By Elissa Barrett, WJC Executive Director, April 30, 2020
WJC Executive Director Elissa Barrett and Program Director Shaune Gatlin sat down virtually with Dr. Malikah Nu’Man and Heather DeWeese Schon, inaugural members of WJC’s Program Advisory Council, to hear about how Covid-19 is affecting them, their students, and their schools. What follows is an edited version of our conversation.
About the Participants
Dr. Nu’Man has been the Restorative Justice (RJ) teacher at Samuel Gompers Middle School in Watts since 2017. Her doctoral dissertation at Concordia University explored the personal and institutional impact of teacher trauma, as well as the correlation between PTSD and retention rates for K-12 educators. Ms. Schon has been a counselor at Palisades Charter High School for more than a decade, where she runs the peer mediation program. She received her Masters in Negotiations, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding from Cal State Dominguez-Hills, where she studied the correlation between conflict resolution education and improved academic performance.
Dr. Nu’Man and Ms. Schon are graduates of the ABCs of Conflict, WJC’s premiere Conflict Resolution Education training program, and veterans of WJC’s annual Peer Mediation Invitational (PMI), which is held at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Pasadena.
The Interview
Elissa Barrett (EB): If you had three words to describe the kids you work with, what words would you use?
Dr. Malikah Nu’Man (Malikah): Resilient, innovative, and hurt.
Heather DeWeese Schon (Heather): Inspiring, creative, and diverse.
EB: What is one success you’ve had doing conflict resolution work with your kids in the last year?
Malikah: My biggest success was being introduced to WJC, first through PMI then with ABCs. PMI gave my kids a chance to travel outside of South LA and see things they had never seen before. It also led to my principal trusting me to create classes on peer mediation and social justice. Those classes gave my students, who are typically labeled as “trouble makers,” space to have a voice, to be heard, and to be seen as individuals who have something meaningful to contribute versus being seen as “the problem.”
Heather: I am always inspired by the work that the kids do with mediation. We have students from 110 zip codes, which has led to conflicts around race and religion between the local kids and the kids who travel. Last year, we had funding for a restorative justice class and peer mediation training through APADRC, which was great. This year, we lost that funding. So my colleagues -- Sarah and Holly and I -- figured out how to do the mediation training ourselves. It was really exciting. I mean, we had just started to make real progress doing restorative work with student leaders from the different social groups, when the Covid crisis happened.
EB: That must be hard to start something that works and lose your funding. What happened?
Heather: Our RJ class was taught through the University of California’s curriculum integration that gives students a “G” requirement for the UC system as well as Career & Technical Education (CTE) credits. That’s a big deal right now, so it was super exciting. But budget cuts forced us to reduce funding for transportation, electives, and auxiliary pay for teachers. That’s the only reason we lost the class. Even so, we didn’t let that stop us.
EB: Malikah, do you have anything like that going on at your school?
Malikah: Well, I don’t have a job next year. Because we’re losing all of our students to charters, that means low funding for us. In impoverished communities, kids are recruited to charters based on this idea that public schools are failing. Charters pump it up like, “We’re making a difference for your kids.” But when they don’t want to deal with behavioral problems or they don’t have the means to address special needs or social emotional needs, they dump the kids back in public school. Those schools can’t meet the need because they lost their money and their teachers. It’s a vicious cycle.
EB: So the failure of public schools becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Malikah: Exactly. There are actual communities being devastated by this, and it’s happening in the ‘hood all the time. It’s not so much that I don’t have a job. It’s that we’re going at this thing backwards. We’re not having a real conversation about what is going on with these kids. You can put money into instructional coaches for math. But kids are coming in here hurt and broken. We need to empower the communities we say we’re here to help. When we cut the thing that was helping make a difference, it’s just not right.
Heather: How did your position come about? I mean, a teacher for restorative justice. That’s wonderful!
Malikah: It is, and it’s not. The reason it came about was that they found that students of color were being suspended and expelled at higher rates – black students, latinx students, students with special needs. RJ was brought into LAUSD for specific populations in specific schools.
