photo by Lara Herscovitch
What a sad state of turmoil we are in. To stay healthy, I am reminding myself of what we can change – and what I can change. Today, I’m reflecting on how my path to Restorative Practices helped me appreciate the commonalities, and the differences between my own and our students’ unmet needs.
I was born in 1958 – I have lived through nearly six decades. My mother was married six times as I was growing up. I met my father at 25. We moved a lot. I attended 6 different schools in Texas and Connecticut. We were ‘poor.’ I remember food stamps when they were actually stamps in a booklet.
My mother was stressed and violent and always worried about being judged by others. Her stress pushed her violence to incredibly toxic levels. At 11, she was beating me with a fireplace poker while saying, “Don’t scream! The neighbors will think I am beating you.”
(I am not looking for sympathy here. It was a long time ago and much of it is truly in the past. I offer this part of my story here because of what those experiences led me to.)
I was precocious. I read early and I taught myself. By ten I was reading books like Jane Eyre and plays like Hamlet. My mother was not a reader, but she did have a bound set of books that were a collection of stories known as The Canon. It was all there to read, and I was lonely. So I read.
I brought my skills to school with me, but I felt so out of place and alone that I was uncomfortable. I skipped school – a lot. I hung out with older kids and I did the things those kids were doing. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, I was a disengaged, recalcitrant student. I continued to self-educate, but I was uninterested in being in school at all. It was too painful.
It took me until my late 30s to rise out of the poverty and emotional reactions to my childhood before I became a teacher and found my way to New Haven Public Schools.
Growing up, I was taught that a crime was a crime; some behaviors were wrong, and others were right. As I aged, I learned that other groups of people define this differently. In some countries, the way I live my life would be a crime. I learned that mainstream society has different responses to different groups of people, and our reportedly “free society” has different responses to crimes for different groups of people.
As a young woman I desperately wanted to understand all of the reasons this would be so. I read a lot. I took classes in psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology, history.
I learned that behavior is tied to need.
I first learned this in college, and later as a parent and a teacher. I wondered, if behavior is about meeting a need, then what role does punishment play? If we still don’t meet the need, how could punishment ever work to change behavior?
Early in my teaching career, I learned that schools routinely suspend and give out detentions to hundreds or (like in New Haven) thousands of students. The punishments usually do not change behavior, and result in many of those students being made chronically absent through suspension. I wondered what we were missing. How could we apply what psychology and science was showing us about human behavior?
I realized that my entire life had prepared me to work with my students. I knew and understood their stress and the things that often got between them and the work of being at school. I also learned that the students were not any different than the adults. Maslow flashed neon signs, if you aren’t ‘self-actualized’ (and I am not sure I know anyone who is entirely self-actualized), then behaviors are motivated by one or more of the needs illustrated by his famous pyramid.
This led me to the conclusion that all behavior from birth to death is an attempt to get our needs met. And that led me to Restorative Practices.
When teachers or school administrators turn in this direction instead of strictly-punitive measures, they usually stop at “Restorative Justice.” Restorative Justice and Restorative Practices are related, but different. I think of them as cousins or a parent and a sibling. The basic DNA is the same, but the traits differ.
Restorative Justice is a reaction to a crime or harm. It is a way for the person who was harmed to be heard and ask for outcomes that address the needs of the person who was harmed. The basic idea is, who was harmed? What are the needs of the person who was harmed? Who is obligated to meet those needs? And the offending party works to restore the relationship or repair the harm done.
Restorative Practices is more about building community than it is about responding to harm. It allows the members of a community to be heard, for their needs to be addressed, and to come to an understanding about how to prevent harm. These potential harms can be violence, crime, or broader inequity and cultural incompetence. In every case, there are behaviors that cause harm and there are people who are harmed; the issues are between those two parties. For peace to exist, the needs of those two parties must be addressed.
While the work of restorative practices is simple, it is also deep. If a child is hungry, no one disputes that learning will be difficult. If a child feels unwanted by the world? What then? If a child feels unsafe? If a child feels a deep lack of self-esteem?
In my view, if a child has an unmet need, it is the responsibility of adults to help the child get that need met. I hear all the time, ‘this is the family’s responsibility.’ But what if the family can’t get the need met? What if the family is buried under the weight of poverty, crime, racism, lack of adequate healthcare and healthy housing and other social injustices?
Again, when our needs are unmet, human behavior shifts in a variety of ways to attempt to get those needs met. When inequity is unchecked and allowed to flourish, we adapt our behaviors to meet the needs. When that is too difficult, stress results and behaviors shift again.
Restorative Practices can work through many of these issues. The process literally asks questions like; What do you need in order to be able to…. do your homework, work in class, study, focus, etc.? What do you need from your peers and the adults in order to feel comfortable and productive in class? The answers are collected, and more discussion is developed. For example, share a time when you felt disrespected in a classroom. Share a time when you felt respected. These discussions result in a set of agreed upon norms in place of top down, power over rules.
In a multicultural world that supports the well-being of all its community members, we can create a shared community that is not based on the laws or rules created by one set of people who do not understand the challenges associated with poverty and the toxic stress that results from this poverty or the stress related to adapting to the norms of another country and the isolation that can occur as a result.
The need for restorative justice arises when we have failed to implement the community-building practices and work together. Right now, there is need for both restorative justice and community building restorative practices so we can create a reality that supports the needs of all of humanity.
Cameo is a certified English Literature teacher and a restorative practices practitioner and trainer. She works as Director of Restorative Practices for New Haven Public Schools (during the regular school year), and for other school districts (during the summer).
To reach Cameo directly: thornec76@gmail.com