Focus: A Restorative Circle on “Stop Bullying”
Time: 4:04 min
Who & Where: Glenview Elementary School, Oakland, CA
Grade level: Elementary School
Description
The teacher in this video starts her restorative circle with a mindfulness activity, followed by a check in. She uses what she calls a “symbolic” talking piece to address topics that students themselves decided they wanted to talk about at the start of the school year.
The topic for today’s circle is “stop bullying.” She sends the talking piece around the circle for student reflections and waits for the talking piece to come back to her before she speaks, thus modeling the behavior she’d like to see from her students.
The teacher frames the short restorative circle clip by talking about how circles have been useful in her classroom and how they are used at Glenview Elementary School for “classroom management, to resolve conflict and to involve students in activities.”
“Before I started doing circles in my class, I found it very difficult to start the academic day. Students had things that they wanted to share things … they were concerned about. …. After the presentation of circles in our Staff Development I knew that would be the best way to have each student share and be heard in the classroom.”