Embracing Restorative Justice for a Just and Equitable Education Experience w/ Kathy Evans (Restorative Re-Air)

How do we create meaningful learning opportunities and foster a sense of belonging in the classroom? Join us as we dive into the inspiring world of restorative justice with our guest Kathy Evans, a passionate educator and advocate for creating just and equitable learning environments. In our conversation, we delve into Kathy's personal journey of discovering restorative justice and its transformative power in education.

Together, we discuss the importance of building strong relationships in the classroom, and how to strike the delicate balance between urgency and rest to prevent teacher burnout. We also share insights from leading experts and authors in the field of restorative justice and education, such as Myisha Wynn, Christina Parker, Deborah Delpit, and Sonya Nieto. Kathy reflects on her own experiences with applying restorative justice to her personal life, including navigating her intersectional identity and maintaining meaningful connections with her family.

As we explore the challenges and rewards of implementing restorative justice in schools, we touch upon the need to dismantle whiteness in the field and form meaningful partnerships with diverse leaders. Through our discussion, we hope to inspire educators and listeners alike to embrace the potential of restorative justice in fostering a more inclusive, just, and equitable world for all. Join us on this fascinating journey and discover how restorative justice can transform the way we teach, learn, and connect with one another.

Contact, Learn More, Support Kathy Evans:
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Get your copy of “The Little Book of Restorative Justice in Education” with Kathy Evans and Dr. Dorothy Vaandering

Transcript

David: 0:04

Welcome to this Restorative Justice Life. I'm your host, david Ryan, Barcega, castro-harris All five names for all the ancestors And on this podcast I speak with RJ practitioners, circlekeepers and others doing restorative work about how they embody this way of being in their personal and professional lives. This month, as we're celebrating pride, we're highlighting conversations from the archives featuring RJ practitioners who are proudly part of the LGBTQIA Plus community. We do this work to build a more just and equitable world for everyone, including our queer and trans community members, who are experiencing intense interpersonal, institutional and structural violence. Amplify RJ and the RJ movement as a whole wouldn't be where it is without you, so please know that we celebrate you as you are. We stand with you and appreciate all your contributions to our work.

David: 0:52

While queerness is an important part of Kathy's intersectional identity, this conversation covers multiple facets of doing restorative justice work. As always, you can find all the ways to get plugged into the Amplify RJ community, take advantage of learning opportunities or bring RJ to your school, organization or community at the links in the show notes below. Without further ado, let's get into it, kathy. Welcome to this Restorative Justice Life. Who?

Kathy: 1:21

are you? I'm Kathy Evans. I'm a Mississippi girl, i'm a southerner, with all of the good and the ugly that comes with that, things that I'm both unlearning and still learning. I love the woods, i love fishing, i love fried green tomatoes, all the southern things Like. I believe that y'all is a perfectly respectable plural pronoun.

David: 1:50

Who are you?

Kathy: 1:53

I'm a work in progress. I am still unlearning a lot of things that were part of my development and continuing to learn and grow. I don't believe that any of us have arrived yet. I do believe that we are all on a journey And, if we're lucky, we find a few people who are on the same stretch of that journey, so that the road isn't so lonely.

David: 2:19

Who are you?

Kathy: 2:23

I'm a nerd. I am, i'm an academic. I can't help it. I love thinking, i love studying, i love reading. I often live very much in my head. My brain is constantly moving. I like to drive without the radio on because I'm creating Venn diagrams and schemes in my head, right? But I'm always thinking and I live in that cognitive domain. When I experience a challenge, it starts here. Now I'm learning to be more embodied and I'm learning to feel things and trust my intuition. But my default is still nerd, it's still academic, it's still my head.

David: 3:06

Who are you?

Kathy: 3:09

I am a person who thrives on meaningful relationships, those relationships where you feel seen and honored and where you get to see and honor another human being, where time stands still, sometimes because of the sacredness of the moment. making meaning with folks over cups of coffee, two-hour lunches Those are the stuff that I thrive on.

David: 3:40

Who are you?

Kathy: 3:43

I'm a dreamer. As someone who often lives in my head, i'm constantly thinking about the next idea, the next thing, what needs to happen, perhaps three to five to 10 years down the road. I tend to focus on the big picture, the macro level stuff, the systems and structures, and I often miss the day-to-day things, the minute-to-minute lived realities, that people are in That liminal space of both seeing what can be but acknowledging that I need realists around me who honor the dream and who can help me figure out the next step.

David: 4:25

Who are you?

Kathy: 4:30

I am a person who appreciates complexity. I appreciate conflict and ambiguity. I love the word and This is true, and this is true even when those two things seem like opposing truths. I love a good paradox and I believe the world is full of them If we have the courage to name and embrace them. Haven't always been that person. I think it's been both the most challenging part of my journey and the most rewarding part of my journey that unlearning and relearning to love and embrace complexity and paradox.

David: 5:13

Finally, who are you?

Kathy: 5:18

I'm a person who loves all things peach. I'm serious As a southerner. I love fresh peaches, I love peach tea, I love peach schnapps, I love peach ice cream, peach cobbler Literally, if it has peaches, I'm in love Beautiful.

David: 5:40

Beautiful. I was like the color or the fruit.

Kathy: 5:43

Let me see if I can get one more out of you.

David: 5:45

Who are you?

Kathy: 5:48

I'm a reflector. I deeply believe in praxis and again, not something I grew up believing, but I grew up believing in theory, theory, rules. Then I think one of my growth edges early on in my restorative journey was realizing that my theories without pragmatic everyday realities were landing a lot on deaf ears because people would say that sounds really lovely, but what does that look like with first graders or what does that look like in a middle school classroom? This idea that our practice informs our theory and our theory informs our practice is very real to me.

David: 6:35

Absolutely. Look at us. We've gotten past the part of this that you were most stressed out about, from here on out, smooth sailing. You did a wonderful job with those introspective, reflective questions of who are you? It's always good to check in To the fullest extent that you want to answer the question how are you?

Kathy: 6:58

Yeah, i heard you ask other people that question and I was like that's such a complex question. I mean, we're in the middle of a global pandemic. I feel like so many things that I thrive on are thwarted right now. And how privileged am I? I get to work from my office, which I love, is very comfortable. My day-to-day reality is not dire Economically. I'm privileged enough to be able to have a job that I enjoy About. How am I in that big way? I'm really good.

Kathy: 7:40

This summer I took time off and took care of my heart, and I hadn't done that to the extent that I did it this summer in a long time. Like I took a whole month off of email, and you know that because I didn't respond to your initial email, right. I've not ever done that. I always have felt tied to my work, and yet this summer it felt like a very necessary part of restoring my soul. In the little book of Restorative Justice and Education we have that one diagram, the ripples of relationship, and it starts with being restorative with self, and I know that looks different for different people, but for me it meant detaching from the work for a little bit so that I could show up a little bit more creative and ready to engage.

