Implementing Restorative Practice with Laura Fittz and Ellen Montgomery
Episode 24 with Laura Fittz and Ellen Montgomery
Episode Topic: Laura and Ellen tell how they implemented restorative practice within their schools.
This will begin our several episode series focused on restorative practices in schools. We will hear from educators and experts and learn what makes restorative practice work in schools and how it helps teachers and students. In this episode, teachers Laura Fittz and Ellen Montgomery provide an in-depth discussion on their journeys with implementing restorative practices in their classrooms and schools.
Main Points of Discussion:
What is restorative practice
Comparing restorative practice to punitive approaches
How Laura and Ellen were able to work with school administrators to implement change
The daily life of teaching in a restorative environment
Resources:
Website for Ted Wachtel (who both Laura and Ellen mentioned): Building a New Reality
Website for the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP)
Episode 24 Transcript
Scott Lee 0:02
Greetings, friends and colleagues. Welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast. I am Scott Lee. I hope you're safe and well. Today we begin a series of episodes focused on restorative practice. In this series, we will hear from practitioners and experts as they discuss implementing restorative practice in classrooms and schools. I cannot stress enough the importance of this ongoing paradigm shift within educator practice, and I know that listeners will find the series useful. Whether restorative practice is an ongoing part of your work, or if you are just taking those first few steps, I think that right now it is a very important time for this series for a variety of reasons. But I'm particularly concerned because several state legislatures are currently considering bills that are designed to exclude students from schooling at a time when policymakers should be focusing on ways to provide the supports necessary to make schools places of inclusion for all. We will start the series with a conversation we recorded in January 2020. We will visit with Laura Fitz and Ellen Montgomery, who have led and continue to lead restorative practice implementation within their schools in the Metro Public Schools in Nashville, Tennessee. Laura Fitz is an English teacher and restorative practices coordinator at Glencliff high school. She tells us of her passion about social justice and youth leadership, especially through a youth participatory action research lens. She and her students began the restorative student leader movement at Glencliff with the peace team. She is grateful to get to work with students and teachers at her school as they continue on their restorative journey. Ellen Montgomery is a Spanish teacher and facilitator of core, a student led restorative practices team at Hillsboro High School, she tells us, she is so honored and humbled to be able to work with such inspiring resilience students that are bringing about transformative change within their communities. Welcome today, Laura Fitz, and Ellen Montgomery to The Thoughtful Teacher podcast. Before we dive into your school's initiatives, how would each of you define or describe what you think restorative practices are?
Laura Fittz 2:41
Hi, thanks for having us today. The key thing, this is more the key thing for me and restorative practices is that it's not a program. It's not an initiative. It's not a thing you do, but it's a way that you are. So it's a paradigm shift to change the way of thinking from a mindset that is punitive to one that is restorative.
Ellen Montgomery 3:03
Thanks for having us. This is Ellen. And I think we're pretty much on the same page of how we define restorative practices, and that it's a mindset shift. And it's not a list of things that your school should implement, although there are things that are helpful that you can implement. But it ultimately comes down to a mindset shift within a community and helpful phrase from Ted Wachtel at IIRC, the International Institute of Restorative Practices is that the fundamental premise of restorative practices is that when you do things with people rather than to them, or for them, more cooperative and more willing to do things in a positive way, so that idea of doing things with people is really important as well.
Scott Lee 3:48
Yeah. And that's huge. I know. And in his books, Ted Wachtel's books, with instead of to something that he emphasizes, every time I've read something it is so that you think about it that way as well. What led you to think that restorative practices were needed in your schools and just for everybody to know you're at two different schools, two different high schools in the Metro Nashville area? How did you decide that you needed to do that?
