Circles: Healing Through Restorative Justice

re-posted from http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/restorative-justice/restorative-justice-circles.html

By  | March 5, 2014

This is part of a series examining Restorative Justice in schools and communities, produced in partnership with the California Endowment.

 
 
circles02
“Who or what inspires you to be your best self?”

This is hardly the question that most Angelenos would ask at 9:30 in the morning on a gray, rainy Saturday. But for the 80+ adults and youth who gathered on March 2 at Mendez Learning Center in Boyle Heights, this introspective query kicked off “Circles,” a rich, daylong exploration of Restorative Justice.

Restorative Justice (RJ) seeks to cultivate both peacemaking and healing by facilitating meaningful dialogue. Practiced through conversation circles, whose norms include “listen with respect” and “speak from the heart,” RJ provides contexts for sharing feelings and perspectives related to community issues and conflicts. Individuals directly engaged in altercations, as well as bystanders and other community members, gather to discuss inciting incidents, understandings, preferences, past experiences, ideas, and advice.

According to one Circles participant, a senior at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, RJ works. He and a peer had a falling out this past fall — he had criticized the peer and then they began fighting. Both were invited to a RJ circle to work it out. The circle, populated by fellow students and facilitated by a trained RJ counselor, gave the two young men a space to air their grievances and, importantly, get to know each other. In Aceves’s opinion, this was critical. Now the former combatants are good friends, hanging out together practically every weekend.

While this rosy outcome isn’t typical, RJ increases the likelihood of such a relational development. Compared to traditional responses, like turning a blind eye, assigning short-term mediation, or sentencing wrong-doers with detention, suspension, or expulsion, RJ’s odds of building interpersonal bridges is infinitely superior.

Traditional justice systems use punishment, such as zero-tolerance, to deter students from breaking rules, whereas RJ assumes that strong relationships and community investment function as deterrence. Traditional justice systems are reactive and atomistic, meting out consequences to perpetrators of discrete, forbidden acts — for instance, suspending the student who threw the first punch. But RJ is proactive and collectivistic, engaging a network of students before and during negotiations of conflict. RJ is also restorative, aiming to support participants in healing, problem-solving, and making amends.

 

 

Omar Ramirez, a visual artist with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and who served as a Circles small group leader, frames RJ as a means to shut down the “school to prison pipeline.” RJ might help to do this in several ways.

Because RJ is a dialogic alternative to suspension and expulsion, it breaks the cycle of disproportionately meting out punitive disciplinary consequences to students with disabilities and students of color. This stops the implicit messaging that these students are unwelcome in school, and helps to keep them off the streets. According to The California Conference for Equality and Justice, a suspension at any point during high school makes a student three times more likely to drop out than a peer who has never been suspended.

Additionally, it’s possible that RJ participants who acquire tools for communicating and managing emotions will find it easier to resist criminal activity. Participating in RJ also might help youths to engage in perspective-taking and practice empathy, both of which boost negatively predict bullying and boost students’ social and emotional competence. This is critical, since researchers from Sonoma State University have contended that “deficits in emotional competence skills appear to leave young people ill-equipped to cope effectively with interpersonal challenges.” 1

Due to RJ’s capacity to both support students’ social-emotional health and contribute to school climate change, members of the Building Healthy Communities – Boyle Heights (BHC-BH) collaborative have championed its practice. Building Healthy Communities is an effort of The California Endowment to support 14 communities’ holistic health; Boyle Heights, as well as Long Beach and South Los Angeles, are among these communities. Forty non-profits and community-based organizations comprise the BHC-BH collaborative. Its mission, according to BHC-BH’s campaign literature, is to “meet with resident and youth leaders to establish efforts that will improve the health narrative of Boyle Heights.”

Pilot RJ programs launched in Long Beach and at Boyle Heights’s Roosevelt High School this 2013-2014 academic year. But to scale up RJ and implement it in every school in Boyle Heights (not to mention every Los Angeles Unified School District institution), funding is necessary — specifically, funding to support the salary of each school’s full-time RJ counselor.

In this context of state-wide budget deficits, locating any money at all requires creative activism. BHC-BH has identified as its RJ funding solution the Local Control Funding Formula(LCFF). Introduced in California’s 2013-2014 budget, the LCFF provides grants for schools that serve foster youth, English Language Learners, and/or youths eligible to receive a free or reduced-price meal. This describes many of Boyle Heights’ students.