Kathy: 8:34

I hadn't seen my family since the beginning of the pandemic. I could see my mom, but not my siblings, and so I spent some time with my family. I fished a lot My family's all in Mississippi So got to hang out with my nephews and nieces and brothers and sisters. Introduced my partner to some of my family members that she hadn't met And that was fun And honestly like surprisingly lovely, wasn't sure, and it went really well, like grace upon grace. But yeah, detached from email was the biggest thing. Somebody texted me and said your voicemail is full. I responded yes, i'm leaving that way so people won't leave me voicemails and expect me to respond. But yeah, that was really good. I read. I read a novel. I haven't read a novel in probably 10 years, so, yeah, it was just a good break.

David: 9:44

Yeah, i'm curious. I think you guys have shared as you checked in, but you talked about coming back with creativity and openness. Can you describe the feelings and how you think you're coming back into this new school year, having taken that rest for yourself?

Kathy: 10:06

I feel ever more just, centered and grounded. I feel connected to myself again. Sometimes you know this the work gets tedious and it feels insurmountable, and so all of my processing is about what needs to happen, what I need to do, what's the next thing on my to-do list. And, having rested a little bit, my processing can be more about dreaming big dreams or thinking about a new vision that I have for something I want to add to a class that I'm teaching, or something that we can do at EMU to increase our students' sense of belonging, or like those kinds of the bigger ideas that maybe don't have a checklist. You know, like I can't check it off the list and call it done, and sometimes the work becomes a checklist right, and it feels good to not have that right now. I'm sure that that will show up again. You know, mid-october I'll be like where's my checklist? But for right now it feels a little bit like there's more time for dreaming and imagining, hoping, living into new ideas.

David: 11:29

I feel like this is just me getting inspiration for like it's gonna be okay, the world's not gonna fall apart. You're actually gonna come back better in some ways Because you're right. Like that checklist can be endless, right, i think one of the interesting things about people who listen to this podcast weekly get to hear like slight behind the scenes of like my internal processes, because, like in the last couple of interviews that have aired, right, it's this idea of like this work is so urgent, we cannot rush right Is really coming through And like there are a lot of things that I personally, the AmplifyRJ platform, can be doing right now. But that rest, that balance, that relationship with self is so important too. You know, that might be a good space to get into the question of you know you've been doing this work for a while, right, you've got deep roots in education and you've been doing restorative justice work for a long time, probably before you knew the words right. So, from your perspective, how did that get started for you?

Kathy: 12:39

Yeah, i went looking for RJ. I didn't know what it was, but I went looking for it. I've been a classroom teacher, taught middle school and high school. I think that I was relational. I had been a youth minister and a church in my former life, and then when I showed up in a classroom, like I thought I knew how to build relationships with students, but I didn't know how to build relationships with students that actually impacted their learning. And so I taught middle school for four years. I taught high school for four years and I think somewhere in there I realized I have no idea what I'm doing. I need to know more than I know, and so I started figuring out what are the questions that I'm asking, and one of the questions was why are some kids motivated to learn and others aren't? And I guess, after studying motivation theory, it seems so obvious now. But based on my upbringing my very academic upbringing formal knowledge was prioritized, right. So if you want to know something, you go get a degree, and that was the way I was acculturated into the learning world. And I'll critique that a lot now, right, and I do often. But it was where I was at the time. And so when I started looking at the questions that I had about how I could be a better educator. they mostly stemmed around classroom management, classroom discipline, motivation, teacher burnout all of these things seemed related to me, and so educational psychology was the thing. And so I went and got a doctorate degree in educational psychology again nerd right. And when I started doing reviews of literature on school discipline, it sent me down this rabbit hole that compelled me to ask what other models existed for addressing student behavior that didn't rely on extrinsic motivation and punishment. And so I read about other models and they all sounded nice, but I kept looking, thinking there has to be something better.

Kathy: 15:11

About halfway through my grad program, i attended a family reunion in Indiana This is a funny story And I met a cousin that I had never met before And we were sitting next to each other at breakfast for one of the events And I asked her what she did for a living And she said I just graduated from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding with a degree in restorative justice. And I said tell me more about that. And so she started talking about restorative justice from the criminal, legal kind of framing. But I was like, oh my gosh, that is everything Who's doing that in education? And she said you know, i don't know, but you might read Judy Mullet's book.

Kathy: 16:00

And so I went and read a book by Judy Mullet and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz called The Little Book of Restorative Discipline And the purple one right, the purple one? yes, my copy is around here somewhere, but it's all marked up And I've got sticky notes. I had a whole conversation with Judy and Lorraine. There you go. I wish I could put my fingers on it real fast because it still has sticky notes all over it. And so I read that book and they cited Howard Zaire's book Changing Lenses. And so I went and grabbed that book And then I just couldn't stop. I literally read everything I could find, and at the time I think there were only three or four books that really had anything to do with educational context. And so I started taking what I was learning about in educational psychology and pulling it in with what I was learning about restorative justice and seeing like there's some really cool overlaps here. There's some things that make sense.

Kathy: 17:10

The next year I attended an annual big, huge education conference in. Brenda Morrison and Dorothy Van der Ring were presenting, and so I went to their session afterwards the three of us went and grabbed coffee, one of those three hour coffees where it was just sacred, and we dreamed about restorative justice in educational contexts. And at the time again it was still about alternatives to discipline. But over the years, like it's become so much more as I've listened again, as practice has informed my theory about restorative justice in schools, i kept hearing teachers saying and students you know students saying this as well, like you can't just change the way you do discipline if we're not changing the way we do relationships, if we're not shifting the way we build community in our schools. It doesn't make sense to have this toxic classroom environment where so many students feel like they don't belong and they aren't honored for who they are. But then we're gonna do this really cool restorative thing when we send them to the office, right? And so, yeah, i listening to students.

Kathy: 18:26

So my dissertation research actually interviewed middle schoolers who had been in in-school suspension And I did phenomenological interviewing, which basically starts with the question so you've been in ISS lately, what was that like for you? And they told stories and stories and stories. And hearing them, hearing those middle schoolers talk about their experiences with teachers in school discipline, was really compelling for me And again just confirmed that this was the journey that I wanted to embark on, and I wanted to know everything I could know about restorative justice and how we could do different systems. The school to prison pipeline was something that I was only just beginning to learn about right then, and hearing the students talk and seeing their lived realities again just helped me see from a student's perspective how that pipeline gets played out on a day-to-day basis, which also just compelled me to keep going.