Laura Fittz 4:18
This is Laura. I'm in my seventh year at Glencliff High School in Nashville. And I heard about restorative practices when I was in undergrad. My friend who is doing circles in Chicago Public Schools, for her telling me about them and calling them peace circles. And I thought the idea was just ridiculous. And it sounded so silly, and it was just a bunch of Kumbaya, hippie stuff. But then when I started teaching, I noticed that although I naturally tended to be more restorative, that times when I tried to give a punitive consequences for students who did a harmful behavior, that ultimately backfired students being sent out of my room or being system did not only didn't fix the problem, but it also made that student angry toward me. It was bigger wedge between our relationship. And so I attended the I RP training with a friend. And it just made sense. There wasn't anything that was rocket science, there wasn't anything necessarily new. But as Ellen mentioned before, there are some things that you can do. And there's ultimately a way that you can be that really helped you build a community that 80% proactive, 20% responsive. So you're building communities that harmful things don't happen in the first place. But because we're all thinking humans and we do goofy things, that harm occurs, we have a very clear format of how we can make sure that all voices are listened to that victims and the people who caused the harm, all their needs are met, and that we can move forward in a positive way. So I went from hater to being a coordinator of restorative practices on my school.
Scott Lee 6:03
What about you, Ellen?
Ellen Montgomery 6:04
So in my first year of teaching, I actually met Laura through her first year in having the peace team, in addition to her coordinating role; and the dean at my school, Amy Kate suggested that we start a team at our school, because we were in a shift culture shift to try and become more restorative as a school. And she kind of invited me along to help create a team at our own school. And I had never heard of restorative practices in any sort of teacher prep programs at school or anything. And it was just something I we have a lot of SEL programs here in Nashville. But until my first year teaching in Nashville, I've never heard of restorative practices. And it kind of just immediately clicked and made sense to me. And I think kind of what Laura said earlier about intuitively being restorative, we both are kind of geeks about personality, have the same personality type. And I think kind of being more calm instance, like in chaos, when students are acting out or have harmful behaviors, it kind of makes sense as to kind of stay calm and and figure out the root of the problem. But I know a lot of people aren't like that. And so it takes a little bit more prep work. But for me, it just made sense. And I immediately jumped on board to want to start this shift towards becoming more of a sort of school. So we started our first year of the core team at our school year after we went to Glencliff to visit Laura's team
Scott Lee 7:29
with you all talking about that I keep thinking about first few years, I was teaching things that I was told to do were so, so punitive. And that was that was all people shouldn't were taught and teacher education programs, right.
Laura Fittz 7:46
That's all we experienced. When we have our own stories of times, we experienced creative discipline. So
Ellen Montgomery 7:53
I think like even your first year, like people will tell you like, Don't smile at the kids like, so really, really harsh, and which is crazy and totally like not my personality type. And I think there's a way to balance a whole social discipline window and restorative practices of having high expectations and keeping those high and holding students accountable to reach those, but also the support. And I think that can look different for everyone. But it's so interesting that a lot of people were taught to like, hold high expectations through being punitive and harsh with students.
Laura Fittz 8:27
And in my opinion, the underlying premise, there's fear, fear of losing control, fear of the students, you know, doing something harmful. And I think for both Ellen and I had just made sense that we shouldn't feel afraid when we were teaching and that we should feel joyful. And for me, beginning there sort of journey. And now six years down the road, I feel, and I just finished teaching, I felt so joyful during the school today, not for all of it. But I think it just kind of an invitation into a different way of looking at teaching as you just don't have to be afraid all the time, that we're all humans, and that we can work together with other humans to be kind to each other to solve problems that will harm each other.
Scott Lee 9:12
Right? Yeah, nobody becomes a teacher because they want to punish kids. I mean, that's just not the reason why you would do it. So how did you convince school administrators to do this? If you are a school principal, anytime a teacher comes or Well, I'm not gonna say anytime, but a lot of times when a teacher comes and has an idea for a new initiative, even one that does not require a paradigm shift, administrators are kind of scared or kind of standoffish. Did either one of you run into that and and how did you deal with that? If you did?
