Restorative Pedagogy

"We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes."

This lyric from “Ella’s Song” by the acapella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, reflects an ethos that I hold to be central to my artistic and creative expression. Freedom is as essential as breath.

My ancestors were enslaved in Maryland less than 50 miles from where I purchased and remodeled a 1925 bungalow that I named “Baileys Cottage”.

Discovering that my Bailey ancestors once were enslaved in the state where I became a homeowner brought me to tears. It prompted me to honor and reclaim the agency of my ancestors by naming my home using the surname of my 4th great grandfather, Bailey.

At the age of 9 I discovered that people responded favorably when I wrote down words with emotion captured in a structure.

Sometimes I'd receive a questioning look from someone coupled with “You wrote this?!”

When one of my poems was selected to be published in the Omaha city wide school literary magazine I knew that writing would be something I would do the rest of my life.

Storytelling has the capacity to dissolve the walls of difference that hold us all hostage. In my writing, I don’t shy away from showing the world as it is, and sometimes that isn’t a very flattering portrayal. Nonetheless, seeing something for what it is gives us all an opportunity to choose to remake it into something far better.

As a child, I moved a lot. In fact, I moved 13 times from the time I was born until I was 17. My single mother moved my siblings and I from apartment to apartment, constantly outrunning the eviction sheriff.

However, the rainbow in the cloud is this…constantly moving solidified my thirst for reading.

In the fictionalized lives of the characters in each book I read I found the stability I craved and accessed a way of being and thinking that was largely foreign in my impoverished upbringing.

I work at the intersection of experiential arts, restorative pedagogy and wellbeing. Exploring Memory, history and the impact of white supremacy on the black community guide my work as a researcher, educator, writer and director.

Using story to create an entry point for self and communal introspection and interrogation are the twin light bearers that fuel me to craft stories that center the underrepresented African American experience in research and on stage and screen.

As an educator and researcher, in and outside of the classroom, my methodology is centered in the principles of restorative pedagogy, with a focus on harm reduction, deconstructing mandatory hierarchy, student process, curiosity leadership and skills mastery.

My pedagogy is grounded in restorative practices and the theoretical works of Dr. Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot, Portraiture Theory, bell hooks and Dr. Stephen Porges, Polyvagal Theory.

Today, I strive to do the same for my students, clients and audiences, give them hope, because the imagination is the most powerful tool we have to help humanity soar. ~ Denise Joy

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