location of its institutional, economic, and governmental fixtures. Do you notice anything special? For example, what about the locations of libraries and educational centers? Are they easily accessible to the population or only to part of the population? What about retail locations and types? Do you see a prevalence of big box stores or small businesses? What types of resources or institutions are not evident in your zone?
Who Is Where?
Too often, we make the mistake of overgeneralizing about the people in our communities. We then put plans into action based on our false assumptions—and are surprised when our plans are less than effective. Zone mapping will help you avoid the naivete of overgeneralization by helping you understand characteristics of the neighborhoods in your zone. Thus, your next mapping step is to ferret out data about the people in your zone.
Census data are wonderful sources of readily available demographic information, although they may not be as helpful in rapidly changing areas. For online access, go to www.census.gov. Try clicking on Data Tools, where you can search by block or census tract. If you go no further than the Census you will have accomplished a great deal. But usable data are available in many places: for example, if you live in an area with a university, see if there is helpful information in their geography department or their urban and rural planning departments; ask the Board of Elections for help in understanding voting patterns; talk to ecumenical groups to find out about religious participation levels; ask the library about patron usage patterns.
Use the data to identify various demographics in your zone. Even in communities that appear homogeneous you are likely to find differences you did not expect. And in communities others have written off because of overgeneralization you are likely to find spots of promise. Here are a few questions worth answering:
- What does the age distribution look like? Are certain parts of the zone older or younger?
- What does the employment picture look like? Are people in some areas of the zone likely to have certain types of employment?
- What about education levels? How do those vary across the zone?
- How do SES patterns change across neighborhoods?
- How about the proportion of renters to home owners?
- Do people tend to move out quickly or stay at their residence for long periods?
- Are there visible patterns as re: family structures?
- Do you see any areas where religious affiliation is particularly strong?
- Does voting participation vary across the zone?
As you begin to map the answers to these and other questions, you’ll see—literally—some fascinating patterns appearing. Download maps from your data sources or use your computer to color in maps of the zone. If you have a generic template of your zone, you can use it time and again to create color-coded maps that show the diversity of life and resources in your zone.
Zonal Webbing
The maps we discussed should be added to, refined, and revised regularly. They will help you as you seek to understand your zone, as you look for other institutional and corporate partners, and as you seek answers to conflicts that arise within your school population. However, in mapping your zone, you need to go further. Our next step moves us away from geographic mapping and into the relational webs of social capital mapping. “Social capital” means the resources, such as relations and networks, that groups can use to solve common problems. (James Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 94 (1988), pp. 95-120). When you start webbing social capital networks, you»ll find that your maps are far more abstract and sometimes much muddier than your geographic mappings. But you can learn just as much from these messy, muddy webs as from your data-based information.
Civic Engagement
In looking at the relationships and networks in your zone, you may find it helpful think in terms of civic engagement. How are people engaged with each other and with institutions in your zone? Build your structure by identifying participation avenues such as the following:
- Civic organizations such as Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis, locally grown service groups
- Corporate organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce
- School organizations and committees such as PTA, boosters, etc.
- Coalitions/special interest groups, such as citizens for environmental action or parents of gifted children
- Local charities, such as United Way, health-based groups, animal shelter groups, etc.
- Church-based groups
- Local cultural groups, such as arts councils or community bands
- Elected offices, including all elected officials in your area
- Local government commissions and ad hoc groups, such as school board audit committees, school levy groups, historic district review board, the library board, the cable board, etc.
For organization’s sake, try color coding the groups in a way that makes sense to you. You may wish to code by type, or membership size, or level of activity/visibility. Find out who belongs in each of these categories, insofar as reasonable. Do you see overlap? Where do these people live? In referring back to your geographic map, are there neighborhoods that are heavily represented in civic life? Neighborhoods that are clearly underrepresented? This meshing of civic engagement and geographic representation can be an important indicator of where the formal and informal power arises from in your community.
As you begin to sort through the engagement and involvement patterns in your zone, you will start to see connector points across organizations. The “grapevine” of information dispersal will become evident. Key communicators will be identified. Sources of power—formal and informal—will appear. And you will begin to understand the networks and relationships that are the fabric of your community. If you do not work from a strategic understanding of these social capital realities, community mobilization is unlikely to develop roots because it will not tap into the decision-making and relational structures.
School-Community Web
You now know a great deal about your zone. But, if the goal is community mobilization, an important piece is missing. You are missing a web of your school. This web is to be used to find connector points and access links to the larger social capital web. In your school think about:
- Staff members. Who lives in the zone? Who is involved in the community? Caution! Do not overstep your bounds in gathering this information.
- Facilities. What facilities do you have that could be made available to community groups? How are those facilities used now?
- Resources. What do you, your staff, your students, parent groups have to offer the community groups? Talent? Expertise? Helping hands?
After you identify the aspects of your school’s web, look for ways to link the information in it to the community and its institutions/groups. What do you have to offer? How can you insert your school and its members (including you) into the fabric of the zone? Mobilization is much more likely if members of the zone feel a relationship with you and your school.
Final Thoughts
Put simply, mapping helps you see what exists and then points the way to new structures and relationship for you and your school. But mapping can seem overwhelming. So many people, so much data. Don’t be discouraged. Observe, identify, add information. You can tackle your map in increments as time goes by. Whether your mapping is done in a concentrated time or is spread out over many months, eventually you will build a rich, multidimensional understanding of the zone in which you operate.
We have spent a lot of time talking about finding out what exists in your zone. In digging into data and sleuthing out social networks, it can be easy to lose sight of the reciprocal relationships that should exist between a school and its community, between you and your zone. If you want to mobilize community on behalf of your school, accept that community involvement that lasts for more than a short burst requires a two-way street. Mobilization and involvement are not “gimmies” for a school. The undergirding assumption of mobilization and involvement is that you hope for your school to become embedded in the social and institutional networks and frameworks of the community. In other words, community mobilization is not a question of what the community can do for you. It is a question of what we can do for each other. Only then are we really operating “in the zone.”
