Friday, March 28, 2014
OP-ED: These Kids Are Our Kids, John Lash
Last weekend I was conducting a workshop on
restorative practices and many of the participants were educators,
social workers and others who work with kids. One of the practices we
like to use when considering how to best implement restorative practices
in schools (or any other place) is to ask three questions about how
conflicts are currently being handled. What is working well? What isn’t
working so well? How do we dream it could be?
We do this to explore ways of increasing what works
and find alternatives to what doesn’t as a way to draw closer to the
dream. In the course of the discussion it was mentioned that students
with the “special-ed” label are excessively targeted for discipline, and
often find themselves in trouble for actions that other students
routinely engage in with impunity.
Part of the tension is between teachers who work
specifically with these students and other teachers who work with all of
the students. The special ed teachers feel that their kids are
being unfairly targeted. In discussing ways to reduce
this phenomenon, one of the “regular” teachers said, “You talk about
your kids a lot, but we have to start saying ‘our kids’”
Everyone seemed to take a deep breath, hold it, then
let it out with an “ahh”. It seemed so obvious after it was said. Up
until then the teachers, who have divided responsibilities regarding
students, routinely spoke about “my” or “your” students.
In a world and workplace that often requires us to
specialize, and in which we are often evaluated through numbers, it is
understandable that such divisions occur. But this teacher’s statement
brought us all back to the reality that we were talking about children
who are important to all of us, no matter what their classification, and
it was in all our interest to see these kids receive the best education
and treatment possible.
In many schools these biases are a big part of the
school to prison pipeline, where kids are categorized or labeled due to
behavior, race, sexuality or something else that makes them different.
Because of increased visibility and unconscious prejudice they get a
disproportionate level of discipline, suspension, expulsion and other
sanctions. These in turn contribute to the chances that a kid will find
themselves with an increased risk of dropping out and involvement with
law enforcement and the justice system.
Knowing these facts is important, and the problems
they indicate need to be addressed in policy and law. In that kind of
wrangling, though, there is a chance that the humanity of the children
can be forgotten.
This realization can be extended beyond students as
well. Kids that are homeless, imprisoned, drug users or any other
“problem” category are often shunted aside and ignored. They somehow
fall out of our sphere of consideration and we begin to see them as
“other”. This is a lie though, and we will do well to remember it. They
are all, each and every one, our kids.
~John Lash, Director Georgia Conflict Center.
http://www.youthtoday.org/view_blog.cfm?blog_id=817
Thursday, March 27, 2014
The third R, Reflection.
“As a community of caring adults we need to provide children who spend so many hours in schools the opportunity to know themselves.”
Dr. Daniel Siegel explores the neural mechanisms beneath social and emotional intelligence
and how these can be cultivated through reflective practices that focus on the inner nature
of the mind.
Daniel is a child psychiatrist, educator, and author of Mindsight, The Mindful Brain,
Parenting from the Inside Out, and The Developing Mind. He is the Founding Editor of
the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, co-director of the UCLA
Mindful Awareness Research Center, and executive director of the Mindsight Institute.
“The Applications of interpersonal
neurobiology are based on the neuroplasticity finding that how we
focus our attention directly shapes the activity and the structure of
the brain. This focus of attention can be within our internal world
and in our relationships with one another. Because of this
now-established fact that the brain changes in response to our focus
of attention, we can realize that mind, brain and
relationships are pro-profoundly
interwoven with each other. Recurring patterns can alter the way we
connect with each other, how we experience our subjective inner
lives, and even how we come to shape the architecture of our own
brains. This perspective fuels the interpersonal neurobiology view of
interventions in schools and in psychotherapy. We are in a position
to empower individuals to take charge of their lives and learn the
skills that can help them begin to change the neural proclivities
that, without awareness, could remain on automatic pilot and leave an
individual passive. We can embrace the now-proven truth that how we
focus our attention can transform the brain's structure. The key is
to inspire people to rewrite their brains toward integration and
therefore health and resilience.”
~ Daniel J. Siegal, Pocket
Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the
Mind
(W.W. Norton 2012)
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