Laura Fittz 9:49
Yeah, I can start this is Laura again, I can start by sharing the story I will input I mentioned that in my first year teaching I went to the training and I started implementing restorative practices. In my classroom, and according to my principal, who's lovely, his name is Clint Wilson. He says that just upon observing my classroom and hearing students talk about my classroom, it was very clear to him that there is something different happening in there. He talks about how kids who couldn't be in class anywhere else in the building would be sitting and doing their work in my room. And he just kind of baffled at how the most challenging students were able to function. He wasn't seeing that in other places. And so I think that got him questioning what was different that was happening in my room versus other places in the building. And that coupled with my desire to get to connect as a homeschool community that are starting to practices that it should not just be limited to the four walls in my classroom, but to have collaboration throughout the school. So the colleagues with whom I attended the training, and I kind of pitched restorative practices to the administration, and during that first year, and they were very interested in what we talked about. But as all of us know, on this podcast, there's not a lot of time and not a lot of money. So that conversation kind of got tabled for about a year. And during that year, my principal continued seeing how things were different in my room. Also, to be honest, just coupled with really high state test scores. In my class, I teach one of the most pressured subjects in our school for funding for testing. And just me personally, I got into a grad program at Peabody, which has been about education school. And so I pitched the idea to my principal of staying on part time, while I was in grad school to do the work that we talked about it is sort of practices. So I got really lucky that my principal saw something that he wanted to extend to the whole school. And let me help coordinate that, while I was also receiving my Masters, my Master's in urban education, while practicing restorative practices in an urban school. in Nashville, it's a little bit insane. It was a really important experience to get to take what I was applying in the classroom, in grad school and practice it. And this was working, and I'm still there. So we're on our fourth year of restorative practices implementation. Now,
Scott Lee 12:26
what about you, Ellen, you really did decide to take this to your principal? Correct? This was not something that your school had been looking at at all, am I right?
Ellen Montgomery 12:36
Yes. And it wasn't me that did that. It was actually our dean of students, Amy Kate. So first year of becoming the Dean of Students, which previously wasn't a goal at our school was the first year I started teaching at Hillsborough. And I took her job, which was a Spanish One teacher, and she moved up to be essentially a dean of culture that would make the shift while also kind of dealing with just referrals that come in and things like that in a restorative way. And so she kind of was the one leading while I joined the school for the first time and kind of just joined forces with her and tried to work through that. But honestly, I mean, our school is going through a lot of kind of chaos. Right now. We're currently in the midst of year three of building construction. And so there's a lot of pressure off our admin right now, I think it's still going to be a thing that's going to be a long term kind of shift, which it should be, it should be long term. But it's kind of a thing where you always need to be, even personally, but also for the people you're working with just reminding people of like your goals and what your priorities are and what you want to happen and how you want your environment and your culture to be and working towards that. And, and all of the chaos of just working in an urban school setting with not a whole lot of funding in general, but also on top of the stresses of a building construction and all of that other things just kind of sticking true to what you want for your school and your community and working towards that.
Laura Fittz 14:11
And Ellen talked a lot about giving advice to administrators who are frustrated by challenging student behavior, and then challenging teacher behavior in terms of responsive versus corrective. Do you want to talk a little bit more?
Ellen Montgomery 14:28
Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of talks, at least within my my team about focusing on proactive versus reactive and 80% of the energy you spend doing restorative things and working in your building. restoratively should be proactive in terms of building community and building relationships and culture building, and only 20% to really be like repairing harm and doing circles that are focusing on how to move forward from harm when it does occur. And so I think That is where my hope would be is that obviously at first, you maybe can't do exactly the 80-20, you might have to do a little bit more of a 60-40 or something like that, but working towards being more proactive rather than doing one to reactive and so that you can spend more time preventing problems before they occur.
Scott Lee 15:19
Right. And then, of course, that also leads to more academic time. I think that sometimes there's a misconception that you take the time to do a circle while you're taking time out of academics. And research is really starting to show that restorative practices can really enhance your academic efficiency.
Ellen Montgomery 15:42
Absolutely. And I think I speak for both of us. And when I say that, when we make the time and our content classes to do circles, and especially regularly do circles, there is a shift in the culture within the classroom and students are more connected to each other and to the content. And whether the circle is about the content or just about their lives, you can you can see a shift within the classroom that is 100%, like a positive shift. And it's worth it for sure.
