Agency & Next Steps

In today's episode Dr. Tami is talking with Amy Reiman. Amy is a high school teacher from Normal, IL .   Dr. Tami and Amy discuss the process of uses Restorative Justice practices in her high school.   Dr. Tami and Amy explore the importance of agency and voice as a part of this process: both for educators and students.  Explore with them how agency and taking the one next step in an equity journey can make all the difference.  Joy has a prominent place is this very important work. 

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Transcript

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 welcome everybody. Welcome to the Dragonfly Rising Podcast. I am here with Amy Raymond today  from normal Illinois.

She's a teacher at University High School. So Amy, I'll let you introduce yourself to everyone. 

Hello, Tami. Thank you for having me on today, and I am just finished up my 15th year of teaching in a high school English classroom.  I teach at a. School that is a lab school for university. So it is a choice school  technically publicly funded.  But students have to  pursue admission to get into that school.

And we work with pre-service teachers in the classroom for 12 weeks out of each semester.  I.  I'm not, I'm, I'm currently located in the Midwest, not native to the Midwest, but have made my home here and,  you know, enjoy it. Except for like, maybe August and February are a little rough. 

When it gets super hot and humid in, in August, and then too cold in February, you know, that's,

cold and too dark. 

oh, yes, yes. It is dark. So for those of you who don't know, I'm, I mean, Amy and I worked together  university of High School back from, what was that, like 22,000 and.  10, maybe 2009 to 2016.  2010 to 16. 11 to 16, something in there.

So

I started working with you. It was like my second year of teaching when I started working with you. Thank goodness.

Oh my goodness. You're so sweet. You're so sweet. Was it you really?  Oh my gosh. I didn't even realize that. I didn't even realize that. I know, you know, time flies when you're having fun as an educator, right?  Just, it doesn't seem like that, but it, but I, great time. So yes, I am currently in Texas, but I am a mid-westerner.

I lived in Illinois for 20 years. I wasn't native either.   So very exciting. They do exciting stuff at ui. So  I'm happy to have Amy here today. We're gonna talk a little bit about what they're doing there with restorative justice. But you know, Amy, I'm curious  you don't just land into,  right, let's do restorative justice.

So how, like, tell me a little bit about your.  Journey as an educator thinking about equity, social justice, and those types of spaces. 

My. I was, I was thinking about this question.   I think that as an educator,  both as just a product of my own reading interests and a product of my education program at Illinois State University, I, I graduated thinking a lot about representation in the  language arts curriculum, and. I think I also thought of equity and social justice as, oh, a, a really well-developed curriculum is, is really gonna solve racism and inequity.

Right? Like I was in that kind of space of  No. Yeah. 'cause it's a lot of work. It's, you know, important work. But I, in the classroom, In, even just in this country as it has been so rapidly changing over the last, well, I mean, it's always changing,  but suddenly in the classroom you are hyper aware of it.   That  that was inadequate to the task of.

Like I said, really getting students to communicate around diverse experiences, to even understand themselves  and their, the ways they wanted to be in the world, which I think is,  is deeply like that is, is a really important goal in my classroom.  Language is,  It's simply wrapped up in everything we do, how we think about ourselves, how we move in the world, how we establish that community.

And so that began for me, a really long-term exploration of how  do I do this work in a way that is.  More real and authentic for students.  And some of it is, some of it is skills based. Some of it is, you know, really rooted in civil conversations. And  and some of it is that  social emotional learning, right?

What do, how do I   become aware of my own presence in the classroom? How do I help students? Become aware of their own social emotional skills.

Mm-hmm.

 So yeah, it's been,  it's been kind of a, a long journey from there. And I think there are  crossroads moments  that really have emerged in my own teaching. Of course, the election of 2016.

Mm-hmm. 

You know, I had, I was teaching American Lit at the time, and I had students the day after that election, my black students came into class wearing all black. I had students come into class wearing MAGA hats, one draped in the American flag. And  you know, that kind of environment can rapidly make you feel inadequate  as an educator.