So, I get to do this work, but I’ve got to deal with teachers who don’t understand why I’m there. They don’t know that I’ve been in education for a long time. I’ve lived this. I’ve breathed this. I’m here because I care about your well-being. I want to make a difference.
EB: What I hear you saying is that the legal system can initiate certain types of change, but it can’t be the only tool. Now Heather, what is the culture around RJ at your school? How is it similar or different from what Malikah is talking about?
Heather: Well, the dean’s office has really embraced RJ. So whenever there is a conflict or some kind of situation between students, they will bring us in to help resolve it instead of sending kids home. They’re trying to reduce suspensions and expulsions. They know there is a discrepancy in who gets suspended or expelled. The shift has been to try these practices first, before we do anything else. They don’t go to the punitive place, the retributive place. They go to the restorative place first to see if it can be resolved that way.
EB: It sounds like your school is aware that something problematic was happening in terms of differential treatment of students that the school needed to address. How did that come about?
Heather: As part of my graduate studies, I tracked data in terms of which students were being referred to the dean’s office before and after going through some RJ practice or mediation. What I found is that we had fewer referrals for discipline issues after students had participated in or learned about conflict resolution and restorative justice. I presented that data to the school board. I showed them that every time we would do a peer mediation or RJ circle, things would get better. That made a big difference. Now, the principal pushes for RJ whenever something big happens.
EB: It sounds like the role of the dean, principal and/or assistant principal can be critical. Malikah – Was that the case at your school as well?
Malikah: Absolutely. We had a principal that came from a high school with a culture that supported restorative practices and had a population of students that was more socio-economically diverse than the one at Gompers. She knew all about WJC. That’s how we got to the Peer Mediation Invitational.
Still, it’s been a great challenge. Since I’ve been at Gompers, we’ve had four principals in three years. We’ve had at least four or five administrative teams. So when you have that type of turnover in leadership, it becomes difficult to create a sustainable culture. It becomes tough for teachers to take a risk and try something new. I mean, why take that gamble when it’ll all change again next year anyway?
EB: Heather - Is that something you’ve had to deal with at your school as well?
Heather: Yes, we had a lot of transition for a while. We had 7 principals in 8 years. Now we have a wonderful principal who has been there for a while. As we’ve had success with conflict resolution, our school leaders have become more supportive. We’re lucky that our admin team supports restorative practices now and turns to us when we have conflict on campus.
EB: Can you describe what it was like to do CRE and RJ work at your school before covid-19? What did that look like for each of you?
Malikah: I would get to school at 7:45 am and be met by a principal or dean telling me about how they need me for RJ work that day because they’re tired. Let’s face it. Our dean? He can’t take girl drama. He’s like – “You need to talk to these girls or I’m gonna throw them out!”
When it comes to the principal, she or he might have a parent who is irate because their child is getting jumped. Since I have a rapport with that child, they want me to sit in and mediate their conflict with the parent.
With the students, they come up to me and say – “Listen, Miss Nu’Man. If you don’t help me, I’m gonna knock this kid out. So we need a circle right now or it’s gonna go down at lunch.” That’s great! They’re using their skills. (She laughs.) Then we would gather all the kids and talk it out before it gets to their friends and everyone gets stupid and crazy.
Basically, I have to be creative. I have to get rid of my picture of what RJ is supposed to look like and be present for the here and now. Plus, I have to make allies -- like the librarian, the cafeteria people, the cleaning crew. You’ve got to find people who you wouldn’t normally send kids to for support because no one else has the space for it.
Heather: My peer mediation started with girl drama too! (She laughs.)
Because I’m a counselor, a typical day for me starts with a call from a parent or the dean that something is going to go down at lunch if we don’t get on top of it. So, I get a couple of our peer mediators, and they do the mediations with the other students. I coach them on what they did well and where they can improve, but they do all the heavy lifting. So far, we’ve had a 100% success rate with the kids shaking hands, hugging, working things out.
We did have one situation where I had to call security because one girl grabbed another girl across the desk. We got the girls and all their friends in one big circle. They talked things out and apologized to each other. That was the only one that wasn’t resolved in mediation.
