Reflections on Restorative Circles in Room 508

One morning, right before lunch I heard “Miss Frantz, can I talk to you for a second?”  It was our music teacher, and he looked as though he had some bad news to share with me.  “Yesterday you had a few girls who were excluding another girl on purpose, and they were making her feel like she couldn’t be a part of the group.”  Uh oh, a mean girls situation. My heart felt sick. “Ok, thanks for letting me know,” I quietly responded.  

I knew that one of the best courses of action was to have a restorative circle to discuss this issue. Up went the prompt “I have been a good friend to my classmates recently because” or “I haven’t been the best friend to my classmates recently because...”  I told them that today everyone needed to think first and make a choice about which prompt they were going to address with our class community when the talking piece came to them.  

That day, every girl who had been involved in the “mean girls” incident the day before acknowledged it to our class and gave a reason why they hadn’t been a good friend.  It was a proud moment to see the students take ownership of what they did, to recognize it on their own, and to make a step forward in making it right.  

How did we get to this place of vulnerability, trust, and the ability to talk about difficult issues together?  This wasn’t something that I’ve experienced every year with every group of students, but this year it was just different.  This year, more community had been built than I had seen in the past, and you could see it daily in the way that my students interacted with one another and with me.    

One big change that we added to our classroom routines this year was doing restorative circles every Friday morning during breakfast. As a school site, it was strongly recommended to us to start using circle time on a regular basis, as much research has been done on the topic and positive results have come as a result.  The Center for Restorative Process discusses and models the importance of “building a positive, supportive, friendly and just classroom environment (where) circles are the foundation of this process.” Restorative Circles in the Classroom 

There were a few key things that I was taught in professional development on the topic of classroom circles, as well as a few things that I learned through the process of implementing it in my classroom this year, that made a BIG difference in the impact they had in our classroom community:    

1. Establishing clear protocols from the first day.
a) Only talk if you have the talking piece, b) What is shared at circle time stays here, c) Choose your neighbors wisely, and d) Be honest!

2. Starting with community building questions such as a) If you could have any super power, which would it be and why, and b) How do you plan to spend your winter break?

3. Build up to using prompts that explore values or respond to incidents such as a) How do you feel about what happened? or b) Please share a time when you became angry.

4. Being consistent to do circle time every week so it becomes an expected routine.

5. Use the restorative circle organically- either when a restorative conversation would be beneficial for the classroom community, or when a conflict has arisen among a group/s of students.

6. As much as possible, have the circle be student focused, with the teacher interjecting only if needed to remind students of the agreed upon protocols.

These are not the only elements or ways to implement and use restorative circles in the classroom, but I found this process to make the most sense for my group of students this year.

Reflecting back on the school year, I realize why this year looked so much different than last year: saying you want to have classroom community and then actively cultivating opportunities to build classroom community are two different things. This year, we did the usual “build community the first weeks of school” activities, but we also had our Friday circle time as a priority.  I was committed to this process, and as our class became fluent in using it together, it became an integral piece of our routine. And it was exciting to see that the fidelity in using it regularly led to being flexible in the way that we used it.  

The previous school year, my group of second graders didn’t get along nearly as well or care for one another in the same way that my group of students this year did.  Since I didn’t start using the restorative circle on a consistent basis until the school year that just ended, I wonder how our classroom community last year would have been different if we HAD done this routine together.  It’s not a magic wand that will instantly take all the issues away, but the practice of it would certainly have helped the more turbulent group of kiddos who had been grouped together the previous school year. 

So on June 7th, 2019, as they passed the stuffed sloth around the circle, seated criss cross apple sauce, I heard these words repeated over and over again- “we don’t want to leave this classroom, this group of kids, this teacher.”  I brushed away the tears in my eyes, and saw more than one student do the same. Authentic community had been an important value in our classroom this year, and I’m grateful that this ritual of restorative circles was such a meaningful practice for all of us.