Wow. What a powerful visual of what was happening in your classroom at the time, reflecting what's hap, what's happening in the country 

Yeah. And students do, they are, they are very aware. These are students that are growing up with the internet. They are far more aware than I was at that age.  They are emotionally intertwined with   both the celebrations and the outrage that is pervasive on social media.  And I think, I think teenagers have. 

An abiding sense of justice and fairness, and they are looking to  adults to help them navigate that. And  there aren't a lot of models for that right now. And so I certainly think the classroom, the schools are a place where we can begin to,  to better model what that can look like. And we have some growing to do too, a significant amount. 

Don't we all though? But I think you hit on something that's really important. You called it  like a long  journey, and that speaks to me, right? Because I think people think  when you're.  Trying to do this work. One, either there's like a magic bullet and I've learned all the things, right? And now, and now I do this, and now we can in instill justice and equity for everyone. 

One, which I would love, like I would love, like if I was somehow like, had some magical powers and like everyone, but it is a journey, right? Like, and I feel like that's the same for me, right?  It, it started in.  There's like a catalyst, right? And this, this catalyst for me goes all the way back to, you know, my undergraduate study to become a teacher.

And I had this one professor that shared this, you know, dreamkeepers, that one book, and it became this trajectory to today.  And so I think that's important, right? Because there's no matter how long  I think you've been learning and engaging, With this work and connecting with others, whether that's other adults or students or just, you know, in your daily life.

Like there's always something to learn  in the journey.  So I think that was super powerful. What you're talking about, like this, this long journey, like this is, this is a marathon, this is not a short game kind of experience. Does that, does that feel true?

but that feels true. And I think too, even just the framing it right as learning and as journey, there's an opportunity for joy in that. Like there is this really, I. Hard work and navigating the,  the shame and the embarrassment and the right as a teacher. The, i, I frequently say to all those students, I had my first five years, I'm just, sorry, come back. 

Oh, I think every educator feels that way. 'cause I'm like, oh y'all, I'm, I did my best. Like, I didn't know what I didn't know, and I'm so much better now. I'm so glad you made it. 

but I think like   There's also  some, some relief in being able to say that like, okay, I have learned  and that learning is what, as an educator feels sacred to me. It feel we are designed for learning and for wonder and curiosity, and there are moments even around this  vast injustice that exists that per persists in our society  to. 

Experience that joy of learning and of seeing, oh,

Mm.

but I've changed, I think differently. My students changed. They're thinking differently.  And so yeah, I think there's,  there's a built-in reward there too.

Yeah. Yeah.  I love that, the joy and finding the, the moments of joy  small or large, right in, in that, in that journey. So you talked a little bit about.  Right. Sitting in this moment and feeling inadequate. Like, what do, what do I do? Like, what do I do in this climate? And I think that's really important.

'cause I think  oftentimes society tries to paint schools as apolitical, and they're not political spaces, but schools. Honestly mirror the systems and structures that exist in, you know, the country that we live in, right? For better or for worse. And there are things that are great about that. And there are things that are challenging, right?

Things like you mentioned we can do better.  So when you're feeling like that, so you felt like I'm inadequate, what do I do? Right?  were some things.  That you did do, like, what would you say or share with others? Like what do you do in those moments? Like, 'cause you, you're in a different space now, right?

So you've definitely taken some action. 

So    I think there are, like, what I did do in the moment was  we, you know, we're gonna pause, we're gonna pause on.  The flags. We're gonna pause on the conversation. I host  I set up a silent convers, a silent discussion in a Google doc for my students. That was highly structured.   That just began with, right, what are the, the feelings that you're bringing into this classroom today?

What do you need?   And that, that was, that was what we did for, that was our starting point for that day.  I.  I mean, in terms of how I would respond now  still, still the pause. 

Yeah.

There's a lot that can be done with a   I'm noticing right, the  the reaction that has just occurred in this room. And I'm wondering if other people have noticed it, how,  how we're feeling.