David: 19:35

So yeah, yeah, i love giving an expansive question like that, and what sucks about it is that there was something that you said at the very beginning that stood out to me. Right, and being a circle person, right, i'm not gonna interrupt you, oh, but let's go back. Yeah, absolutely, you said from your background as a youth minister. You thought you knew how to build relationships, but when you talked about relationships that impact learning, what was the difference?

Kathy: 20:09

Oh yeah. So when I was a youth minister, i can create a throw a pie on your face like event and we're gonna have a blast and everybody's gonna laugh and we're gonna have fun and people are gonna show up and be excited to be there. Learning is different. Like learning is hard and you're asking students to show up relationally in ways that are risky. Like it exposes their vulnerability, like if a kid struggling with math. Like relationship can't just be about the fun. Right Relationship has to be. How do I create a safe enough environment for this kid to say I'm really struggling with this math problem?

Kathy: 20:56

That's a different level of relationship and I didn't know how to do that. I cared about kids and I think I could convey to them that I cared about them, but I didn't know how to check around the room, read the room, see how people were feeling. I didn't know how to call out injustices and name those as infringing on someone's opportunity to be themselves in a learning space. I didn't know how to not center my own experiences as the teacher as the only ones that really counted in a classroom. I didn't know how to lift up the voices and the perspectives of students and honor those in ways that changed the way I taught. Yeah, so much that I didn't know about those kinds of relationship, that level of relationship building.

David: 21:58

Yeah, specifically going into that vulnerability that it takes to admit that you're struggling with math. That's something that I experienced as a student and my struggles with math largely got alleviated with my dad creating a chant Like math is hard, math is mean, but I'm the big green math machine and then I had to like right at the end of that like third and fourth grade And I was able to have that relationship because it was my dad.

David: 22:36

I don't know that a teacher would have necessarily done that. Shout out to Mr Brower and Mrs Turner at the time in third and fourth grade. But when just something as small as like hey, i'm having a problem with like long division, long multiplication and like I just don't get it, it takes a relationship to say that. And, of course, like I have that relationship with my father, not necessarily the relationship that you know a teacher has the capacity to have with, you know, 30 different students. So what are the things that, what are the ways that teachers can create some of those relationships right?

David: 23:23

You know, we know restorative justice, as you were talking about restorative practices, whatever words we're using in any given moment are can be responsive. But even before, like the kid gets frustrated and throws a pencil across a classroom, hit somebody and then get sent to the principal's office, right, like, what are the things in a math classroom right That are important for people to build relationships?

Kathy: 23:48

Yeah, you know, i teach teachers like that's my day-to-day job, right, and as we talk about that, like what are the things that mattered to you? I spend probably the first two weeks with my college students in circle. Like we start with real simple questions like that are non-threatening, like what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? Cause those are like really accessible questions that don't require a whole lot of vulnerability. But then we actually work together to talk about the underlying values that we share. We name those as a class. We develop those as we taught in, you know, in circle process. Like we develop those as shared values and shared guidelines And in the process of doing that, we begin to trust each other a little bit more.

Kathy: 24:50

And I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that we can do that with first graders. We have to use different language that's developmentally appropriate. Like what are your shared expectations for class? Like I can't use that with little kids, but how do we help children show up and name what they need in order to be in a safe learning space? And it will always surprise me what people name as what they need to be in a safe learning space. I need for there not to be candles, cause I have a real hypersensitive nose and it can shut me down, or I need to be able to walk around, or I need for you to use these pronouns when you speak about me or I. This is my given name, but I really like this name and I'd love it if people would call me this name. So I think for me like to answer your question broadly. It's actually paying attention to what people say they need in order to feel safe and open to learning, and then pay attention to that.

David: 26:07

Yeah, i mean, we talk about reducing restorative justice down to like being responsive to the needs of people in your community. Right, you have to create the opportunities for them to share and to listen. Right, yeah, that's people. But then, like, it's not just checking in about those, like following up on those and being responsive to those, and it's not all just on you as a person who has the power in a classroom. Right, like, how can the community contribute to all of that? right, similar to how you were talking about, how is it restorative to send someone to the office and do this cool thing there and then just send them back to the classroom where there's chaos and no concrete relationships? or you did, in equity, trust, respect, compassion, all those things. There's so much work that can proactively be done to meet those needs. I know you talk a lot about the proactive work.

David: 27:07

Your entry into this work is different from some others where, like, you were exposed to like, oh, the criminal legal system and like alternatives to punishment. But you were already coming from this place of like, what are the relationships? right, people who listen to this know. For me, it was working within the context of an employment program, trying to help people find work and like who are the fellow and friendly employers or like, but then started to think about what are the ways that we could have avoided this in the first place. Part of it is like restorative alternative to the criminal legal system, but so much of it is like what are the supports that this person could have gotten in foster care right? What are the supports that this person could have gotten instead of being criminalized for their mental health issues or their addiction or so many other things? There's so much that needs to be done proactively within the context of school And so, like I so love that you, in the book that you and Dorothy wrote, put such this heavy emphasis on the relationships before the fact.

Kathy: 28:18

Well, what it makes me think of is the whole idea of harms, needs and obligations, right, that Howard talks about in both the little book of restorative justice and in changing lenses. like, if we really wanna think about harms and needs and obligations, that feels very responsive. but when you're talking about somebody who can't get a job because they have been incarcerated, and we still ask that question on our employment forms, right, we have to back up. We have to back up and look what are the previous harms Like?

Kathy: 29:01

why is this person struggling to read? Like what happened when they were in the first and second grade, that they didn't get the reading instruction that they needed in order for them to become a confident reader, which meant that they dropped out. as, like, we have to look backwards. I think the African concept of Sankofa, right, that speaks to that. We have to look backwards in order to be able to move forward. Like, i feel like that that's something we've failed to do often, and so we look at a discipline incident in this moment, right here, and we don't look at the huge context that brought us to this moment right here, right.

David: 29:42

The things that are under the iceberg, but also like the water in which we swim.

Kathy: 29:47

Right, We were talking a couple of weeks ago on the podcast about.

David: 29:51

you know, so a student punches another student, right? What happened there? It's actually because that student used a homophobic slur against them, right, right, and you know that is rooted in the, that is rooted in all of the homophobia that exists within, probably, the culture of the school. but, like society at large, and so like what, who is obligated then to make those changes? And I think, like in those moments that can seem enormous. What do you say to people when they're like, i'm not responsible for dealing with all of homophobia, right?

