[00:00:07] Jake White: Welcome back, everyone, we’re at another episode of Party Talk where we get to empower leaders in youth drug prevention. This week, I’m super excited to share what I learned at the boost conference. If you don’t know about boosts collaborative, they’ve focused on after school programs. And so working with those students who after school, and maybe their parents are working at a job, they need some extra time. And so they go to these programs. And there’s a whole ecosystem of supports, and staff, they’re there to support them. And they learn things after school on top of the regular school day. So it was filled with resources, it was filled with education, with social emotional learning, with athletics, different activities that the students can do after school. So I’m here to just bring a few things that I took away, that hopefully you can use to help you in your prevention efforts as well. 

The first thing that I’ll cover is called restorative communication, or a way of conflict resolution that isn’t competitive. And so when you think about, a student in your class, who’s really causing trouble with you, who isn’t doing what they’re instructed to do, and likes to put up a fight, these are some ways that you can actually get them to cooperate with you and find agreement with your instruction. So I’m really excited about this one to try these things myself as well. And the main idea is that if we combat with our students, we don’t build trust. In fact, if they’re a student that is causing trouble in the classroom, maybe they have trauma at home, maybe someone is yelling at them at home. And so that’s why they’ve learned to do it to you. And so in order to change that narrative, we can’t just do the same thing back, because we’ll be reinforcing this idea that you get yelled at, that you’re not good enough, that you get punished.

And so restorative communication, and I’ll read right off the guidebook here, is a way to repair relationships that have been damaged by conflict, and prevent future conflicts from arising. By making simple changes in our language, we can experience dramatic shifts in our results. And here are the core things that we talked about. There’s two different pages right here. And before I go through it, this came from kindus.org, the global kindness initiative. And it says that you can get training and resources there. But here are the core concepts of restorative practices. The first one is this, how we feel is important. Our emotional state has enormous impact on our ability to be productive, experience, enjoyment and satisfaction, and make positive connections with others. And the way it was explained in the workshop, is that when we feel stress, there is a signal in our brain and Cortisol is released. And this is the way, when stress goes up, and your body basically goes into fight or flight mode. And you probably know, when you’ve been in a stressful situation, you weren’t thinking at your best, you’re probably thinking at your worse, you’re going to run or you’re going to fight. And so when we raise our voices, when we cause more stress in our environment for students, of course, they’re going to walk out or they’re going to fight us. So the idea is to reduce the stress, because when they’re in a stress free environment, they can learn, they feel safe. They say in point number two there are many ways that conflict shows up, but they all share an underlying structure. Conflict arises when someone does or says something that we find harmful, and we want them to stop or change their behavior. And the main thing to notice about that is that conflict could be just on us, is that we don’t like what they’re doing. And to check ourselves at the door to say, is this just my expectations of this student? Or have we agreed that this is the expectations for all students? And that they’re not meeting that expectation? Because we both agreed on it. So is it just me, or is it us? Third one says, when we want someone to change their behavior, we usually use threats, fear or punishment to get them to change. Something like if you show up late again, you’re out.

And we both know that, if you send someone away, we don’t have an opportunity to help them change behavior, or if we send them out all the time or punish them all the time. It can be more damaging about their identity than to really help them learn how to change. So are we a partner in change or are we someone who sends them away and expects them to change on their On, that might not be a great way to actually support students. And finally says using restorative communication by clearly expressing our needs and offering the space for others to do the same. We can create change through building greater connection, compassion, and collaboration. Things like what can I do to support you and being prepared and on time for our lessons, so it improves our learning?

So all that is pointing to new ways to ask for what we need from our students. And they show things called Smart agreements. And these smart agreements are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timely. And if you’ve studied SMART goals, it’s the same thing. So as specific as you describe exactly the behavior you want to see, not for example, clean up the classroom. That’s too vague, people have a different idea of what clean is, you could say, there are five cans and four hamburger wrappers around the classroom, in the next 30 seconds, let’s get all those in the garbage. Ready, go. That Specific, measurable. So given them out, actionable, something you can actually do right now. Realistic. And this is one that they had a circle meaning, is it realistic to ask this person to do this at this time? Can they do it right now? Do they have the resources, the abilities to get it done? Or again, is it something that I’m putting on them, because how I think they should be, not that they actually could do that. And timely, to time box your request, to show them that we’re going to get this done by this time. Otherwise, again, as the facilitator, we will continue to be frustrated if we don’t clearly communicate these agreements. This might be something that you use as a class, before you get into a class that you can set up these agreements on how we treat each other, what our agreements are. And I’m saying the word agreements, because that’s what the facilitator did. And they mentioned that in agreement is something that the team creates together. So there’s unity, and there’s more likely to be buy in. But if it’s a rules, then it’s just something that I set up, and everyone has to follow. So they’re not necessarily bought it, they could feel like the rules are unfair. But if there are agreements, and we all agree not to talking over each other, and to clean up the classroom every day, and make sure there’s nothing on the floor or the tables, then that’s something that everyone has bought into and is agreed, is important. So when you ask it, you’re just following up on things that we all agreed to do.