 And they, they can be quick  interventions into, because the. Thing that happens in a classroom is however much Americans don't want politics to come into the classroom, however much a teacher doesn't want them to come into the classroom.  Teenagers carry those emotions with them into every space, every human does.

Teenagers, it just,  they're delightfully amped up in those emotions sometimes.   So they're there whether you address them or not.  And I think.  You know, it's pausing, but I also think I've done a lot of growth and learning in just social emotional development and what's going on with our parasympathetic nervous system, our sympathetic nervous system, and how do we get  a group of people to take a deep breath to bring that prefrontal cortex back online.

So there's some really concrete things, but the question for me is always, Two, how are we going to then move towards and build towards the classroom community that we  we want to create together?  And I think sometimes it's as simple and maybe obvious as co-constructing group norms.    You know, co-constructing responses rather than reactions.

So I do a lot with  building sentence frames together.  We do, this is not my creation, it's from   oh, the book letting go of Literary Whiteness.  And they have, they have some great    Kind of  moves that occur in classrooms that they dub white educational discourse and their, their educational conversation moves that we often use to gloss over or  move back to niceness rather than navigate the actual  topic. 

We need to be unpacking, whether it's in literature, whether it's personal, whether it's, you know, racial, social. And so we do some activities early on where we, Hey, let's, let's look at this scenario. What's a way that we can respond that would move us back towards these, you know, group community norms that we've established for how we want to be together. 

And  it doesn't take a lot of time.  It takes. It takes intention and it takes  building a space too where we can say, Hey, this isn't, this isn't working. Let's, let's go back and fix this together.  And then of course  restorative practices have  become  a huge part of.  Of how we communicate in my classroom from using circles to familiarizing students with that vocabulary  of restorative justice, restorative practices, which is premised on how do we work with and support people to do things with them  rather than to or for them,  which is, that's our goal as educators.

How can I support you with your learning?  That is both academic and skills-based and also,  you know, moving towards that adulthood. 

Right. Right.  I think that's so  powerful, right? Like the, the co-constructing  because the  people get a chance. And I'm gonna say people, meaning students, right

Mm-hmm. 

to have a voice in the space in which they're engaging with. 'cause students are in school for the majority of their day, and in the absence of that voice, I feel like they still try to find a way to exert their voice.

So how powerful is it to be intentional? Like you were talking about intentional in setting those things up.  So  you, you were alluding to the restorative justice practices. So, and this may be exactly how you got started, but kind of tell me how   tell me more about that and how that got started and where you are and all, all the good things. 

Yeah, so I  had an opportunity through our regional Office of Education and it, this was the summer of 2017, so it was after the election. It was part of my kind of questing for how do I.  Do better at this, at helping my students develop these skills for civil conversations.  And I happen to sign up for a workshop with   Kevin Jones, who's an I I R P, which is like,  oh something, international Restorative Practice, Institute of International Restorative Practices,  and he was collaborating with our Office of Education with.

All sorts of community workers, teachers, social workers, police  juvenile detention facilitators, and was really, and it has continued this work of bringing restorative practices to our towns of Bloomington normal.  And it was a, I believe it was a four day workshop on introducing the concepts of restorative justice, working through scenarios.

 And, you know, application of how we could bring this into our spaces.  Just networking. What does it mean, especially 'cause it was a lot of people working with young adults.  What do restorative practices look like in each of our, our areas?  And  that  launched me into attending a series of  workshops. 

Reading just to understand, right, what was this essentially indigenous practice that has been around for thousands of years  and how the research into it and how it's being applied in education. And I don't wanna,  I don't wanna  tell restorative justice as a cure, all right? It's not a bandaid, it's not a fix, but it is an approach that I think has really. 

Provided me with a framework for that intentionality that I mentioned.   And so I brought it to my faculty.  And pre, you know, we  operate with something called shared governance, and so.  Shared some tidbits about it and asked faculty if they would be interested in pursuing it further. And they were, they were interested in learning more.