EB: What do you see happen differently when students mediate and resolve an issue versus intervention by a teacher, even if the teacher is using CRE/RJ practices?
Heather: I feel like it takes a lot longer for the kids to respect me. They might not know me. They might look different from me or come from different backgrounds. If I’m leading the mediation, it might take hours because the kids are like – “Are you cool? Why do I want to talk real in front of you? Why do I want to share this stuff?”
But when I put them with students that are similar to them, that are role models, they immediately open up and resolve it quickly. If students lead mediation, it changes things. They know each other from sports, or the bus, or growing up somewhere, so they jump right in.
Malikah: Exactly! There’s also this piece of respecting the community that you are in.
One of the things that has been challenging for me is the fighting. I would stop fights at school; but, as soon as school would be over, it would go down around the corner. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. We did the work. We talked it through. We got into what everyone was feeling. We had a real conversation. We’re good. Then they come back to school, even the girls, with black eyes and scratches all over their faces. Plus, it gets on Instagram, and everyone is talking about it.
I had to learn that they leave school, and they’re in the environment. They have to survive. They can’t leave like I do when I drive back home to Pasadena. That’s a powerful thing to embrace and not judge. If I can do that, I can have a conversation with a student about their future. I can say - “Listen, I get it. You have to save face. You can’t get beat down. No judgment. But when are you going to realize that you have a choice about who you associate with? When are you going to start being accountable for those choices?”
EB: Thank you so much for this conversation. One of the things that we talk about a lot at WJC is how to be reality based; how to meet people where they are; how to give people tools they can use in whatever way they need to use them. Thank you for this conversation, because it helps us understand how to help you meet your reality.
Let’s talk about what is happening now. How are you seeing this present situation impact the kids? You two are dealing with really different dynamics. What is that like?
Heather: It’s challenging to figure out how to connect with our kids. Our kids live everywhere from Palmdale to Torrance to downtown LA. We can’t just pop in and see how they’re doing. Usually, we see them at school and check in with them. Now, we can’t even reach some of them. We know they’re dealing with anxiety. We worry about abuse at home.
So, we started something called COST, Coordination of Services Team, where the counselors get together with the mental health professionals, the school psychologist, the social workers. Basically, we do case management, and we get into action. We get them IT materials so they can do homework. We get them set up with local food banks. We do whatever is necessary.
On the other hand, we have better attendance for those kids who wake up at 4:30 am to take a bus and a train and a scooter and whatever they do to get here each day. Now they just wake up and turn on their computer, so now we have more kids showing up for school on time because they don’t have to leave their house.
EB: Was there an assumption going into the school closings that your students wouldn’t have issues like food security because you are in a wealthy community?
Heather: Yes. There was. But those assumptions were there before the closings, too.
For instance, we had a retreat with 13 local kids and 13 traveling kids. A lot of the traveling kids were surprised to hear that the local kids had issues they were dealing with. There is an assumption that wealth solves everything. But the traveling kids are often more resilient.
Now, finding out who is struggling is the hard part. We can’t just run into them at school and check in with them about how they are feeling.
EB: Malikah, what are you seeing? What are you hearing from your kids, if you’re even able to reach them?
Malikah: That’s exactly right. Inequity is real.
The majority of my kids were already the most at risk kids at my school. So now, reaching them is hard. Or, they’ve cut us off. They don’t want to deal with us. Why? Culture.
You have teachers reaching out, trying to force work down their throats, rather than being sensitive to what these kids are dealing with. For instance, I reached out to one parent who let me know that her son would not be doing any school work because he was in the ICU fighting for his life. He got hit by a car again.
People are dealing with serious trauma. They’re struggling to stay alive. Kids don’t have food. They’re watching a parent get beat. Now I want to talk to them about breathing and checking in with their bodies? How are they going to be that vulnerable when there is violence happening all around them?