Kathy: 30:32

I'd say, yeah, we are. We all are Like we built that. We built a system that is entrenched in a particular worldview and we have to unbuild that system. Several years ago, i heard Jasmine's story speak at the restorative justice NACRJ conference. Jasmine was talking about things that were wrong with the education system, and Jasmine identified three things. One was this ridiculous hierarchy structure that we in westernized society, like, are so just rooted in and how that impacts schools. A hierarchy that allows teachers to think that they have more value than students. A hierarchy that allows administrators to impose things on teachers without teacher buy-in. This idea of hierarchy was one of the pieces.

Kathy: 31:34

The second piece that Jasmine identified was toxic individualism And the idea that we exist in isolation, apart from others, and so Jasmine was talking about the ways in which I don't see that what happens to me is connected to what happens to you, because I live isolated, and I was really struck by that a lot. The third one was this detethering of the soul, and they talked about how we've separated ourselves from who we are in our core And that we do that to the detriment of all of us. Again, those are way up here kinds of things. How do we fix that You can't. That's a ginormous shift that has to happen.

Kathy: 32:45

But I can, in whatever realm that I have influence. I can, as a teacher, for example, help my students re-tether to their soul. I can resist hierarchies and help students feel like their voice matters and that I'm paying attention. And I can't change the whole school, perhaps, but I can change my classroom dynamics And then, as I move into different spheres of influence, if I'm a principal like I, can change those at the school level. So I think it's figuring out where is my sphere of influence and how do I leverage the influence that I have to change the things that I can. I think Fania Davis talks about the individual and then the structural and then the systemic, and we have to be working at all three of those levels. It's not that we can work here and ignore here. All three of those have to be addressed together.

David: 33:55

Yeah, for sure. I'm thinking about what you said about praxis, right, And with these like heady, abstract ideas and like there's something I struggle with too, like I'm not a teacher I've never been a teacher, I have worked in schools and like I do not have all of the education that people who are teachers and have been trained in education have. So I'm like these are just these principles. These are things that I've seen other people do, but you gotta figure out what works for you. I'm not gonna ask you like what it what you're coaching other folks to do in classrooms. When we're talking about this de-tethering from these systems of oppression and domination and toxic individuals, what does that look like for you in your spheres?

Kathy: 34:39

Yeah, well, obviously it looked like taking a month off of work for saying I'm not answering emails, right, i have to re-tether to my soul and figure out where the place is. And I can't tell other teachers to do that if I'm not willing to actually do that. And there's a luxury in that and I get that. And again, paradox, eh, there's a luxury and a privilege in being able to do that. I need to name that. And just because it's a privilege doesn't mean I shouldn't do it, whatever I need to do. And then being able to encourage other people to do what they need to do.

Kathy: 35:22

And for me it was stepping away from email for a month. For somebody else it might mean like going to a spa and I don't know, i don't get that, wouldn't ever do it. That would create stress for me, right, but I'm sure for some people that would be a really good way to connect with themselves. I don't know. Anyway, reading a book, i don't know what it is for people, but I know that we can't just say that self-care and being restorative with ourselves is important if we don't actually do it. I think I might've missed a little bit of the question I was still thinking about? yes, can you come back and ask?

David: 36:07

Yeah, and I'm gonna maybe frame it a little bit differently, thinking about the way that you detether from these systems within the context of your classroom what does that look like?

Kathy: 36:21

Oh, a hundred little things. Like I hate grades. I think grades are just like the devil. I think that they're extrinsically reinforcing of all kinds of dynamics that we're trying to minimize, like who's smart and who's not, like the whole concept of intelligence.

David: 36:45

When you say we are trying to who's the we Oh good.

Kathy: 36:49

Thank you. The structure of schooling privileges a certain type of intelligence And I think the structure of schooling. We need to shift the way that we, all of us see intelligence, And I think we're moving away from that societally. But in the day to day, lived realities, this kid is still perceived as smart and this kid is not based on a GPA, which is absolutely ridiculous because it doesn't take into consideration any of the contextual factors that have set this child up to make a higher GPA than the student. It also doesn't take into consideration any of the intelligences that this child brings to schooling that we don't honor, that are not honored on a daily basis in their schooling practices, And so minimizing the importance of grades would be one of the ways that I try to do that.

David: 37:55

What I was gonna say. What does that look like?

Kathy: 37:58

Depending on the level of students, like where they are developmentally. I try to. I mean, I have to have a grade, but I try to minimize the importance of that and focus more on using language that demands their own learning and not just my assignment of a grade. It's more about and the comments that I give, the feedback that I give, is not about what I expect, but rather how they're making meaning of new ideas. Yeah, it's hard. I think that's.

Kathy: 38:39

One of the questions that I still have is how do we live restoratively in a world that doesn't often support those kinds of shifts Like, for example, silence, giving space for people to just think? We suck at that. One of the things that I love so much about Circle is the opportunity to hold a talking piece and be able to reflect and think before I speak. Our day-to-day lived reality is very seldom that way. If I pause for like a minute or 30 seconds to think about what I wanna say next, so often like somebody's gonna jump in and speak on top of me or interrupt my thought or not, let me get to that place of reflection.

Kathy: 39:49

So, yeah, I think so much of restorative justice is just counter-cultural in so many ways. Yeah, and none of that addresses like things like capitalism that drives so much of what happens in schools. I mean, we could throw out big words, like you know, neoliberalism and stuff like that But again all of those are just kind of structural things that tend to dictate for so many teachers what happens in their classrooms. And it doesn't have to be that way. But I do think that it takes all of us, working collectively, to begin to change those structures.

David: 40:35

Yeah, for sure.

Kathy: 40:37

And it's what you said earlier. Right, it's so important that we can't rush Like I know that that work is the long haul work, we're not gonna arrive tomorrow with that, we're not gonna change a thing, and then it has the impact that we want to have. I get that. That doesn't make it any less worth doing, even if it's not gonna have a direct impact which gets us all into big conversations about grant funding and stuff like that, which we won't get into today.

David: 41:09

For sure. All of that had me rethinking my removal of silence spaces when I edit podcasts.

David: 41:19

So I'm gonna leave that part in, but so other people know, oftentimes, when you're listening to this restorative just as life, people aren't thinking of things just on the spot and brilliant. A lot of times people do take those pauses. I'm just reflective of my own practice, right, because I want people to be able to consume content in ways that are time efficient for them. And the probably cumulative two, three, four minutes that I edit out of a podcast just from UMS, and those silent pauses What is the impact of that one way or the other? I don't know the answer to that.

Kathy: 42:00

Well, i took a class when I was in grad school called discourse analysis, and we actually analyzed all of UMS in the pause and the pauses and all of the ways that people use language in order to perform all kinds of things right, and so it was really fascinating.