And so my principal and I began attending.  We attended another workshop  particularly for launching and training people to be facilitators and restorative practice.  And we've done that in collaboration with the College of Education at I S U, which is kind of our   umbrella.  Organization. And then we spent this past year, because of course the pandemic interrupted a lot of things.

oh yeah, for sure.

 Although I was also grateful for the concept of circles and restorative practice through the pandemic.  Yes. Yes, I bet. Oh my gosh. 

yeah. And so this past year was the first, like we did a lot of   Faculty workshops that the principal and I facilitated and  introduced them to concepts of that, that idea of, you know, affective language and becoming aware of the ways in which,  you know, emotions are present.   And so how to navigate those in ways that that align to our desire to support students.

You know, with their education  and moving away from some punitive and,  and perhaps permissive behaviors  within our,  within our culture.  And so I think that after this first year, we're in a place where,  We're very comfortable with some of the language of restorative practices. I think we're in a place where we're working to  imagine what it can look like in more of our day-to-day interactions.

 The  probably the most powerful experience this year was   I got to participate. We have a group called the Student Diversity Committee, and it's a group of students that are.  Both selected and volunteer  that are, they're pulled from every sport, every activity within the school  our student senate.

And so we try to have representation from all parts of the student body,  and we spent a day with them on, Hey, this is what restorative justice is. These are, of course, circles are the things that people are most familiar with, with restorative. Justice. That really is just one small piece of it.   But we had a, a hate based incident towards the end of the school year and the students asked for circles.

And that is where, when students start asking for  these practices, right, that's where it's gonna gain its.  It's momentum within our culture. That's where I think it will have the most potential to shift our culture into something that is more  restorative, something more that offers a little bit of redemption, right?

Something. It's an alternative to cancel culture.

yes. Yes. Well, you know, and. You, you want people to want to be involved, right? Like you want, no one likes, including, I, I always say this, right? Like, sometimes we forget that students are just younger or smaller humans, right? So in the same ways, right? We as adults want our voice to be valued and heard. And students  also want to have their voices valued and heard.

  And  be a part of that process, right? Like, I have thoughts, I have experiences, I have feelings.  So help me,  you know, in that process on how do I, how do I use those, right? Like, there's still, well, I think we're all, well, to be honest, we're all still learning that. I mean, maybe I'll just speak for

Right.

but  you know, so that's why I think that that's powerful, right? Like that engagement, it's, it's a. Together versus to you like, it's not something we do to students.

Right.  And sometimes they just have such better ideas 

Oh, absolutely. You're like, oh my God, that's brilliant. Yes. I love that. I never would've thought about that. Right? And yes, yes, students are brilliant. 

Yes, they are.  Oh. 

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry, I interrupted your train of thought. I'm so sorry. Keep going. Keep, keep going. So, yeah. 

Yeah. So that's, I mean, that's, that's pretty much it. That's kind of where we're at with  we're continuing to implement  You know, these restorative practices. My principal and I had another opportunity this past year to go to these six workshops called Pathways to Restorative Leadership. And each of them was themed around a component of restorative justice, which I think was really helpful  for getting   us also to a place where we can share with faculty more than, you know, it's more than circles   things like, you know, Maintaining intentional community building  the trauma informed restorative practices  just a number of things that will, you know, continue to,  that have continued to develop our toolbox.  So I'm eager to continue sharing that with faculty.

Yeah, that's exciting. I think that's important, right? Like the continuity, like  it's not just a, we did a circle or you know, the, also the intentionality around supporting educators with what does that look like? Because  I feel like sometimes it's like, oh, put your students in groups and then have a conversation and then, you know,  and we've seen this with other things in education, right?

And then they're like, oh, that didn't work. I tried it one time and it, and it didn't work. You know, so I'm gonna go back to what I did. So  I, the consistency, right? The intentionality, like I keep hearing these themes, right? Like consistency, intentionality, collaboration,  and I think even vulnerability,  right?

  On the educator side. I don't always know or have all the answers, which is okay. 'cause I, I can sit in my humanity too and allow space for my students to be in their humanity also. And then how do we move through  things together? 

