In January 2012, we gave a one-and-a-half
day introduction to the Restorative Circle Process to the faculty and staff at
the Sophia Mundi Steiner School as part of their Professional Development days
before first term. In addition, over the course of the first term, we presented
at three College meetings, established a Restorative System within the College
and facilitated four live circles: one within the College itself as a
“fishbowl” demonstration, one with four class eight students and two of their
teachers, one that addressed a current situation among teachers working with
class six, and one that addressed an event that had happened two years earlier.
We also presented two weekend workshops that were open to the school community
and general public. At the end of term, we conducted the following interview
with Jennifer West, the administrator at Sophia Mundi.
Jennifer West Interview with
Cat Gilliam Cunningham
Jennifer, what was going on at Sophia Mundi that you became interested
in the Restorative Circle process?
We had a teacher here last year
and he was very interested in this work.
He’d been working with Nonviolent Communication and he’d been bringing
that to the teachers here, and something of the restorative justice process. We
were starting to build up a little bit of the experience of working with that
but we weren’t quite getting hold of it. So when the opportunity for you and
John to come seemed possible, I thought that might be just what we need. I looked at it for the beginning of the
conference when all the teachers are here and we’re all fresh. In particular we
were looking for a whole school approach to working with the general area of
bullying. It’s not a huge thing in this school, but it’s something that is
there - and discipline – we were to looking to find something that everybody
felt comfortable in working with and would be able to work with in the same
sort of way, so we could have a unified approach in the school. We didn’t know what that was going to look
like. We thought that this work seemed
to be absolutely in sympathy with the direction we wanted to take. Once we began to work with it, I realized
that this is something worth going further with.
How are you feeling now that we’ve completed several live circles and
the staff is beginning to experience some consensus that this is one of the
choices they can see using when conflict becomes painful?
I’m feeling really very positive
for a couple of reasons. The first is
that it has the support of all the teachers here, we’re all pretty well on
board that this is something we want to work with, so that’s really very
satisfying. The other particular area
that I think has been very positive is that we’re actually able to apply it so
quickly to our situation here. The staff and students can actually use it, it’s
not practicing in an abstract way, and it’s real.
Something you can apply
as a very hands-on, concrete
solution.
Absolutely. And this school, as I suppose many schools,
has some things that have happened in the past that continue to ripple on
underneath the surface. The opportunity to work with some of that, I think, is
really beneficial.
It sounds like you wanted to
bring in something that could support healing.
Absolutely. And working with it
with the students has been good. That
was our first intention - to imagine how we could actually work with it with
the students - but the reality is that it is of great benefit also for the
adults involved, and so it’s a whole community benefit.
So you’re seeing the value of it right across the board, for the
students, faculty and staff, as a way to really support relationships that are
supportive and clear.
Yes, absolutely. So to have
somebody say, “This happened to me and I’m not feeling good about it”, and to
be able to work with that and get it resolved, I think it is just a wonderful
thing to be able to have that.
Is there something you could share about the characteristics of this
work that align it with the school in such a clear way?
I think probably the first thing that springs
to mind is the fact that it’s not working with blame and guilt and all those
sorts of things, so you’re not getting into whether it was somebody's fault.
Rather, it looks at how was it for each person; that ability to share and bring
empathy is something that’s really important, where we learn to stand in
someone else’s shoes and see how it was for them. That seems to be a really powerful thing that
makes it something that, in a way, can lift the burden that people carry about
things. So that’s really important, I think.
The other thing is that I’ve been aware of just how it works through the
feeling life rather than through the intellect as the prime mode. In
doing that, by coming in through the feelings, then engaging with the intellect
and the will, that’s absolutely in keeping with what we do with the whole
educational philosophy.
Where do you see this going from here?
If we made an action plan together, how would you see that unfolding?
Well, there are two areas I think
that we want to continue to work on and develop more. One is the whole school approach, how you
work with students in terms of their working together in their social
relationships; so it includes areas like bullying, but it’s not just about
that. That’s one thing, that as a faculty we want to build our capacity to
support how we work with the students. The other area is how we work as the
adults in the situation, too - how we work together and how we
resolve issues and keep our relationships clear and well-functioning. So, I think its building experience and
developing good practices that don’t let things get buried and simmer away
underneath but actually try to deal with them at the right time.
So you are really seeing that this process has the capacity to build
confidence in relationship to conflict.
And I think that word “confidence” is an important word
because it really supports a teacher in feeling able to work in this way - that
they have confidence that it actually will work, and we’re sort of now
at that point.
If you know I’ve really heard you, even if we still don’t agree about
it, once we feel heard, connection can happen and possibilities open.
Yes, that’s what I like about it,
you don’t have to all see exactly the same thing in the sense of all agreeing
that this is what it is or what it isn’t, but rather that you have that
opportunity to speak what it was from your point of view and be heard, and that
I think has been a really important aspect of it, that people actually have the
opportunity to say what it’s been for them and know that that can be heard.
I’d say that it’s something that
has quite a potential to work very positively in the sort of situations you
find so commonly in schools. Because of the ways we work together, there are
times we rub up against each other. And that’s actually good, there’s nothing
wrong with that – it’s actually what we do with it that matters. And I
think this process is something that can help, where we otherwise can get
caught and stuck and think, “ugh I don’t like that person”. Rather it gives us
a way to move through that. I think that it’s well worth the time that we’ve
given to it, which has been quite a good amount of time, but it’s been
absolutely worth it. I think particularly, as I’ve said before, because it has
now brought everybody onto the same page, and we’re working together. We feel
this is something we want to work together and move forward with as a
group.
I don’t
believe that we should aim to never have conflict, because conflict can
actually bring about new understandings, I think. And so it’s more that this is a process that
can help us when otherwise we might draw back from conflict. This is a process
that can help us go through it together and that’s what I like about it. It
helps you find a way forward.
The
Restorative Circle Process is the work of Dominic Barter www.restorativecircles.org
Sophia Mundi Steiner School www.sophiamundi.vic.edu.au
