Translator: Mahitab Elsaghier Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Hi, everybody.
I was a classroom teacher for 15 years,
and I'm still a teacher at heart.
Only now, I teach people about restorative practice;
a restorative practice offers language, skills, tools
to consciously build positive relationships
and to manage conflict when it occurs in a healthy way.
And I'm going to share one of those tips with you tonight.
I have done a lot of research in this area,
helping teachers to implement restorative practice
in their most challenging classes,
and with the most challenging students.
And the positive outcomes
have really inspired my passion and commitment for the work that I now do.
I really believe in it as a teacher,
as a human being in the world.
I feel it has so much to offer us all.
And at the heart of the restorative approach
are the values, the restorative values, such as empathy and respect.
I will share a time with you
where I'm really rocking those values in my classroom,
but first I'm going to tell you a story
about the time where I've armored up and disconnected;
this example is classroom based,
but any of you in the audience that have a teenager in your life
might be able to relate to this scenario.
It's a Thursday afternoon,
and I'm tired, a little bit overwhelmed,
and one of my lovely students, Lauren, comes in without her homework done.
And I jumped straight to the attack, you know, giving out.
And she raised her eyes to heaven.
And I say:
"Did you just raise your eyes to heaven?"
And she says: "Yeah."
And I said: "Well, we'll see about that after school at half past three."
And she said: "No we won't, 'cause I won't be there."
And I said, "Oh yes you will,
and if you're not there, you'll be in a big trouble."
I didn't quite know what the trouble was going to be,
but I knew I was going to put a lot of effort and energy into finding it.
And at the time,
I'm the poster girl at my school for restorative practice.
And I could hear this voice in my head saying:
"What are you doing?"
And I can't help it, you know, I'm just on one and it escalates.
The whole class is like that. I go home with a headache.
And in that power struggles with Lauren, I've disconnected from my values.
I am not trying to connect with Lauren and cultivate empathy.
I'm not modelling respect,
which isn't something you hustle for,
whether you have your homework done or not.
It's just a given, because we are.
I wasn't promoting accountability,
giving Lauren power to be part of the solution.
I was just trying to punish her and make her do what I say
because I say so.
Where are my values there?
As a teacher, I've always felt that what we know matters,
but who we are matters more,
and I didn't like who I was that day, I wasn't being my best self.
Although I was probably doing the best I could in that moment
because calm is a superpower.
Brené Brown, an empathy researcher,
and my very favorite TED talker of all time, by the way,
maybe until tonight,
but she says that calm is a practice,
that it's not like we're born, you're a calm person or you're not.
Calm people practice two things before they respond.
Do you know what they do?
They read, and they ask questions.
So the next day, Lauren comes in like this,
and sits down, she's looking at me.
And if I'm being totally honest,
part of me is like: Oh, it's on,
(Laughter)
And then I breathe,
I ask myself a very powerful question.
And this question has been a great friend to me over the years.
It's "Who do I want to be in this situation?"
And of course, I want to be someone that my models and lives my values.
What's brilliant about restorative practice
is that it offers a scaffold and explicit language
to breath life into the values.
So they're values in action,
especially helpful in times of challenge
when we can ease the armor up,
disconnect and miss our opportunity for empathy.
So I invite Lauren to connect with me
by asking and modeling these very six simple questions.
And I say:
"Look, Lauren, I just want to discuss
what happened yesterday with the homework, okay?"
And she says: "Yeah."
And I said: "At the time, I wasn't thinking,
and I went straight to the attack.
And since then I'm thinking I really could've handled that better.
I'm sorry for how I spoke to you."
And she said to me straight away:
"Miss, you're grand. I was pure cheeky."
And I said:
"Look, from your perspective, what happened?"
And she said: "Well, I came in. I didn't have my homework done.
You got mad at me."
And she said, "I was a bit cheeky."
And I said: "Okay." I said: "Look, what you were thinking at the time?"
And she said: "I was thinking, had I done something on you,
or you didn't like me or something.
I've never seen you go on like that before."
I said: "No."
And my mom was sick at the time.
I said: "Lauren, my mom's not well, and I'm tired,
and I think I just probably took it out on you, you know?"
I said: "What are you thinking now?"
And she said: "You were just having a bad day."
I said: "I was was just having a bad day."
I said: "Look," - fourth question -
"who is affected by that?
I know I was very stressed, and I took it to next class,
and I felt guilty when I went home."
I said, "How about you?"
She said: "Yeah, I was upset." She said: "I was a bit embarrassed."
She said: "I was kind of worried about coming here today."
I said: "I'm sorry, I know."
She said: "No, I'm sorry too."
I said: "Okay, well, look. What could we have done differently?"
Fifth question.
And I said: "Look, from my perspective,
I think I could've calmly said, 'Can I speak to you at the end?'"
I said: "How are you?"
And she said: "I could've told you at the start
I didn't have my homework done."
I said: "Yeah, or, like, you could've done the homework, you know?"
(Laughter)
And she's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah."
But we had a chat about what happened that the homework wasn't done.
And our sixth question: What needs to happen next?
And honestly Lauren and I got on better since that day than ever.
It was an opportunity to practice empathy.
There's a huge empathy deficit in our culture.
And empathy is something that we can teach, it can grow.
But you need to cultivate it.
And the restorative questions facilitate that.
They do two things:
They invite us to see each other's perspective -
a key ingredient to empathy.
And they allow us to feel with one another,
which what empathy is - to feel with others.
I now work in schools, in organizations with teachers and students
who wish to cultivate a restorative culture.
But this is relevant in the classroom, in the board room, in the living room,
wherever there's people and relationships.
So I'd invite you next time you find yourself
maybe in a challenging situation or in a difficult conversation
to practice calmness,
to pause.
Ask yourself: Who do I want to be in the situation?
And maybe instead of saying:
"Why is the dish washer still full?"
Ask: "What happened that the dish washer's full?"
Or, "Why are you late?"
"What happened that you're late?"
"Why did you just say that to your sister?"
"What happened that you said that to your sister?"
Or in my case, "What happened that the homework isn't done?"
And it might just allow us turn towards one another.
People in the workshops and lectures I do often ask me:
"Does restorative practice really work?"
And what they want to know, usually, is does the other person change.
And in my example, it might look like success
lies in the fact that Lauren chose to work with me the second day.
In my own practice, in all my research,
there's huge evidence
that a restorative approach maximizes the potential for this,
but, I'd urge you not to look at external outcome
as your only lens or measure of success.
Maya Angelou, my favorite writer,
says that success is liking yourself,
liking what you do
and liking how you do it.
And the truth is,
I really like who I am when I'm restorative,
and being who I want to be in the world.
So for me, it always works.
Practically speaking,
the questions move us from blame and attack
to empathy,
the heart of difficult conversations.
And on a personal note,
I believe that spiritually, they move us from fear to love.
And this is what I think our lovely world needs -
more empathy, more love.
Thank you.
(Applause)