This description is a formalization of how I've been handling conflicts between the elementary students I work with. I wrote it up for a presentation I did this weekend with my restorative justice reading group. I was a little self-conscious about sharing it with the wider world of social justice educators, because I know there is a vast body of work that much more experienced educators have done, which my small experiments aren't tapped in to. But it was exciting for me to write up what I'm doing, and to realize that I have built up a system that works for me and for my students. So here goes:
I facilitate an after school arts program for K-5 students. Below is the framework I've cobbled together for myself for handling the small conflicts that arise each day between my younger students: snack stealing, poking, name-calling. Two Hands is an image offered to me by Pamela Lindsay, a fellow member of this year's nycore Restorative Justice Inquiry to Action Group. It refers to this: One Hand is up, in self protection, and to indicate a stop. The other hand is outreached, willing to talk. I sometimes make and explain this gesture to my students, to make my intentions visual and concrete. I constantly use the image to center myself in what I want to offer young people when I am frustrated with them, and they are frustrated with each other. Before considering any punitive response, I offer the opportunity for a firm, clear stop, and then a period for reflection without judgement. I think of this conflict mediation as a curricular offering. It is the main way way I help young people build empathy, listening, and self-reflection skills that help them avoid escalated conflicts, and prepare them for successful participation in more elaborate conflict resolution later in life. This method draws directly from the readings done with my ItAG, particularly Lost at School by Ross Greene, Giving Students What They Need by Jonathan C. Erwin, and Punishment By Rewards by Alfie Kohn. It also is highly influenced by my training at the Village Free School in Portland, Oregon, and democratic education theorists like John Holt, Ivan Illach and John Taylor Gatto, whose work Free Schools like VFS try to enact.
The Script I Use:
1)It looks like something upsetting is happening here. Stop. Lets talk. I intervene in conflict in two ways: when I witness something escalating, and when a child approaching me upset about something done to them. In the latter situation, I ask do you want to talk with them about it with me? They usually answer yes. In either situation, I bring the two or more children to a quiet or calm area on the periphary of the space we are working, and sit or kneel at their eye level.
2)What's going on? What's up? I ask each participant this question, emphasizing the needs to hear both people speak. If a unified story doesn't emerge from the children's own narratives, I offer a story that takes everyone's experience in to account, and ask them to agree that that's what happened. Sometimes, this agreement is not possible. When this is the case, or I really can't figure out what happened, I affirm that I trust both children, and state that I can't help if we can't come to agreement. This is the end of the mediation.
3)How does this make you feel? If we have a unified picture, I ask this question to each involved party, generally trying to bring out all party's experience of having been 'wronged', and modeling language that looks at the situation, rather than blaming one individual or the other. The ideal is that this exchange of perspectives is in itself a resolution- and sometimes it is! If the young people have practiced expressing their feelings,witnessed each other's perspectives, and seem contemplative, satisfied, or empathetic, I stop here.
4)Hints at Resolution. If both parties are still focusing, I ask them if they can think of a compromise, solution, or next step. If they don't have one, I might offer one. Often kids glaze over as I begin this step, and so I conclude my thought, and thank them for talking with me, and for listening to each other. I consider any small modeling of language that can be used for resolution to be useful, even if we don't come to anything at all like resolution.
What This Isn't:
-This is not for gigantic problems: Two Hands doesn't have any punitive measures in it at all. When issues come up that involve safety, health, or extreme distress, then I do rely on the system of time-outs, calls home, and other external punishments used by my coworkers. I recognize the importance of consistent consequences within a school, but I still don't feel great about implementing them: it makes me feel like I'm embodying false authority, perpetrating hierarchies, and teaching young people to passively comply.
-This is not forcing resolution: Often I don't feel resolved at the end of mediating a conflict: I crave some concrete improvement. I ask myself a lot: What does success look like? My best answer is: success looks like kids who are willing to acknowledge that problems occur, and can identify their role in them using relatively accurate and descriptive language. Success is a school community that makes time for everyone to try to work out their problems, and where children honor this process.
-This is not assuming blame: When I make time to listen to a whole situation, I often find that the child who appeared to be causing trouble feels legitimately wronged, and that the one I first pegged as a victim was in some way an instigator, too. In response to this, I focus on the wrongness of a situation, rather than re-enforce either child's conception of who is to blame. In most schools I've worked in, teachers become the ally of tattlers. I want to mediate conflict in a way that also supports kids who rely on aggression or silence in tough situations. I continue to have trouble navigating how to do this, while still honoring the distress that usually compels a more effusive student to involve an adult. Mostly, I use physical affection, and make sure to emphasize who has crossed some important lines. (It is not right that she took your snack, but it's never okay to hit.)
-This is not asking for apologies: Apologies between my students are usually pretty empty, and even seem to create pathways for them to think it's okay to be disrespectful. (but I said was sorry!) I try to model empathy, but I don't ask kids to fake what they don't feel. This can still feel weird: sometimes my students don't seem remorseful at all. Sometimes the weirdness is okay, and sometimes a time-out or call home makes sense as a next step, as an additional space to encourage reflection.