So we’re all held accountable. The second way that you can use restorative communication that we talked about during the conference in this workshop, is that you can use it on a one on one basis when you’re meeting with students. So for example, someone doesn’t follow the rules, or two people are fighting in class, is you can use this to facilitate conversation between them. And they outlined this called look, feel, and offer, ask. Look, feel offer, ask and here’s what it says to do, is that when you first open up the conversation, it’s really looking, like what did you observe? Leave the feeling out of it, you did this out of it, and you’re a terrible person. Any of the judgments should not be here. It’s just observations, what did I see and hear. So it says describe the events exactly as they happened.

“Empowering Effective Communication and Conflict Resolution in Youth Education and Prevention Efforts”

Avoid judgments, exaggerations, or assumptions about the other person. Avoid telling people how they feel or what they think and use I statements. For example, I noticed that blank. Next one is you can talk about feel, how it made you feel as an individual. So communicate how it made you feel. And then as a facilitator, this is an opportunity for you to repeat what they said, so that they know that you understand their feelings and value their feelings. And then always focus on building compassion and empathy for that person. So that they know you do care, that you’re not just curving their behavior, it’s because you care about them. The third one is to offer and this can be puzzling for the facilitator because oftentimes you’ll know that conflict that arises isn’t really always about the thing they’re fighting about, maybe something happened at home, maybe they’re just really hungry. Maybe they’re in a bad mood because something’s happening in their family life, or they’re going through something that is just, again, this was the last straw maybe that allowed them to freak out and have a fit, or to lash out at another person. So in the offer section, it says, “What needs is the person trying to get met in this situation? Can you offer to meet their needs in some way? If nothing else, can you offer to listen to them?” And sometimes that is all you can do, is listen. But if you are the person who’s always there for them to listen, you’re going to have the opportunity to meet their needs more often. And to help understand and care for them. And get have an agreement, that when stuff like this happens, again, because you’re always there listening to them, and you care about them, you get to offer feedback, and have them respect you and listen to you. So look, feel, offer and then ask, it says make requests, not demands, make smart requests. The example that they used in the workshop was that, if someone is acting out and using foul language at the facilitator, and you can pull them aside, and to ask them what they need, hey, I noticed that you called me this. And it makes me feel terrible, bad about myself when you do that for the class, and makes me feel incapable of doing great things for you. Because that’s my job. Make an offer, what is it that you need right now that made you do that? Great. Can I get that for you in an agreement?

Can we agree in the future, that whenever you need this, that you will just pull me aside and asked me or raise your hand and asked me, instead of calling me a name like that, is that fair? Then you get there by it. Now, of course, this takes time, you will have to do it a few times, they said, but it is in a more agreeable way instead of taking their behavior and just expecting them to do different because you’re the authority figure and you said, you’re letting them take part in the decision. So it’s going to be more effective. And they, cited examples of classrooms turning around, teachers enjoying their job more. And people basically, facilitating better and making change in student’s lives in a way that shows love and compassion and caring and collaboration. They started the beginning.

And I think we all want that. And this is just one way to help, facilitate it. And that was it. Again, if you want more information on this workshop and what I did, go check out kindus.org or the global kindness initiative, and see what they have to say, they do trainings all across the country as well for different organizations, different education, associations, and businesses. So it could be something that’s helpful for you and your team as well. There you have it. That episode of Party Talk, where we empower leaders in youth drug prevention was focused on restorative communication. I hope you find it helpful. If you did, please leave us a review. Please share this podcast with somebody else that works with students, so that they can get a lift in their day as well. Enjoy the rest of your week. And we’ll see you next time on the Party Talk podcast.