EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Online June 2014 | Volume 71
Making a Difference Pages 51-55
The
Power of the Circle
Laura Mirsky
When schools use restorative practices to build
relationships and community, students' attitudes change for the better.
In April 2014, students at Warren G. Harding
Middle School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had just finished a week of state
testing, which they had found very stressful. Like all Harding's teachers, 7th
grade language arts teacher Denise James had her students sit in a circle and
discuss the purpose of the tests and how they felt about having to take them.
The third girl to speak began to cry, saying,
"I know I'm better than what the state says I am. I'm not 'Basic'."
A boy added, "My whole life I've been told
I'm 'Below Basic,' and that's the way I felt. But in here, I don't feel like
that."
Harding is one of many schools employing
restorative practices to build relationships and improve school culture.
Circles, like the ones on testing conducted schoolwide at Harding, are one of
many elements of restorative practices. From California to Maine, elementary,
middle, and high schools in urban, suburban, and rural areas are using these
practices, both to build relationships and to decrease incidents of
misbehavior, bullying, and violence—and to prevent such problems from occurring
in the first place. The International Institute for Restorative Practices
(IIRP) Graduate School is helping schools implement the practices.
"Restorative practice is not a discipline
program, but rather a framework for how to approach all relationships in a
school building: leadership to staff, staff to staff, staff to students, and
student to student," says John Bailie, assistant professor and director of
continuing education at the IIRP Graduate School. "The way we handle
discipline flows naturally out of the way we approach relationships in general.
That's why we train educators in a range of practices, most of which are
proactive. Responsive disciplinary practices are simply the natural result of
that relational framework."
Schools that come closest to achieving a
restorative school culture approach that goal through both strong
administrative leadership and the creative efforts of teachers and staff.
Warren G. Harding Middle School is one such school. Harding has an enrollment
of more than 900 students in grades 6–8. The student body is 55 percent black,
29 percent Hispanic, 11 percent white, 2 percent Asian, and 100 percent
economically disadvantaged (School District of Philadelphia, 2014).
"We are a
community."
In fall 2012, Harding began implementing the
IIRP SaferSanerSchools
Whole-School Change Program, a comprehensive two-year initiative
that trains the entire school staff in restorative practices. Principal Michael
Calderone works hand in hand with assistant principal Betsaida Ortiz, whom he
calls "the heart and soul of restorative practices at Harding." Ortiz
says, "Teachers are learning that this is our way of living. We are a
community."
To build community and relationships, Calderone
and Ortiz have incorporated weekly proactive circles into the classroom
routine. During this time, participants sit in a circle, with no physical
barriers. Circles are often a sequential go-around in which each participant
shares a thought, feeling, or experience related to the topic under discussion,
sometimes passing a "talking piece" to indicate whose turn it is to
speak. Circles provide opportunities for students to build trust, mutual
understanding, and shared values and behaviors (Costello, Wachtel, &
Wachtel, 2010). Teachers may use topics drawn from problems or behaviors
they're seeing in their own classrooms, or they may focus on issues the
leadership team wants addressed schoolwide, such as social media bullying, name
calling, fighting, harassment, or thoughtlessness.
During the first year the school used
restorative practices, Denise James's honors class addressed the circle topic,
"Why do you think kids behave the way they do in our school?" The
circle started out in a light vein: "to be cool," "to be
popular." But when a student said, "because kids don't have enough
guidance at home," it was as if a tap opened—students began to share
intimate details of their lives.
First, a girl spoke about the time she lived in
a box on the street, her mother addicted to crack and her father in prison:
"[My parents] tell me, 'Don't do what I did.'"
"Sometimes it's hard to let go of what was
going on before we come to school," one boy shared. His stepdad was
beating his mom, and he was afraid the man would also hit his 3-year-old
sister. "Do you ever wish you could unsee?" he asked.
That circle brought her class together, says
James. "From then on, we were a family." James has built enthusiastic
learning communities in all her classes, even the one she calls "a
handful."
"You're being mean,
and it's not funny."
If teachers are struggling with the circle
process, Ortiz helps them out. Circles are sometimes used to solve problems or
address wrongdoing (Costello et al., 2010), and one teacher wanted to hold a
circle to address name calling. However, four boys who had been calling another
boy derogatory names related to homosexuality insisted they were only joking
and didn't need to circle. Ortiz came to the classroom, told the boys to watch
from outside the circle, and started the go-around, saying, "I'm
disappointed because a member of this class is being affected by mean comments,
and some of you don't see anything wrong with that." The students went
around the circle, telling the four boys, "You're being mean,"
"It's not funny," and "We're tired of you doing this." The
boy being teased also shared how he felt.
The four boys tried to comment, but Ortiz said
they weren't allowed to speak unless they joined the circle. All four did. By
the end, they all apologized, saying they were trying to be funny, but could
now see there was nothing funny about their behavior.
In the past, when severe misbehavior occurred,
students were suspended—sent home. They were not held accountable, and the
suspension taught them nothing. The U.S. departments of Education and Justice
(2014) issued joint guidelines earlier this year recommending that schools
revise their discipline policies to move away from zero tolerance policies,
which exclude students by means of suspensions and expulsions, often for minor
infractions. The guidelines instead recommend alternatives such as restorative
practices, which foster positive school climates.
Now, at Harding, even severe
misbehavior—bullying, fighting, cursing, trashing a classroom when a substitute
teacher is in charge—is addressed restoratively. Students are not suspended
unless they commit a "nonnegotiable" offense, such as bringing a
weapon or drugs to school. Instead, they are assigned to the reflection room.