David: 42:21

Yeah yeah. No, I'm just reflective of all of my jazz, right, Yeah, like yeah. And what am I trying to communicate when I use those? And oftentimes it's just filler, Like so there is that as well. You talked about like de-emphasizing, grading as one of those practices among hundreds of little things. Are there a couple other that you wanna highlight?

Kathy: 42:48

Sure, like starting two weeks in circle, like we literally take two weeks to build relationships, and over the course of those two weeks we increasingly talk more about teaching and learning. But it starts out at that experiential level Like talk about a teacher that meant a lot to you. What was it about that teacher? What kind of teacher do you wanna be, why are you studying teaching and what do you hope to accomplish as an educator? Like those kinds of questions I think are crucial. Before we get into talking about Piaget or Weigatzky or Nelnodding's or Bell Hooks, like bringing ourselves to a place where we're like oh so can we talk about Maslow And can we talk about Jeffrey Duncan Andrade And can we problematize Maslow, like all of that gets really theoretical and it's lovely and I love it, but it doesn't mean a whole lot if we haven't first situated ourselves as learners to really care about motivation, if we don't care about every child, if we don't like, if we haven't brought ourselves to that learning space.

David: 44:00

So taking the time to do that and not just diving into content, I think some people would say like yeah, that's easy When you are teaching teachers about teaching. what does that have to do with my math classroom? What does that have to do with my history class? What does that have to do with BE?

Kathy: 44:20

Yeah, and the only thing I can say to that, because I haven't done circles with fifth graders. But the teachers that I work with who do circles with fifth graders tell me all the time that they spend the time building the relationships up front And it saves them so much time down their end because they're proactively building a container where learning can happen. And so I guess trust teachers. The teachers are saying that it matters if we build those relational pieces. First It matters. It matters to the students whether they show up well or not. And then not just at the beginning, but working on a new writing project right now on restorative justice and education link from a pedagogical perspective. Myisha Wynn has written a good bit about pedagogy, restorative justice, pedagogy. Has Myisha been on here before?

David: 45:32

Who is that? No?

Kathy: 45:34

Myisha Wynn is a rock star. I'm so grateful for her work. She's a teacher educator also. Her first book was Justice on Both Sides, and then she's written two books that are more directly about pedagogy, one specifically about English language arts curriculum, and then the most recent one was about pedagogy across the content areas. And so thinking about pedagogical practices from a restorative justice place, using the graphic and the kind of framework that we use at EMU and that we brought up in the Little Book of Restorative Justice and Education like three big components right, nurturing healthy relationships, repairing harm and transforming conflict, and establishing just and equitable learning environments. We just take those three perspectives And then we think about what can we do proactively, what can we do responsively for each of those, and then thinking about what we mean by pedagogy.

Kathy: 46:51

I like to use Carol Tomlinson's kind of taxonomy of content, process, product effect and environment. And so if we think just about content, like the curriculum that we choose, how do we establish just and equitable learning environments and what adjustments to our curriculum need to happen? Well, it means we need new history textbooks in a lot of situations. Right, it means that our English language arts classrooms need to bring in a whole bunch of different types of literature and not the same tongue, of authors that have been part of our English classrooms for generations, that we decent her whiteness in our history and in our language arts. That when we talk about math and sciences, that we acknowledge that there are lots of mathematicians and scientists that are underrepresented in our thinking about math and science. And so how do we adjust our curriculum and our content in order to be more just and equitable?

David: 48:01

Yeah, and.

Kathy: 48:03

I could go for days on that, but I'll stop.

David: 48:05

Yeah, i was going to say like and none of that is an overnight process, none, yeah. And those each deserve like podcasts of their own and like books, and so shout out to Carol, and I already forgot.

Kathy: 48:20

My Asia.

David: 48:22

My Asia about those folks and we can link those in the bio and like, proactively, i'm going to say, hey, maybe that's one of the people that I'm going to ask you to hit me up with to be on this podcast. You know you've continued to do this work And I appreciate you know the way that you and Dorothy approached the little book of restorative justice and education, also appreciative of knowing about my issues. But because I didn't know about that as well, a lot of times people ask me about resources, books around restorative justice, specifically in education. I shout out you and Dorothy's book, the little book of restorative justice and education Circle forward from Kay and Carolyn and living justice press, primarily because of the books out there like those are two that like really make clear from the jump that like this work is rooted in indigenous ways of being right.

David: 49:23

This work isn't like a social science that has developed in the last like 3040 years And, like I know that you all aren't the only people who are writing, those are the only two that come to mind. What are some of you just shouted out my issues? Are there any others that, like really help folks within? like education, lean into restorative justice practices?

Kathy: 49:46

Yeah, i Christina Parker is out of Canada has a chapter in the colorizing restorative justice. So big shout out to colorizing restorative justice. I for a while I was like, yeah, i'm not going to speak anymore or write anymore. All I want to do is tell everybody to go read colorizing restorative justice and then, when everybody's done that, then we can resume conversations, because I feel like it's groundbreaking. I really do. I feel like the restorative justice world needed that book, needs that book desperately.

Kathy: 50:21

Christina Parker is in Canada. She writes about schooling practices, but Tina loves book. We have to do more than survive. I think is crucial to our understanding of like abolitionist teaching and what needs to happen in schools in order to make space for everyone to show up as learners in good and healthy ways. and yeah, so our undergrad students did a book study on Bettina loves book last year and it was pretty transformative for them. I mean I could hear in their tone like, oh, my goodness, like we have to read this book, everybody has to read this book. I want everybody to, you know, release a delpit's work and Sonya Nieto's work and I mean there's more. And she has a new book on trauma and restorative justice that thinks critical.

Kathy: 51:22

And, yeah, you know, several years ago I did a good audit of my syllabi, the course documents that I was providing to my students, the things that I was inviting them to read.

Kathy: 51:39

I realized like so many of the authors were white authors talking about restorative justice, and it was super important for me at that point.

Kathy: 51:51

I was using a textbook in my undergrad classes and I ditched the textbook completely and still have to teach Maslow and by God ski, and I'm not going to read today and all of these like educational psychology people, but I want to. I want to read them alongside more contemporary and particularly authors of color right, who represent the global majority and represent perspectives that aren't held by textbook authors necessarily, and so I think that it's important in the RJ work. For me it's important that I continue to find ways to de center whiteness as the dominant narrative and look for ways to re center or center for the first time in many cases right The perspectives of people that have been disregarded for years. I don't say that is some like grandiose vision, but like it's a matter of looking through my syllabus and realizing, oh, like this is not balanced, it's not representative and it's not honoring of the roots of restorative justice, and so and a change that as we've heard so much about doing this work is the practice, but it's always great to have some fundamentals.

