West Hawai’i Complex Area’s Restorative Journey

Robyn Skudlarek and Joy Personius

Social-Emotional Learning Team for West Hawai’i Complex Area

Updated April 2021

How did it all begin?

Robyn’s journey: Robyn was mentored by a master teacher who specialized in developing a positive classroom culture that emphasized relationship building and healthy conflict resolution. This was long before “Restorative Practices” (RP) was codified as a school-based practice; this teacher was using concepts that were popularized in the 80’s and 90’s but were called “Tribes”, “Positive Discipline”, or similar. The time spent in her classroom was so impactful that Robyn knew she would use these practices when she had her own classroom - which she did - with similar positive results. Years later, when Robyn worked for West Hawai’i Mediation Center (WHMC), a Board member sent her an article on restorative justice and said “I think we should be involved in getting this going in our schools. What do you think?” WHMC contacted former Complex Area Superintendent Art Souza and he was also interested. So the two entities partnered to bring Nancy Riestenberg, a national trainer, to Hawaii Island in August 2017 to do a four day RP training. Principals in West Hawaii were mandated to attend at least the first day of this training along with teams from all 19 schools in the district. After the training, Nancy advised the SEL team to develop a cohort of people who were interested in implementing restorative practices in schools.

Joy’s journey: Joy discovered restorative practices through a Ted Talk she watched when researching conflict resolution strategies. She was intrigued and started immersing herself in the topic. At this time she was the lead counselor at an elementary school and brought the information she was gathering to other counselors. She tried using circles with her students during her guidance lessons as well as restorative questions when working with students to solve a problem or conflict, and she encouraged the other counselors to do the same. She was also the lead of the PBIS cadre at the school and they decided to make “check-ins” a universal strategy at the school. When she moved into the district position, the August 2017 training with Nancy Riestenberg was already scheduled and she was delighted.

Year One: SY2017-18

In year one, Joy was working as the SEL Resource Teacher for West Hawaii and Robyn was working for West Hawai’i Mediation Center. Together we formed a DOE-nonprofit partnership and created a cadre of people to continue the work of restorative practices. The cadre met quarterly and developed a vision/mission, created an online restorative practices Google folder that educators could access, delivered RP presentations for schools, and developed a five year RP district plan under the guidance of Nancy Riestenberg, our mentor from Minnesota.

It also became clear that if we were going to further this work we would need more training and support from the district. A ‘needs and vision’ proposal was created and a small group of selected cadre members met with Art Souza (the Complex Area Superintendent at that time) who supported our plans moving forward. After this meeting, a decision was made to restructure the cadre for SY18-19 using a ‘leadership team’ model.

During this time, Nancy Riestenberg also helped to connect us to friends of hers who were engaged in restorative practices in Minnesota but who now reside in Hawaii. Tim Hansen is the Program Director for Restorative Justice at the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney in Hilo, and Stephanie Barnett is a Victim Awareness Counselor for the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney in Kailua-Kona. In May of 2018, we partnered with Tim and Stephanie to offer a circle keeper training for 30 educators in West Hawaii. Meanwhile Joy was also delivering RP presentations to principals and resource teachers in the district.

That summer, Robyn went to Minnesota for two weeks of RP training and Joy went to the International RJ conference, also in Minnesota. In July, Robyn was hired to work for the West Hawai’i DOE as the 2nd SEL Resource Teacher.

Year Two: SY2018-19

Based on our experiences the previous year, we decided to create a new structure for the restorative practices cadre. This new structure consisted of three tiers. Tier III was a leadership team and included eight volunteer educators from across the district. This group met monthly to support us in creating cadre meeting agendas and moving the five year plan forward.

Tier II was made up of the rapidly-expanding cadre, which now totaled nearly 30 people. Cadre meetings were held once every quarter. As leaders of the cadre, we were tasked with developing cadre meetings that would best support the needs of the educators in attendance. We decided that each meeting would include RP professional development as well as support in school-wide RP implementation. We modeled our implementation guides from school districts that were leading the way in this work, e.g. Minnesota, Denver, and Oakland.

We also leveraged our partnership with Tim Hansen and Stephanie Barnett (experienced circle keepers and RP coordinators at the Prosecutor’s office on Hawaii island) and co-facilitated a second circle keeper training attended by 22 people both within, and outside of, the DOE. Including people outside of the DOE greatly enhanced our work and created meaningful community partnerships with folks who continue to support us today.

Tier I consisted of any school that was sending representatives to the cadre meetings or reaching out for consultation, training, or other forms of support. By this point, 13 of the 19 schools in the West Hawaii Complex were sending reps to the meetings, and things were clearly ramping up. However we were moving outside of our own comfort zones in terms of our ability to advance the ‘movement’. It was clear by year’s end that more training for everyone was needed. Complex Area Superintendent Souza agreed to send Robyn and Joy back to Minnesota over the summer to attend their annual statewide conference and also approved bringing in another trainer from Minnesota during the first quarter of SY2019-20.

Year Three: SY2019-20

Year three started with a lot of momentum: Joy was now a 12-month employee, therefore she was able to use the summer months to further organize the upcoming training that was approved by the district. At the end of the first quarter, Hanna Arafat and Alexis Goffe came from Minnesota and New York to provide a week of training including Repairing Relationships, Circles for Circle Keepers, and A Unifying Framework implementation training. Additionally, Hanna provided consultation to Joy and Robyn, also paid for by the district.

A very exciting development was that the largest elementary school in West Hawai’i hired a full time RP coordinator, Rachel Talasko.

Robyn and Joy have continued to provide support to West Hawai’i schools in the form of training, consultations, and coaching. After successfully facilitating a couple of one-day Intro to Circle trainings, they developed their own four day circle keeper training to be delivered before the end of the school year. This was part of an ongoing capacity-building effort for ourselves and the district.