Laura Fittz 16:13
Yeah, I can, I mentioned that I teach a subject that has a lot of stress related to it because of funding. And so I definitely can commiserate with teachers that say, I don't have enough time, you know, there's 35 kids in my class to have a circle with all of them will take 20 minutes. You know, it's it's hard to find final time, especially when you're really pressured for content and for money, and in so many of our cases, but I can say personally, this is as the restorative practices coordinator out of high school. Last week, we had a four day week my students didn't meet in circle. Usually we meet every single week and things last week were funky, pretty cartoon crazy. Like why, you know, why is the design so messed up? And students like why don't we have a circle this week, I miss meeting and circle and this week, we have a circle question the process, you know, current events happening are being paid for and stuff. If you could have a snack in your pocket for the rest of your life, what would it be and why and it's just the total culture of all of my classes is so much more positive this week. And even though I feel really pressed for the deadlines I have for getting content in and just such a good reminder to me personally, that taking the 20 minutes to make sure every single child is listened to and valued and can talk about processing for the brand stuff, or the favorite snack they'd have in their pocket or what have you, is so valuable and allows the rest of the learning to occur.
Ellen Montgomery 17:43
Also to be human. I think that's another thing that you forget about. I mean, I forget about constantly, just like, Okay, let me go through the lesson plan and try and focus on building relationships as much as possible. But I mean, it's so easy to get caught up in the day to day and even block to block activities that you have going on. And so I think, even if it's just a five minute circle, where the kids say one word about what they're feeling, you know, or saying one thing that they learned from last class or something simple like that, it still reminds them that they're in a community and that their voice matters. And it's definitely time and energy, but it's always worth it and it pays off tenfold in the end.
Laura Fittz 18:24
And I just want to add that I think it's so important for, again, this idea of like being fearful as a teacher and being joyful as a teacher, but you get to be human too. And it's so liberating, to get to be vulnerable and honest and not have a mask on as a teacher, which we're kind of told to do. it's just nice to be yourself. And the same extent that students need to be seen for who they are. It's also really liberating to be able to be a human among the other humans in your class and to not feel like you have to be in charge or have it all together. But you can just be joining in a conversation whether it's about something silly or something more serious.
Scott Lee 19:10
I've had conversations with educators or visited schools were a comment I get is that we're quote, "doing restorative practice, and it's not working." What kind of advice could you offer? to somebody who says that? Or I guess what kind of questions could you ask or what is it? What does that tell you? Without going too into detail, you know, diagnose maybe what, what you think the problem could be if you hear a comment like that.
Ellen Montgomery 19:43
Initially, I think I would just want to listen and ask a few questions and say, Well, what have you tried? And ultimately, like, what is your goal for the shift like a restorative shift like Why? Why are you doing this? Like what is it your end goal? And what are you doing? Like? What are you trying and really kind of dig at what they're doing? And ultimately, I think we said this in the beginning, but is it? Are you just trying to implement a list of things and checkboxes for teachers that's ultimately just stressing everyone out? Are you really working on building community and relationships? And is it more of a mindset shift that you're trying to help encourage within your faculty and staff and really, your whole community? And so I think that I mean, Laura and I both hear that comments all the time. And I think that it comes when you're viewing restorative practices as a as like a checkbox and things that okay, well, I tried that and it didn't work. But honestly, it, it does, like, sometimes take a lot of patience and time and energy to do this. And so if you're a person that wants a quick fix, and a silver bullet, this is not going to do that. It's very long term, paradigm shift. Because you're dealing with people, you're dealing with humans that have their own issues and biases and life experiences that they need to deal with going through this paradigm shift. And so I think that it takes a lot of patience. But ultimately, I just want to sit down and listen to the person and kind of diagnose what specifically they have tried. And ultimately, what do they do the concept of restorative practices being?
Laura Fittz 21:31
I would want to echo what Ellen said, I think, clearly that comment is coming from a place of frustration. And the most helpful thing to do is to listen first. And as a student, Maria Aguilar taught me five years ago to listen to understand not to respond. So try to understand where they're coming from. One thing that popped in my head while I was talking was the Social Discipline Window. So the Social Discipline Window is a really helpful tool. And I think, maybe gearing that conversation toward looking at the window and thinking about where do you find, you know, your personal practice? Where do you find your school policies in the social discipline window, and you know, being real about why you are, where you are, and staying out of shame in that, and about what you need in order to get it to doing things. With people having high expectations and high support. Ellen has a really helpful metaphor for this.