David: 53:15

So if you want to tap into the intro to RJ racial and restorative justice course, the link to engage in that learning is in the show notes. If you want to go deeper in your practice or explore other aspects of doing work that is restorative and building a better world for future generations, we have learning opportunities for you to, both in courses and live workshops. If you're in a community school or organization that would benefit from this learning, we're more than happy to get on a call with you to talk about how we can support this work in your context. Whether organically or not, it always comes up in interviews, conversations that I have with the handful of white folks that have been on these airwaves, and that's intentional, right. What do you see as your role as a white person who has done a lot of work in restorative justice? like your experience, you have a lot to contribute, but what do you see as your role in this work now?

Kathy: 54:07

Again decentering whiteness and not white people, but decentering whiteness as that construct, that very Eurocentric way of thinking, and like I'm still learning what that looks like, i know that, for example, the lists of things to do is a very white thing, it's very white dominant, so that I become more consumed with accomplishing things that I do, about actually attending to people who are sitting right in front of me, right. Other ways that whiteness shows up for me is like this utilitarianism, and I heard it in my voice earlier. I heard it in something I said oh, that we do circles because it takes time now but saves time later. That's whiteness, you know. That's like we've got to make sure that we're being efficient, and the ways in which those show up. I'm still, i want to be reflective enough to go oh, that's what that was, and then try to figure out how to undo those, the things that Jasmine talked about hierarchies and individualism, like those things also like so steeped in white colonizing practices, and so how do we like begin to push back against those? So, as a white person, i think naming those for myself is a place to start, and I mean I'm teaching at a university that's very much like white students, and so I think for me, working intentionally with my white students to help them to begin asking questions, that it took me a long time to begin asking Thank you for that. that might mean, like encouraging them to read colorizing restorative justice or Bettina Love's book or Maisha Wynn's books, encouraging them to look to other sources for knowledge.

Kathy: 56:17

I think another way it looks for me is to acknowledge that my perspective about restorative justice is always influenced by my whiteness, and so how do I like? right now it was really important I'm co-teaching with a woman of color, a black woman, who came through our restorative justice and education program. That was intentional, because I don't know what I don't know. She's brilliant in and of herself, of course, but I don't ever want to show up for I don't want to be the thing I don't want to be the white sage on the stage. I want to find ways to dissenter, dissenter me And yet, by the virtue of my job, i often find myself in that place, and so can I be intentional about finding ways to not do that. So, yeah, those are just a couple of things that pop out. Did I even answer your question?

David: 57:33

Yeah, there's no right answer to that question right. It's really like a reflection of like you know where you're at in wrestling with this, because I'm working progress.

David: 57:48

Yeah, for sure, and I appreciate the vulnerability that it takes to share that. I was reflecting a little bit earlier about, like you know, whenever there are people of the global majority in new roles, it's like what does it like to be this oppressed person in this space, right, and thinking about, like flipping the question to folks like you know, especially in this moment that we're in now and I know like people have issues with like this moment, right, like this has always been a necessary conversation, but I know people like yourself have been more reflective over the last couple of years about, like, what does it mean to continue to do this work that we believe in in a way that, like to your point, is dissentering whiteness and is, you know, undoing the harm, not undoing repairing the harm?

Kathy: 58:42

The extent possible. The extent possible right.

David: 58:46

It is your obligation.

Kathy: 58:48

It is Yeah, yeah, and, and I don't know all that I need to know And I'm doing my darnedest to study and to read, but all of that's up here kind of stuff, and so part of the work is to partner with other leaders in the field of restorative justice who represent the global majority and who I can learn from, and with right. So Dorothy and I recently did a presentation or a kind of a conversation with Sky Bowen from Canada and Cheryl Wilson, and the four of us just had a really you know, really lovely. We've had two now, just lovely conversations with the four of us about whiteness and how whiteness shows up in restorative justice and how do we de-center it, how it causes harm and how do we address that harm. Name it first, right, reckon with it. Which is another book that I'm reading right now? Danielle Sared's book Until We Reckon, and it's it's knocking my socks off. I'm really enjoying it in in that good meaty kind of way.

David: 1:00:00

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You shouted out. Well, dorothy's been on this podcast, cheryl's been on this podcast, sky been talking to trying to get to. Danielle, we're gonna get there with all of those folks. I want to transition into the questions that I ask everyone, and you know this I sometimes I think about it as a speed round. It rarely is very speedy, but we'll go where we go For you. Define restorative justice.

Kathy: 1:00:38

Respect, dignity, mutual concern, belief that all people are worthy and relational focus on relationships and justice and equity.

David: 1:00:51

What's been oh shit moment as you've been doing this work And what have you learned from it?

Kathy: 1:00:57

Yeah, i, i heard you ask that question And I knew you were going to ask this question. You know, early in my restorative justice work here at EMU even I was at a conference And I I felt like a big wig at the conference was responsible for some things And at the end of one of the days, a black man came to me and expressed that he had experienced a racial microaggression and he felt deeply harmed and he wanted me to do something about it. I was busy And I didn't have time to address his harm in the moment because I felt like my to-do list was more important. I was responsible, i was important, i centered me and I caused harm, deep harm. I got defensive when I got called out for calling the harm. I did all of the wrong things And it took a mentor, respected mentor, calling me on the phone and very kindly but very directly, shining a light on my very colonizing practice. She said, kathy, you have a lot to offer the field of restorative justice, but you're going to have to become more racially savvy than this. Oh, i hate that. Oh, it was.

Kathy: 1:02:30

It was such a humbling moment for me because, like I had screwed up royally and I saw it in that moment. And yet there was grace upon grace and it was a real turning point for me. It pushed me to do a lot more deep reflection about the role of my whiteness in my own restorative justice work, about my tendency to prioritize the big picture over the minute-to-minute relational interactions, and it pushed me to stop and pause and listen to people when they say this is what I felt and what I need And I regret deeply the harm that I caused that man And I still feel like that is not repaired. It bothers me. There's still something that needs to happen there And I don't know exactly what it is. And I regret that moment. I don't regret the deep learning that came as a result of that and how it shifted the trajectory of my whole life, pushing me to learn and to keep figuring stuff out. It's a humbling moment. It was an oh-shit moment for sure.

David: 1:04:00

We've talked a lot about how restorative justice and this work has existed within the professional realm. for you, what about in your personal life, this restorative justice life?

Kathy: 1:04:14

Yeah, i often said I wouldn't be in a relationship with my family right now if it wasn't for restorative justice. I love my family deeply. We're super close. Growing up we were really really tight as I began to shift in my political and religious ideals And then several years ago when I came out to my family, it all but severed some of that And it was really hard for a few years.