At including the development of 6-person circle keeping cohorts (whereby each member of the cohort developed and kept a circle over the six weeks) as well as a three session Equity Seminar Series co hosted by dr.raj from Minnesota and Rachel Talasko of Portland, Oregon.

The RP cadre continued to meet - in the online space - and throughout the school year we offered many well attended “circles to process” our uncertain world. We also had Nancy Riestenberg from Minnesota and Dr. Margary Martin from UH-Hilo present sessions for the cadre. Additionally, we continued to highlight the many restorative efforts that were taking place in West Hawai’i schools by including them in monthly newsletters and having them present at cadre meetings.

Due to the creative efforts of vice principal Bill Chen at Kealakehe High School, we mentored a cohort of 8 teachers in the principles and practices of SEL - including restorative practices - specifically circles.

As the year came to a close, we focused on meeting with the RP team at each participating school and helping them to create an RP implementation plan or achievable goal

for SY 2021-22.

For the record, we also want to note ththe end of year two, we had many discussions about how to ensure that the work they were doing was culturally-sensitive and aligned. This is important because RP has its roots in indigeneuos cultures. Initial contact with Hawaiian cultural practitioners resulted in positive feedback and support, and we are now including these practitioners in our RP cadre meetings. This provides opportunities for cadre members to receive their mana’o and mo’olelo, deepening our connection to the host culture.

The organization of the cadre has once again evolved this school year. Robyn and Joy decided to eliminate the “Leadership Team” and created an “Advisory Team”. The purpose of the change was simply to streamline the entire meeting and advice-gathering process. This team currently meets for the last 1-2 hours of cadre meetings and provides feedback and insight. The cadre has grown significantly as well this year, now totalling almost 60 members. This year’s cadre meetings are organized around the four pedagogical stances developed by Maisha T. Winn in her book Justice on Both Sides. The four stances are Language Matters, History Matters, Race Matters, and Justice Matters.

Covid19 brought all of our in-person work to a halt during April and May. Like everyone, we had to adapt and continued to offer what we could online.

Year Four: SY20-21

Nearly all of this school year played out under the influence of Covd19. We did all of our trainings, cadre meetings, and other activities online. In response to the need for information that could be accessed easily and at any time, we created an SEL team website as well as monthly newsletters that people could access at their convenience. We also recorded and posted to the site asynchronous webinars on relevant topics. In some ways all of this aided the RP movement because we could easily interact with people in the online space. In other ways, the RP journey was negatively impacted because educators were so overwhelmed and inundated with online expectations that the cadre and RP became less of a priority for many folks. We saw a marked decrease in participation during this school year but we were very pleased that we were able to successfully offer a lot of circle keeping experiences online - at in the summer prior to this school year Rachel Talasko, the RP coordinator at Kealakehe Elementary School, moved to Portland, Oregon and was replaced by Dulcy Dawson. This school committed to RP in the preceding two years via funding and putting RP in the academic plan and we consider this type of intentionality to be a major success of the RP journey in West Hawai’i.

Challenges and Successes (and some Ah ha’s)

There have been many challenges, successes, and ah-ha’s!

Challenges:

1. By year two we had lots of involvement and interest from schools, however each school’s involvement and attendance at cadre meetings wasn’t consistent. This created a challenge: how do we provide support for 13 schools that are all in varying places in terms of their implementation and needs? Do we keep going ‘backwards’ to catch people up, or move forward with the schools who were truly committed? Complex Area Superintendent Souza directed us to focus the majority of our energy and cadre meetings on those schools that were most invested, while still providing some foundational support to schools showing interest that was more ‘curious’ rather than action-oriented.

2. Some folks in the West Hawaii DOE hold the belief that RP is just a bunch of ‘fluff’, is not grounded in anything foundational, and is not rigorous. We have heard a principal say “People are either into SEL and RP or they are into academics.” As if the two are mutually exclusive. These are misconceptions that we have to work harder to address.

3. Probably our biggest challenge is ongoing: there are schools where staff does not have the necessary RP training or input into the school’s RP process to do this work in an informed way. Tier III, conflict resolution-focused practices, (which often are what piques interest in RP) are being ‘rolled out’ into the school community without foks being grounded in any of the foundations that support RP. Some schools are now ‘back tracking’ in significant ways because they moved too quickly and without enough intentional thought or planning.

4. Because our district positions are not permanent, we are focusing on sustainability as much as possible; we hope that even in the absence of these two funded positions, RP will still flourish in select schools.

Successes:

1. We have seen so much progress in four years and it’s been truly inspiring. What has been really interesting is that some of the schools who appeared to be unlikely “RP candidates” are now having the most success. We’ve learned not to dismiss schools; you never know who will emerge once a couple people get excited about RP.

2. We have made numerous community partnerships which have greatly enhanced our work, including with individuals, cultural practitioners, police officers, the Prosecutor's office, and nonprofit organizations.

3. We have developed an essential pool of human resources outside of Hawaii; they are our mentors and challenge our thinking.

4. We came across a simple, but important, body of research authored by a group of partnering agencies with the Denver Public Schools which identified the four essential ingredients that must be in place to succeed at school wide RP implementation: 1) principal vision and commitment to RP; 2) staff has been included in the process and they ‘buy in’; 3) staff has received foundational training in RP; and 4) an RP coordinator is on staff.

5. Perhaps the most significant RP success story in the district is that the largest elementary school in West Hawaii hired an RP coordinator - a woman from our Leadership Team. They are leading the way in terms of funding RP and making huge efforts to train staff in circle facilitation.

6. In general, RP is no longer a foreign language in our district!

7. Currently we have representatives at cadre meetings from nearly every school in West Hawaii (19 of them), including charter schools.