In the reflection room, students spend one to several days thinking, writing,
and talking about their behavior in a circle with other students and a staff
supervisor. Students address such restorative questions as "What happened?
What were you thinking about at the time? What have you thought about since?
Who has been affected by what you have done? In what way have they been
affected? What do you think you need to do to make things right?"
(Costello, Wachtel, & Wachtel, 2009, p. 16). The entire process is a
learning experience.
"At first it's a struggle," says
Ortiz. Students are defensive. They insist they're innocent or blame others.
But they're told they have to talk about it and hear how their behavior
affected others. Through this process, students realize what they did wrong and
how they could have made a better choice. "It's rare that students who
leave the reflection room don't accept responsibility for what they did,"
says Ortiz.
"The kids didn't
know the word prejudice."
Like many teachers at Harding, 6th grade reading
teacher Jennifer Levy uses circles not only to build relationships and respond
to problems, but also for teaching and learning. Participating in restorative
circles prepares students for circles on academic subjects. For example, for
Black History Month in February, Levy held a circle on civil rights. Her class
was reading a book about Martin Luther King Jr. that talked about the racism he
encountered early in life. The book spawned "a very deep circle, both
restorative and academic," Levy says. "The kids didn't know the
word prejudice."
In the circle, Levy traced the history of race
in America, from slavery to the civil rights movement. This led to a go-around
about race relations, during which the students and Levy discussed how blacks
and whites treat one another and "how it is for me as a white teacher with
black students and vice versa." This was a wonderful bonding experience
for Levy and her students.
Immediately after all circles, while the
conversation is fresh in their minds, Levy's students write about the circle in
their journals. After the civil rights circle, Levy asked her students to write
about why it's important to treat people the way they themselves want to be
treated.
Circles also help teachers see how they can improve
their teaching. When a teacher was having trouble with some of the students
Levy also teaches, Ortiz asked Levy to invite the teacher to a circle in her
classroom. The students had a chance to tell him how they felt about his class:
All he ever did was hand out worksheets, which they finished in 15 minutes,
they told him. As a result, they were bored and acted up. The teacher learned
how his students felt, and he saw how circles could help him and his class.
"It's always a
conversation."
In fall 2013, Harding's student and staff
rosters doubled. After the School District of Philadelphia shuttered 23 schools
for financial reasons, Harding took in some of the closed schools' former
students and staff. This included 20–25 new teachers, some of whom had never
heard of restorative practices.
To bring the new teachers up to speed, Ortiz
held weekly restorative practices meetings, each week discussing a new chapter
of the Restorative Practices Handbook (Costello et al., 2009).
New teachers also sat in on circles that veteran teachers were holding in their
classrooms to see how it's done. Some new teachers embraced restorative
practices immediately. "I'm learning how to do this, and I feel my
students and I are going through the process together," said Jennifer Levy
when she was first learning the process.
Although Philadelphia is moving toward making
restorative practices a district wide effort, it is a major shift and takes
time, says Ortiz, adding, "I still have teachers—mainly new ones—who say,
'This kid did this, and you're not suspending him?' I say, 'If that's not
the approach I'm taking with you when you do something wrong, why would I do
that with a child, who needs a lot more support than you do?'"
Indeed, Ortiz employs restorative practices to
address issues with staff. To help a teacher having trouble with classroom
management, she held a problem-solving process called a "fishbowl
circle" (Costello et al., 2010). Ortiz asked the teacher to think of three
questions he wanted answered about restorative practices and classroom
management. The teacher sat in a small inner circle with a few veteran
teachers; others sat in a larger surrounding circle and could move into an
empty seat in the inner circle to contribute their suggestions.
Ortiz also uses restorative practices when
disciplinary problems arise with staff. This was difficult at first, she says,
"because of the unions." She has resolved that difficulty by sending
memos ahead of time that include the specific restorative questions to be addressed
in their one-on-one meeting, so the staff member can come prepared. "It's
always a conversation," says Ortiz. "In the meeting, they figure out
how to move forward."
The way Ortiz handled an incident with a school
police officer is illustrative. The officer received information about a
motorist following a young girl to school and failed to report it. In the past,
the officer's actions would have gotten her in trouble. Instead, Ortiz worked
through the restorative questions with her, which helped the officer understand
how the incident had affected Ortiz, as well as the entire school community.
"She will never do anything like that again," says Ortiz.
"Students have
taken ownership."
How has the climate at Harding changed with
restorative practices? "Students have taken ownership for their classroom
and for the school community," explains principal Michael Calderone. Adds
language arts teacher Denise James, "It's quieter, much more respectful. I
know this is not how the real world works. We're a punitive society, even
though that doesn't work! But especially with this population of kids, who feel
they don't have a voice out there, we get great outcomes. They think, 'Oh my
God, an adult is paying attention to me!'"
References
Costello, B., Wachtel, J., & Wachtel, T.
(2009). The restorative practices handbook for teachers,
disciplinarians, and administrators. Bethlehem, PA: International Institute
for Restorative Practices.
Costello, B., Wachtel, J., & Wachtel, T.
(2010). Restorative circles in schools: Building community and
enhancing learning. Bethlehem, PA: International Institute for Restorative
Practices.
School District of Philadelphia. (2014). School
profile: Harding, Warren G. Middle School. Retrieved fromhttps://webapps.philasd.org/school_profile/view/7110
U.S. Department of
Education & U.S. Department of Justice. (2014). Dear colleague
letter on the nondiscriminatory administration of school discipline.
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