Kathy: 1:04:45

And I'm not sure that if I hadn't embraced restorative justice as a way of being and not just as a thing I do in schools, i'm not sure if I would have had the skills or the ethic to persist in that relationship. And so the summer when my partner and I went to meet my family and to visit with them again talk about grace upon grace right, there were good relationships there And we still disagree lots And we're still on really big ends of spectrums in a lot of ways. And yet the respect, the dignity is still there And the relationship is still there And I'm really grateful for that. I think it also impacts the way I interact with colleagues who see the world differently. I think it impacts the way I treat myself when I screw up.

David: 1:05:48

Yeah, Yeah, relationship with yourself always is a part of that. You get to sit in circle with four people, living or dead. Who are they and what's the question? you ask the circle.

Kathy: 1:06:05

I've been asked before if you could have a conversation with anybody, who would you want to have a conversation with? I probably would probably go to my ancestors. I realize, as a white person who is a descendant of white people who were settlers on this land, i don't know that history, i don't know those practices, and so when I think about being a southerner from Mississippi, i don't know the stories. I don't know the stories of how it came to be that my family settled here. I don't know the stories of how they became landowners. I can make assumptions, but I don't know those stories.

Kathy: 1:07:06

And so I would my great-great grandfather on all four sides of my immediate family perhaps, or my great-great-grandmothers to hear their stories about what their life was like And did they know that when they staked their claim that they were, were they aware? like, to what extent did they have awareness that they were staking a claim in land that wasn't theirs? And did they? did they name those things? Yeah, i'd want to understand that history a little bit more so that I can just reckon with my own history a little bit. I feel like there's a blank space in my self-awareness because they don't have access to those stories.

David: 1:08:02

Yeah, or whether it was just like, and like they probably wouldn't use the term manifest destiny to describe that either, Of course not right Of course they wouldn't.

Kathy: 1:08:12

But you know, they would have framed it as religious freedom. perhaps I don't know. I want to know.

David: 1:08:20

Yeah, for sure. We've talked about this work largely in the context of schools. We talked about it in the criminal legal system. I'm curious if there's a specific situation whether it is historical, fictional or in your life that you've experienced recently where you wish someone or where you wish people really knew this work.

Kathy: 1:08:45

Yes, our local county school district is grappling a lot with three big issues mask mandates, critical race theory and transgender bathroom policies And we have so created dichotomies on all three of those fronts that nobody can even have conversations that are even somewhat remotely productive And we just yell each other down. Right, there's just you're the devil and you're the devil, and nobody's actually having conversations. And I wish desperately that we could take some of the values and the guidelines of circle, we could establish those norms together of listening Not that we all agree I'm not looking for us to agree on things But I am wishing that we could not vilify one another, that we could actually pay attention to one another and maybe have some more productive conversations about those three topics. That might get us somewhere together.

Kathy: 1:10:18

I know that I'm not willing to bend on transgender bathrooms, but I also would like to express that this is so much bigger than bathrooms And if we're only having conversations about bathrooms, we're missing the point. Can we back up and realize that we're talking about honoring the dignity of every child and every educator in a school building? Bathrooms is a small expression of that. Bathrooms are part of that, but also just being seen and honored for who you are and what you bring to a learning community. Can we get out of this very narrow focused thing and actually find the humanity in it, instead of just arguing or talking?

David: 1:11:09

points. I think what's hard for me about these things is you said like you're not looking for agreement, but that sounded to me like I'm not going to bend. So where is that space? Because I agree with you. I agree with you If we're talking about mask-managed, we're literally talking about life and death, and I think similarly, in some ways, you have to take the connections to mental health and psychological well-being with folks who do not fall within the gender binary To also say this is a life and death thing.

David: 1:11:59

How are you not looking for agreement?

Kathy: 1:12:03

Can it be one of the paradoxes that I wrestle with and sit with ambiguity? I believe that there are things that support the well-being and the sense of belonging for all of us. I think there are things that violate the well-being and that sense of belonging. Obviously, what is something that I privilege? Well-being and belonging. But I think everybody should prioritize well-being and belonging of everybody. And if I push on that person that I know was protesting the transgender bathroom, they would say that they also care about the well-being and the belonging of all of our children. I think that they would say that, as long as it doesn't interfere with their personal rights. So I want to give the benefit of the doubt to that person. But I also know that I've never actually heard them talk in a one-on-one kind of situation. That's not true. I grew up with those ideas.

David: 1:13:21

I was going to say here in my liberal bubble of California, my curated interactions on social media. I only have my. I do have a limited view of the world. I was curious because you do live in Virginia, right College town And you were within university setting, but you're still amongst people and the people that you grew up with. Do you have those views, oh man?

Kathy: 1:13:50

I know right How do I talk about that. One of the questions that you asked in somebody else was what values keep you going? which values are difficult? For me, they're the same ones. Which ones keep me going?

Kathy: 1:14:06

It's dignity, It's vulnerability, brave spaces, open-mindedness and a commitment to personal growth. Which ones are difficult? All of those. They're difficult to live into. Those I'm open-minded until you start talking about refusing to get a vaccine And then, all of a sudden, yeah, I'm not so open-minded. I don't know what open-mindedness means when I'm talking to people who are anti-science. I don't know how to treat someone with dignity when they refuse to treat our transgender students with dignity. I don't know how to create brave spaces with people who are going to use that space to vilify certain populations of our students or teaching. So I value those things, but they're really difficult to live into. Yeah, I think that's one of the complexities of restorative justice work. If I really believe that every person is worthy and relational, then I can't just write off this person who stands in direct contradiction to everything that I believe. And yet, how to live out my values in that relationship while not compromising on what I believe? Those are hard minutes, I don't know.

David: 1:15:33

Yeah, Oh man, Yeah, It's messy, because I think about any one of us can say, like that's not my lane, I don't have the capacity to work with quote unquote those people.

Kathy: 1:15:50

Right.

David: 1:15:51

Well then, who's in? I think there's a lot of merit to that right. We can only work where, in some places where the doors are open, people are willing to hear us, And some of this work is changing those people's minds is impossible and is not my job. But that's not being dismissive of them. That's just saying I can only control what I can control. I can only work in the spaces where I can work.

Kathy: 1:16:18

Well, and I think that's different for everybody. For example, talking with white people who still have really pejorative views of people of color, people from the global majority, like I probably have a greater capacity because I grew up with that And like that's part of my journey is unlearning that stuff And I probably, as a white person, have a greater capacity to sit and talk with white people. I don't have the capacity to sit and talk with people who are homophobic. I'll get quickly triggered and irritated and it's not healthy for me to sit and listen to people talk about their views of LGBTQ folks, so I don't have the capacity for that.