And I think about one of the things students expressed concerns about through surveys, through some conversations we had with them was  they wanted to know teachers were going to intervene when they heard something. And of course, teachers are   they're over tasked. They're overworked, they're underpaid, all the things.

 But teachers also want to know and believe that they are caring for the students who are.  In their care during their, in their classroom.  And so that was also one of the  professional development sessions that we had was what do you, do? You hear something that is, what is it? My students, I don't think they say this anymore.

That's out of pocket.  Right. 

Right.

 Right. Like No, I know, I know they're not supposed to say that. And so  we, we worked with. Students and with teachers on  what are some ways to say, Hey, did I hear this?  I don't want this to go unnoticed. If it's, you know, you offer a space for a student to self-correct.

You offer a space for  the student to explain or to clarify if you heard it wrong.  But you address it. And that way students begin to see. Teachers as the models for,  Hey, we're humans. This is, we're gonna, we're gonna enter conflict, we're gonna hear things. Right? This is a space where we get to learn  how our words impact others and we take that seriously.

 Again, not it's, we, we borrowed from  oh, I wanna say Kathy o Bear's pairs  system, which don't ask me to spit it off right now, but it's  pausing, acknowledging, intervening. Right?  That can be some really  quick.  Important moves that teachers can make, that students can make to disrupt that conversation that's going to go south if it's unaddressed or is going to be splashed on social media and create more havoc than if we learn how to navigate the discomfort in the moment. 

Right. Oh, that's so powerful. Learning to navigate the discomfort. 

Oh

th like,  I think that is a important concept to remember. Like  it doesn't always feel comfortable,  right? Like it's uncomfortable,  how do you  sit in that uncom  to,  to get.  To resol resolution or understanding or  you know, whatever that movement leads to.  But you  sit there  engage with it. And you know, you've said this a couple times too, like the pausing,  think  like.  That's also very powerful, the pause, because when we hear or see things, we can, you know,  have this rush of emotion, whatever that emotion is, right? Positive or negative. And then the reaction may not be  the reaction  that  supports or helps or moves things forward or even is the reaction you really wanted to have.

But because. Without the pause, you just,  I don't even know what I wanna say. Like, vomit all the things out of your mouth, you know? Right. And then later, and you can't, you can't take back what comes  once it's out there in the world and you've said it  to somebody else.  Right. You, you can't take that back. 

Right.

So the pause helps you think about that, but then I think it continues on, right?

Because maybe I pause later before I say something. When someone has done exactly what you're talking, like I'm pausing, I'm interrupting. I'm like, I'm asking you, and we're following through on this.  Thing, this incident that just happened, that something that just said that affects another person.  So perhaps I pause later on.

Or the student that was involved or the teacher or whomever, right? Pauses.  It helps us have more empathy and  see somebody else's worldview or perspective or consider  their experience. I think.  Do you see that happening in, in.  As you've been like working through and, and having some of these opportunities, 

Oh yeah. I, I think so, and I think the right, that difference of reacting versus responding is so like that's where    you know, that's where agency lies. That's where,  that's where I'm getting to choose to be the person that I wanna be. And so, I'll give a quick example. We also do     Another  scenario building activity, and it's around   oh, what the book?

This book is anti-racist.

Mm-hmm.

I just, I just pull the pages on calling in versus calling out. And I need to give credit to my colleague  Becca Hoffman for bringing this onto my radar.  But  you know, that I love the way she articulates in those, it's like just two to three pages, very short.  It's a beautiful book,

It is, it is.

Yeah.  Very, it's has a lot of appeal for, for teenagers and, and for me.  But she, I love the way she frames calling in and calling out as choices and that she sets it up around your personal boundaries around. So calling in, right? There are ways to, someone says something and you can, you know, that's.

Out of pocket, something that's off kilter and you can pause and invite them into explain, invite, say, Hey, you know, this is how it made me feel. Did you know that it would have that impact? Right? And work to bridge, but sometimes.  You don't have the emotional bandwidth for that. Sometimes you right. Need to pass it off to someone else.