 

 

Las Fotos Project presented the Circles workshop, in partnership with several community-based organizations: The Greenlining Institute, the California Conference for Equality and Justice, InnerCity Struggle, Khmer Girls in Action, Violence Prevention Coalition, and Alliance for California Traditional Arts. 2 Together, they defined the workshop’s objectives, which included raising attendees’ awareness of the BCH-BH, educating them about LCFF, and inviting them to urge officials to direct local LCFF funds towards RJ. According to Eric Ibarra, founder of Las Fotos Project, the March 2 workshop also was inspired by his pride in his students’ photo essays.

Ibarra’s Las Fotos Project seeks to empower Latina youth through photography, mentorship, and self-expression. Whereas five of Ibarra’s students last year premiered their photo essays online, this year Ibarra yearned to share his students’ projects with live audiences as well. Moreover, since this year’s photo essays examined RJ, Ibarra wanted audiences to explore RJ hands-on, learn about how RJ can be funded locally, and access pathways to activism.

That’s precisely what the Circles workshop offered. After attendees shared who or what inspired them to be their best selves, they watched a photo essay created by Las Fotos Project participant Lorena Arroyo. A 17-year-old Roosevelt High School student, Arroyo documented cheerleader Gaby’s explorations of RJ within her squad. Following the photo essay presentation, Arroyo proudly bowed to Circles attendees’ thunderous applause. Four more of these media projects, highlighting the respective RJ journeys of two students, a parent, and a school staff member, will be forthcoming from Las Fotos Project participants.

Explained Ibarra, Circles represents “the efforts of a lot of really passionate people … We believe in the importance of collaboration and sharing resources to work together for a common cause.”

Rich in geographic, ethnic, and occupational diversity, Circles attendees seemed to share that collaborative ethos. For example, Circle #3, facilitated by Ramirez, included three high school students, a community organizer, a nun, a PhD candidate [myself], a high school teacher, and an editor [of KCET Departures], all of whom eagerly embraced RJ’s community spirit. Establishing our own dialogic circle gave us a space to learn about RJ and each other. We shared and, more importantly, deeply listened to personal stories about a Native American grandmother, a growing daughter, an insensitive coworker, a resilient student, and a passion for ’80s fashion. We also discussed RJ definitions and how to conduct circles for addressing teacher-student conflicts.

To close the workshop, each Circle group practiced and promoted RJ through the use of a different art form, e.g., collage, journaling, breakdancing. Articulated members of the spoken word circle, “I am a beautiful dreamer, I am a strong fighter.” Members of the songwriting circle entitled their tune, “We Want to Restore Justice.” Together they sang the refrain, “This is ours/People power.”

In the view of 20-year-old Anaheim community organizer Carlos Becerra, the implications of this people power can be revolutionary. Stated Becerra, “Restorative Justice, when implemented in our global community, has the potential to create world wide peace and prosperity.”

 

21st Century Teaching Practices

Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012

Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012

Pellegrino, J.W. & Hilton, M.L. (Eds.). (2012). Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

After conducting extensive interdisciplinary research on behalf of The National Research Council, several committees of experts in education, psychology, evaluation, sociology, physics, astronomy, geology, learning sciences, and cognitive science recommended the following 21st century teaching practices:

o Using multiple and varied representations of concepts and tasks, such as diagrams, numerical and mathematical representations, and simulations, combined with activities and guidance that support mapping across the varied representations.

o Encouraging elaboration, questioning, and explanation—for example, prompting students who are reading a history text to think about the author’s intent and/or to explain specific information and arguments as they read—either silently to themselves or to others.

o Engaging learners in challenging tasks, while also support- ing them with guidance, feedback, and encouragement to reflect on their own learning processes and the status of their understanding.

o Teaching with examples and cases, such as modeling step-by- step how students can carry out a procedure to solve a problem and using sets of worked examples.

o Priming student motivation by connecting topics to students’ personal lives and interests, engaging students in collaborative problem solving, and drawing attention to the knowledge and skills students are developing, rather than grades or scores.

o Using formative assessment to: (a) make learning goals clear to students; (b) continuously monitor, provide feedback, and respond to students’ learning progress; and (c) involve students in self- and peer assessment.

SOURCE: Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012, pp. 9-10.

Reporting on Impacts of Youth Media Literacy

"Home Is Where the Heart Is," a silkscreen piece created by participants of Circles Restorative Justice workshop, March 1, 2014

“Home Is Where the Heart Is,” silkscreen piece created by participants of Circles Restorative Justice workshop, March 1, 2014

I’ve recently come full circle in more ways than one.

During high school and college, I had the privilege of reporting features stories for such publications as Glenbrook South High School’s The Oracle and Northwestern University’s The Daily Northwestern, The Summer Northwestern, and arts + performance magazine. 