Kathy: 1:17:10

Somebody should do that, but just shouldn't be me, and so I think it. For me, it depends on what you do have the capacity for, and I should go talk with more white people. I should have those conversations because I think I have the capacity to do that, but I shouldn't expect everybody to do that. The work is big and we all have a role to play and we should play our role and do what we can, but I can't expect everybody to do what I can do, and nor can I do what other people can do.

David: 1:17:46

Right, Yeah, does that make sense. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And like the urgency of like we need to tell everybody, we need to get everyone in. Fourth is in such conflict, what is one thing, a mantra or affirmation, or maybe something else that you wish everyone listening to this podcast could know?

Kathy: 1:18:11

I'm thinking about a dear colleague who recently got some bad news And I'm going to rely on her mantra, which is I can do hard things And I know that she is naming that for herself right now And I'm going to borrow that from her in this moment to say like I think we can do hard things And sometimes we I I'll say I, sometimes I shy away from those difficult things And I need more badassery in my life to show up for the hard stuff.

David: 1:19:00

Yeah, yeah. See that silence is appropriate within the context of this conversation, but how much silence is appropriate for a listener? Yeah, I know That's right, you kind of already answered this, but who's one person that should have on this podcast? and you got a?

Kathy: 1:19:29

I should.

David: 1:19:30

Perfect. Well, we'll get that in.

Kathy: 1:19:33

I don't even know that I can facilitate that connect because I don't know that I'm in. I mean, i don't know that I'm the person to make that connection happen.

David: 1:19:43

But we will find a way. We will find a way. Is there someone else who you would love to see in conversation here?

Kathy: 1:19:55

I did my initial circle training with Oscar and Jamie in St Paul, jamie Williams, oscar I wish I could tell you Oscar's last name, oscar. I tell this story all the time. When I'm talking about restorative justice circle process, teachers will say but what about the student who refuses to participate? And I always, always, always tell the story that Oscar told in our circle training about working in a juvenile detention center with young men who were incarcerated for violent offenses And he, oscar, was doing circles with them And a new student came.

Kathy: 1:20:41

A new young man came to the juvenile detention center and just wouldn't even come and sit in the circle, set in the corner of the room And after it took months for that student to even come sit in the circle. And even after that that student continued to pass for a while And then one day the talking piece came to that young man and he just opened up and shared about his life and all that had happened that brought him to this place. And Oscar had shared that story as a way to say like kids will show up when they feel safe And for some of our students it takes a little while longer for them to feel that sense of safety and it's our job to create that space, but then also to allow them to be the ones to decide when it is that they feel safe enough to show up. Anyway, i'll always remember that story and I share it everywhere, so I'm really grateful for the circle training that I had with Oscar and Jamie.

David: 1:21:49

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. You can't force someone into being restorative In the meantime. And if you're thinking about a time when people are resistant to being accountable for the harm that they cause, what do you do then? There's one answer where it's like, you give them the choice of hey, here's this restorative process that you can participate in. It's hard, but I think it'll be beneficial And we do have these punitive measures that we can take right. That's still giving people choice. It's often a veiled threat. It's still there. There's this other space of like. What are the other ways that we can address needs, meet needs for people who have been harmed, while we're still building safety to deal with this person?

Kathy: 1:22:46

Yeah, for sure, and I think yeah, absolutely, that has to happen.

Kathy: 1:22:52

I just thought of somebody else because a little while ago I wrote a policy brief with Anne Gregory And in there we identified five mis-implementation models for restorative justice in schools And one of them was a top-down coerced model And it just doesn't work.

Kathy: 1:23:20

Like we've seen evidence after evidence that when we require people to do restorative justice stuff and it doesn't come from a place of like I want to do this, like it actually can cause more harm than good And so yeah, so that was one And it made me think of that when we were talking about you can't mandate people to show up for restorative justice, Like it's not a thing you can make somebody do and expect to have good outcomes for sure. So anyway, anne might be a fun person to have. Anne would bring a completely different perspective. Anne is an educational researcher and has done a lot of deep dive into what we call research on restorative justice and why so much of the research doesn't tell us what we're looking for because it's limited to numbers and trends and misses some of the components that might help us understand, like the relational pieces. Anyway, anne's fun to talk to as a different kind of different framing of the world And I really appreciated working with her on that policy brief.

David: 1:24:52

For sure, we've kind of come to this haphazardly. But last question is how can, how and where can people support your work in the ways that you want to be supported?

Kathy: 1:25:05

Yeah, i thank you for that question.

Kathy: 1:25:07

I mean I love what I'm doing.

Kathy: 1:25:10

I don't think it's the only way, but when I was studying to be a teacher educator and kept hearing people say, man, i wish I'd learned about this when I was studying to be a teacher rather than having to learn about it post facto, it just seemed logical like we should build in restorative justice to our teacher preparation programs, and so one of the reasons I came to Eastern Mennonite University was to hopefully build a restorative justice and education program. I think we might be one of very few teacher ed programs that actually offers courses on restorative justice as part of the teacher preparation curriculum, but I'd love to see that become more commonplace because, as teachers are developing their understanding of what it means to be a teacher, like they're learning about what it means to be restorative as an educator. So I think just thinking about how can we teach teachers in ways that are restorative, how can we model that? How can we build that into our teacher prep program? We also have a graduate program and it's now online so people can access the restorative justice and education graduate certificate like from anywhere. So come join us.

Kathy: 1:26:40

Study restorative justice in schools. Study that, yeah.

David: 1:26:48

And I'll link the. I'll make sure that EMU's page is, for all of those things are linked in the show notes below Thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, sharing your experiences. Is there anything else that you want to leave the people with Kathy?

Kathy: 1:27:08

No, i'm grateful for the conversation, thank you. I will say that I am questions. Who am I? questions Prompted a whole lot of conversation in my home, and I'm grateful for them. They pushed me to reflect on some things And so, even though they were wildly awkward and uncomfortable, i think we should do more reflecting as people on who we are and naming those things. So thanks for that as well.

David: 1:27:42

Absolutely Well. Again, thank you so much for your time here this morning afternoon, you know, on our respective coasts, to everyone else who's listening, thank you for being here. We'll be back with another conversation next week. Take care Till then. Thanks, david Like, would you hurt? Please subscribe, rate, review and share this podcast on whatever platform you're using right now Or, if you're old school, tell a friend. It really helps us further amplify this work. You can also support us by following us on our social platforms signing up for our email list, signing up for a community gathering, workshop or course, so many options Links to everything in the show notes Or on our website, amplifyrjcom. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you next week.