 Sometimes it's, it's the third time they've said something like that and you know, they're  They've lost their chances, and so now it's time to call out or  and so she, she just walks through what those different consequences are and not, not consequences as exclusively negative, but consequences as in this is the impact it has on you.

This is the impact it has on the conversation and your community.  And that's a choice.  And that is really,  Empowering   even just as a woman  to think about, right? When I'm choosing to  call out or be irritated, versus  when I'm choosing to try to build that bridge when someone has said something,  I'm like, I don't think they know what they're saying. 

Yes, yes. Oh, that agency. So powerful. Like the, the choice when we, we all have a choice. Oh my gosh. So exciting. So many exciting things. So where are you all?  Like, where are you going? Like, we're getting ready to start a new school year  coming up pretty quickly. So what does that look like  based on what you've done, like, where are you all headed moving into this next year? 

So our school is  working with something called the M C O D. It's the multi. Multicultural organizational development model,

Mm-hmm.

and this is, it is a  very much aligned to restorative practices. It is a model of really recursive    practices or checks on where are we at with equity and these different.

Areas of our school, right? There are so many different regions of a school that have impact on student success, that have impact on culture,  and we are just slowly implementing that.  Model into how we look at our curriculum, how we look at our  we've done some work with our handbook, our student handbook  and some revising of the, the policies there.

 We are continuing to work with our student diversity committee, and we want to, our goal with the students is to develop a, a sort of in-school retreat day where they, because we have.   I believe it was about 50 students in our population of 600 get trained on   restorative circles and  facilitating those.

And so we want to create a day where they can share that with their peers   and. Begin to develop some of those  some language, some cultural language around that within our school.  And then our student diversity committee has also created both a u i values statement and a  a list of actions. That they crafted for, this is what it means to live out these values.

And so they have asked for an opportunity to also share that with the students and kind of brand the school with those action statements.

I love that.

are some of our, those are some of our moves.

That's exciting. That's exciting. I love how involved the students are in this process and that they get to engage with it as well. So it's a, again, back to that collaborative opportunity and effort and ownership. Right?

Mm-hmm.

know,  the school is, is their space too, just as much as it belongs to, you know, the faculty.  adults that are there. So I think that that is, that is huge and  they get to support each other in that  and how they're living out those, those values and what that means to be there. So I love that. I love that. I'm excited to hear more about how that all goes in the continuing journey this year. So  one of the things that.

 I like to do as we think about like the, what is the next step, like how do I use my voice as an educator? How do I just do that one next thing? So just thinking about your journey   what, what would be a, like a pro tip you'd wanna share  with an educator that might be starting out or might be in the middle, you know, whatever, wherever they are in their journey.

What is something you'd like to share with them  from your perspective?  As an educator. 

Boy, one thing  I think educators are  often so hard on themselves,  and so  I mean,  I know a lot of perfectionists in  the field of education, 

Yes. Mm-hmm. 

and  I think that when it comes to  social justice and equity,  that we can sometimes  get consumed by the big picture of it.  And the, the systems that we're trying to  work, the history, we're working to  both make people aware of and change and find joy and as we're, you know, living our daily lives.  And so I,  I think being clear about your own values and intentions,  And I think that check-in at the end of the day of, there's my, I don't know where my sister got this from, but it's brilliant.

 It is, she calls it no zero, no such thing as a zero day  and  at the end of the day. Right. What is the one thing you did that, that was aligned with those values that moved you towards that space of.  A more just community that you're working to create and to know that, you know, that those small things matter and they build over time. 

 And gosh, in the end  we're modeling learning  with a room full of students who are watching whether we think they are or not. And that's a pretty significant impact.  So,

absolutely love that. What is that one thing? Yeah, so think about what is your one thing. Everyone at the end of your day that you've done to move towards your values. I think that's so important. Amy, I wanna thank you so much for joining me today. It has been just such a pleasure to talk with you and hear more about what types of work you're doing there at ui. 

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.