A dozen-plus years later, I’m reporting features stories once again; appropriately, my first subject was a workshop entitled “Circles.” On Saturday, March 1, 2014, I engaged in participant-observation by joining fabulously motivated peers, jotting notes, and conducting informal interviews at this day-long exploration of Restorative Justice.

Restorative Justice (RJ) seeks to cultivate both peacemaking and healing by facilitating meaningful dialogue. Practiced through conversation circles, whose norms include “listen with respect” and “speak from the heart,” RJ provides contexts for sharing feelings and perspectives related to community issues and conflicts. Individuals directly engaged in altercations, as well as bystanders and other community members, gather to discuss inciting incidents, understandings, preferences, past experiences, ideas, and advice (Felt, 2014, para. 3).

This workshop also was irresistible from a scholarly standpoint as it situated itself squarely within my research interests: youths, social and emotional competence, communication proficiency, arts and media, and community-building. I became acquainted with the phenomenal work of partner organizations, including Las Fotos Project, and am eager to cultivate professional relationships in this space.

My publisher is Departures, a transmedia resource hosted by the largest independent public television station in the United States, KCET. Departures uniquely cultivates southern Californians’ civic pride and sociological imaginations through reporting on community-level stories in such areas as activism, immigration, art, gentrification, food, city planning, small businesses, murals, history, and politics. The Departures site also offers multiple participation points, from opportunities to engage with interactive maps and multimedia installations to invitations to help solve civic challenges (e.g., How would you improve the 710 corridor? How can an empty lot in Cypress Park become a community asset?).

This wasn’t my first brush with Departures. Back in 2011, Rubi Fregoso of Departures Youth Voices facilitated a workshop for graduates of the PLAY! program, a multi-part professional development + research project designed and evaluated by USC Annenberg Innovation Lab colleagues and myself. On January 22, 2014, Rubi again lent her expertise to a USC Annenberg endeavor by participating in a webinar entitled “Spreading Your Story.”  This webinar was sponsored by my friends/associates in the Media, Activism and Participatory Politics project, an entity that bridges the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the USC School of Cinematic Arts Media + Practice Division, and the Connected Learning Research Network. Kat Primeau, one of my co-conspirators at non-profit Laughter for a Change, also participated in the webinar. With so many friends gathered simultaneously at the same online spot, discussing one of my favorite subjects — how to spread youth civic engagement stories — I couldn’t stop myself from posting to the webinar’s real-time backchannel chat.

Here’s the webinar:

Watch live streaming video from connectedlearningtv at livestream.com

 

In light of all of this journalistic activity and online communication, I have applied to the UCD Clinton Institute’s 2014 Summer Seminar, a week-long deep-dive into how to be an academic AND a journalist. Should I be accepted, I hope to expand on my recent article on Restorative Justice (RJ). I wonder how, if at all, international youth-produced media has supported RJ movements and/or exemplified RJ processes? Which effects, if any, have these youth productions had on knowledge, attitudes, practices, or policies?

Meanwhile, I’m loving the opportunity to interview trailblazing media literacy organizations and share their important work with the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE)’s 2000+ recipients of its online newsletter. My first piece featured the Center for Media Literacy (CML), an assignment for which I interviewed CML’s accomplished President and CEO Tessa Jolls.

Since 1989, when media literacy pioneer Elizabeth Thoman established CML, this organization has served as a global resource for media literacy education. CML has worked with overseas partners in such far-flung nations as Peru, South Korea, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, while simultaneously continuing to produce original curricula that meet the United States’s diverse education standards (Felt, 2014, para. 2).

Reflected Jolls, “It’s not so much about the technology, it’s about critical thinking, and having the process skills, whether you’re producing or consuming. So that’s what we’ve been trying to focus on — what’s timeless, what’s a systematic way of looking at media, and how media operate as a system” (Felt, 2014, para. 12).

Reconnecting with my journalism roots and networking with people/organizations whose work supports youths’ cultivation of vital 21st century skills is deeply rewarding both personally and professionally. I look forward to continuing to enjoy this synergy as the District 4 delegate to City Councilmember Tom La Bonge for Los Angeles ArtsDay 2014.

Thanks to everyone who helped to make these developments possible!

Counting What Counts

lightbulbI am an eager learner, critical thinker, and sensitive communicator with a fervent desire to do work that matters. I believe in the value of inter-disciplinary collaboration for building, remixing, and extending theory, and constructing comprehensive, practical responses to multi-faceted, real world challenges. My methods are mixed, my style is collegial, and my aim is to support youths’ development.