Ellen Montgomery 22:29
So the Social Discipline Window is split up into quadrants, from in one axis, it's going from low support to high support, the other axis is going from low expectations, high expectations, or they call it control. But I like seeing expectations better, because control kind of gives you the mentality that you're controlling the people within the community. And that's not really what it is, it's more of control of the environment, like as a mind, control of the environment. And so, the top right quadrant is the restorative quadrant, meaning that you have high support and high expectations. And that's obviously what we're striving for. But if you envision it as that quadrant being like the bullseye on a dartboard, obviously, you're not going to hit it every time definitely not if I'm throwing the darts. But I think what's cool is to be self aware, and when you're missing the mark to just know like, Where am I? How am I feeling because I could hit the bullseye maybe like, twice out of eight shots throughout the day and kind of fall into like punitive or permissive, just based on my emotions, or circumstance or stress level or something throughout the day. And so to constantly check in with myself, be self aware and just recognize that like, you're aiming for restorative, you're not going to hit it every time definitely to the day, I go through all four quadrants. But just to say like, how am I feeling? What do I need right now to get back to restorative so that I can be the best that I can be for my students.
Scott Lee 24:03
Quickly, because we are running very low on time to either one of you have a story or each of you have a story that you'd like to share briefly about a student that has benefited by using a restorative approach.
Laura Fittz 24:22
My goodness, I can think of so many I'm trying to think of one I can tell quickly. Okay, we'll do this one. One of the very first formal conferences I facilitated was between three students. Two of them were sisters, and they had been involved in multiple fights to be on school off campus to the extent that two students were facing an explosion and one student was facing potential deportation because of also her documentation, complexities and we were able through a lot of fingers and spent two weeks Talking with all three girls and their family members, we were able to bring the three students and their moms together. Because it had gotten to the point of the parents being involved. There are also some gang complications and a lot of threats of violence for the family. Sure. And we were able to sit down with both families and all three students and have Everyone's story be told. And it was not perfect. It was in English and Spanish, which is always exciting to do a formal conference that's translated. And tensions were high at some points, you know, the emotions kind of ebbs and flows. But at the end, all three students and both moms were able to share what their experience has been, how they were harmed, the ones that occurred, and to make a plan to move forward. And as a result of that, all three students were able to stay at our school, they held to the agreements that they created with each other. The moms afterward ended up sharing contact information and realizing that they were from the same region of a Central American country. And so it was just a really beautiful example of a pretty horrendous series of events, being resolved through listening to patients and through working together to solve problems.
Scott Lee 26:22
That's wonderful, and also thinking about how everything worked, despite a lot of hard work that that it is a process, it's not necessarily a one time intervention. So thank you for that story.
Laura Fittz 26:37
I'll just add that the night before I was on the phone in Spanish with both moms because one of the moms had filed a civil suit against the other and so literally the night before this sort of more pre work to get that to happen. And I think that's so important to emphasize that the day like Elon was saying, a long process to be patient with it, if you think is that the time spent preparing for that conference, and the time of the conference far outweighed the series of events that would have occurred had it not been handled or stored
Scott Lee 27:10
That is a wonderful story. And I do appreciate you taking the time to share that with us as well as this entire time to share about restorative practice and hear about not only how well implemented but how it works and works over time to help kids thank you both so much, not only for joining us, but for the work that you do and that you continue to do.
This has been episode number 24. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is hosted and produced by R. Scott Lee who retains copyright. We encourage diverse opinions, however, opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of producer, partners, or underwriters. Guests were not compensated for appearance, nor did guests pay to appear. Transcripts are available following podcast publication at our website, thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com. Sponsorship opportunities, or other inquiries may be made on the "Contact Us" page at our website, thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com. Please follow the thoughtful teacher podcast on twitter @drrscottlee, and on facebook@facebook.com Thoughtful Teacher Podcast.
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