Still, I do what I can. I started a weekly RJ thing online. I try to be real. Like this week, I opened up with them about how tired I am of being at home. But I have a choice. I can be bored, or I can use this time to learn a new skill. They can too! That opened things up and they told me that they want to know how to bake sweets. So I’m putting a lesson together while trying to be mindful of what kids do and don’t have. It’s like – “How to make a cake in a mug!” Right?
I’m also trying to encourage other teachers, because they’re holding on by a thread. They’ve got their own stuff going on. Our administration? They have their stuff, too. And let’s face it. We’re all burnt out, especially over this technology stuff.
And if that’s true, what is this going to look like when we get back to school? We had students that were suicidal before we left. We had students robbing to get money for food. Plus, it’s not like we’ve got 10% of those kids or 20% in our school. It’s more like 90%. So what’s that going to be like in the fall?
EB: That gets us to our last question for today – What is this all going to look like when kids go back to school?
We had a call with a funder last week. They said – “Look, we’re trying to help keep people alive right now. We’re funding medicine, food, and housing.” They also said – “We don’t know how all of this is going to play out over time, but it seems that the work of WJC is going to be critical to our collective recovery. Because how else are we going to process all of this?”
So how are you thinking about how this will play out in the fall? What’s that going to look like? What do we need to do differently? How do we need to change our approach?
Heather: Honestly, I don’t think any of us know what this is going to look like; but, there needs to be space for everyone to process. We just did a school-wide training on trauma because not every teacher is comfortable leading a conversation that touches on trauma. But I think there needs to be room in all of our classes for some of that conversation because of what’s happening.
And it’s like Malikah said -- What about the teachers? We’re all focused on the students, but the teachers are like – “What about us? We’re falling apart here! How are we supposed to support the kids when we can’t support ourselves?”
EB: It’s like when you’re on an airplane, and they say – “If the cabin pressure drops, put the oxygen mask on yourself first then help someone who is dependent on you.” What is the oxygen mask that we’re going to give teachers?
Shaune: Yes. Exactly. There’s a lot to consider. WJC is not in the schools every day. You are. The best thing is to give power to your voice – to the folks on the frontlines. Platforms like this are important. Maybe we find a way to connect teachers to help support each other. We need to link everyone together to figure this out because it can’t just be from the top down.
EB: Exactly. Malikah and Heather, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us and for inspiring us. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with us before we wrap up?
Malikah: One of the conversations that needs to start with educators is about how to find the value of change. We need to have a conversation that empowers teachers to think differently about education because what we’re doing is not working. I think WJC can be a part of that.
We also need for educators to get back to reflection. I know it won’t be easy, but how do we empower teachers to reflect on their practices? How do we empower people to lift their voices, come up with solutions, and move our communities forward? How do we transform what leadership looks like and who thinks of themselves as a leader? How do we engage people in our community so we can love and support and lift each other up?
Shaune: That sounds like the next step in our webinar series!
Malikah: Yes, and it doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be simple. 10 minutes, 15 minutes of power talk. But it must be done consistently and honestly.
Heather: Yes! We just did that. We created space for people to reflect and find community because there’s a lot going on right now. We’ve been doing that for a while on campus, like a check in during lunch every couple of weeks. Not only does it give people the relief of being able to be honest about what’s happening, but someone will say – “I’m really struggling with this.” And someone will respond – “I struggled with that, too. Here’s what I tried, and it really worked. Let me know if I can help you with that.” You’re not always in survival mode that way.
EB: Thank you again for honoring us and trusting us to have this conversation with you. We’re so grateful that you will both be joining our Program Advisory Council, and we know that we will get important work done together. For our teachers. For our kids. For our communities.
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The Mission of the Western Justice Center (WJC) is to empower people to strengthen their communities by growing the conflict resolution skills and capacity of youth, educators, schools, and community partners. Our work is rooted in principles of empathy, equity, opportunity, and justice. WJC was founded in 1987 by a group of judges, lawyers and civic leaders led by the Honorable Dorothy W. Nelson, a senior judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. WJC’s founding members sought to find innovative ways to handle conflict and disputes without involving litigation and to support the use of alternative dispute resolution techniques beyond the court system. We are proud to carry on that tradition today.