How I got here is an easy story to tell. My loving parents, both caregivers by profession (dentist father, social worker-turned-housewife-turned-social worker mother), raised my two siblings and me in a town populated by “have’s.” While there were and still are richer folks financially, few have access to our community’s social capital – at least, that’s what both Reverend Jesse Jackson and then-President Bill Clinton said during their separate visits to my high school during my senior year. Later, as a college freshman enrolled in a sociology course entitled “Social Inequality: Race, Class, and Power,” I read Jonathan Kozol’s landmark book Savage Inequalities (1991), which pitted the privileges enjoyed by students in my town against the deprivations endured by students in East St. Louis, where schools couldn’t afford toilet paper. This made an impression. So too did my realization that, beyond creature comforts and access to power, I was given emotionally responsive contexts, both at home and at school, in which to grow safely and love freely. I became a Social Policy major because I knew such gifts were not my right, I was just born lucky; or perhaps such gifts are everyone’s right, and “luck” should be taken out of the equation.

For the past 10+ years, I have designed, delivered, and assessed curricula to support youths’ learning; importantly, these curricula facilitate not just cognitive development, but social and emotional development as well. With the support of my polymathic advisor, Dr. Henry Jenkins, and diverse university institutions — e.g., USC Joint Educational Project, USC Institute for Multimedia Literacy, USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, USC Shoah Foundation, and USC Impact Games — my interdisciplinary, community-focused work has been applied to educational settings in Los Angeles and around the world. My specific research interests include:

  • Empathy and social and emotional learning;
  • Interactive, inquiry-driven pedagogy and assessment (e.g., connected learning, participatory learning, experiential learning, participatory action research);
  • Productive problem-solving across no-tech, low-tech, and high-tech contexts (e.g., media literacy, new media literacies, digital citizenship); and
  • Powerful play (e.g., impact games, experimentation and improvisation for discovery).

Because I care about both maximizing the effectiveness of educational interventions and richly understanding program-related change, assessment is incredibly important to me. Twenty-first century skills, which I have identified in my publications as new media literacies (NMLs) plus social and emotional learning skills (SELs), are what I have sought to theorize, teach, and assess (see Felt & Rideau, 2012; Felt, Vartabedian, Literat, & Mehta, 2012; Vartabedian & Felt, 2012). Recently, I adapted the NMLs from a list of 12 discrete skills to a list of 6 paired skills, and then identified which NML pair plus two SELs collectively represent a characteristic of digital citizenship (see www.laurelfelt.org/skill-composites). The programs I have co-designed and evaluated (e.g., Sunukaddu 2.0, Explore Locally Excel Digitally, Summer Sandbox, PLAYing Outside the Box) outreach to educators and students via professional development and developmentally-appropriate curricula, respectively, and utilize both participatory learning strategies and media-making to enhance 21st century skill proficiency.
I always use mixed methods to study impacts, including pre-mid-post surveys, ethnographic field notes, interviews or focus groups, and analysis of participants’ works.

But for the past two years, I also have expanded my assessment toolkit in order to recognize traditionally overlooked data, which my co-authors and I have termed “cultural beacons” (CBs). CBs are culturally-embedded, user-defined measures for understanding communicative meaning(s), components, and sites of change; they illuminate (as beacons do) unique features of people and places (Felt, Dura, & Singhal, in press; Dura, Felt, & Singhal, 2012). Detecting CBs requires researchers’ sensitive listening and informed observation, made possible through respectful community partnerships and participatory methodologies. Accordingly, I embraced participatory action research with the PLAY! project, and am using this approach for conceptualizing my dissertation, “A Face is Worth a Thousand Words: Using Badges to Train Teachers in Non-verbal Sensitivity and Improvisation.” This dissertation investigates if/how training novice teachers in non-verbal sensitivity and improvisation impacts both the proliferation and management of “teachable moments” — critical points when students are poised to meaningfully learn because they perceive a connection between their studies and their lives. Crucially, this teacher training will be administered online via an original curriculum that uses digital badges to impact social and subjective norms, support community-building, and celebrate the journey.

In terms of my career, I am committed to keeping my mind and options open, for life (I hope!) is long and the world is ever changing. Because I love teaching and conducting research to enrich educational programs, I could remain in academia. I also could continue to provide consulting services for organizations domestic and foreign, based in the West, Far East, and Global South, who register as non-profit, for-profit, and governmental. To 20+ organizations over the years, I have delivered: curriculum and assessment development; training and professional development; program evaluation; media literacy for children and families; children’s media research; and impact game consulting. As long as we care to better support our children’s healthy development and expand their opportunities, there will be work for me to do, and I will want to do it.