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TEDx Talks
Title: Restorative Practices to Resolve Conflict/Build Relationships: Katy Hutchison at TEDxWestVancouverED
Published: 2013-06-11
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcLuVeHlrSs
so I stand here for second bask in chains wake here's the thing in life stuff is going to happen thankfully it lots of good stuff but sometimes about stuff and I believe because we share this beautiful earth of ours by living in community that when we come across a mass we have a moral responsibility to roll up our sleeves and to get busy and to clean
that mess sometimes in the process of cleaning up Max organised realize we're standing right beside person that caused it and if you're not moment that I think there exists an enormous amount of power and possibility I have two stories to share with you today one about a tiny amounts and one about an enormous and I will share with you what I think they have to do
with education my father was a naval commander kind gentle man who is an engineer by training which meant he'd love to find the most efficient way to solve the problem well I'm sure he saw his share of conflict through the wars at home he was a true peacemaker seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to restore order to our chaotic dining table he didn't
ask a lot of us as a family but the one request that my father me was that none of us use his beard trimming scissors I had two older brothers and an older sister they had desks of their own filled with supplies my mother had her own sewing so this is what a particular novelty but for me at seven I was fascinated with the fact that
my father would have something that only he was allowed to use and I remember watching a meticulously shaping his beard with the scissors there were tiny there were sharp and they were very very pointy so one day I was doing a little craft project which involves an enormous amount of paper a huge amount of glue for a few staples and I decided that I needed to
cut something so I went into the bathroom and I took I fathers scissors they were amazing until of course I cut through I think a lot of wetlands and a couple of staples and I realize that I had damaged scissors so as skillfully as I had taken another medicine cap the back the next day my father came to me crouch down to high level and he
looked at me and he said did you use my scissors and I live and then my father told me how disappointed he was and he proceeded to show me how this is no longer easily cut his beard they snagged and pulled a pair painfully any us make up did you use my scissors and this time I told him I had so my father took me for
a walk in the garden and he didn't say much for awhile and then he started to talk to me about honesty and about respecting people's property and most importantly about respecting their feelings we came in the house and he showed me how to clean a dried glue off ablaze with rubbing alcohol and how to find the sound the neko sandpaper and then he made us to
huge cups of hot with lots of personal and we never talked about the scissor incident again years later when I had children of my own I was grappling with finding a discipline technique that felt like it set most of my friends re using the time out you know it seems counter intuitive to me and also with toddler twins it seemed almost impossible to manage to children
in two different spaces and also it seemed like a child who was most affected by transgression ended up being the one that got the least amount of attention so I thought back to the way that I was raised and I realize that in my family had really been much more about the time it when something went wrong my parents would sit down with us and they
take the time to explain how our behavior was impacting family and then that would help us figure out a way to make things better so my husband Bob and I adopted the time and nothing was our children and that was the way we raise them and I'm sure initially a lot of the language when over their little heads to begin with but ultimately what it did
was it set up an opportunity for my children to realize but what our default position is gonna be was going to be to come together to talk about behavior it's talk about feelings and talk about the impact that our actions have on the people that we care about two weeks before my children's fifth birthday I found myself standing in the emergency room of a local hospital
watching doctor distributor Pattinson's hand desperately trying to resuscitate my house just an hour before he and two friends had left a quiet new year's party to go check on the home of the vacationing neighbor my son had decided to host a party of his own wrong police officers started to fill that emergency room and I stood there looking the doctors the nurses the EMTs those officers
and I realize everyone of them was just desperately clinging to everything they have been trained to do as professionals when the most unthinkable the situations begins to unfold but I also understood for them that at some moment the shift was gonna and and they were going to get to go home we see I wasn't at work my shift was never going to and I realize standing
there in the middle of all that chaos that somehow I was gonna have to find a way to live with whatever had just happened and more importantly fourteen my life I left my dad forty year old and I went home to wait for my children to wakeup I look for the plainest words I could on a crouched down to their level and after a long pause
my little boy looks at me and he said because of Cheerios course because that's what happened children wake up in their hungry and after they eat they play because that's their job they spend time outside and then maybe after meal somebody will help I've been into bad read them a story to go to sleep they wake up the next day and they do it all over
again day after day after day and usually one of the people that makes that come together for child is their mother and that was my job and I realized that I couldn't make their little lives be all about so I made a promise I promised him that underneath the horror of what had just happened to our family we would find a gift perhaps one day an
opportunity to share that gift autopsy results reveal that Bob had died from multiple kicks to but the information really stopped there a code of silence descended over the small community we lifted nine of the two hundred young people that were at that party gave the police the information that they needed to move forward their investigation the media were on my doorstep immediately something a microphone in
my face and what do you want to see happen to the person that did this children had just lost their I don't want them to lose me in the process if I had responded frankly the way society expected me to filled with hatred filled with a vengeance a person lookup parent was I had to be absolutely I wanted answers absolutely I want something to be accountable
but I also wanted to know that my children were going okay she knew he was gonna be okay and not included whoever was on the other side a horrible tragedy it was five years before Ryan Aldridge was arrested charged in connection with my husband's please call to tell me they were ready to make the arrest I told them I was on my way what are you
talking about why would you wanna meet the person killed leave that police I said I need to sit down from I need to speak to him face to face I need to understand what was going on in his life to make him capable of doing what he did I need him to understand what's been going on in our lives I needed time in fifteen hours after
Ryan was arrested I was back a community sitting in a small interrogation room about to meet the young man to kill my husband I thought my heart would come out my mouth it's some kind of monster hop through the door not a young man that could be your site somebody's he thought across me slumped over sobbing hi handsome ball after ball of tissue and it was
all I could do not to get out of my seat to cross over the other side of the room to give him a hug because he looks like that was what he needed more than just about anything we can say a whole lot to each other when we first met but I told his confession was the first step in the right direction and the next up
I urged him to consider would be pleading guilty spread out of our families would have to enter a trial as soon as wine which jail I worried about him I no idea what's gonna happen behind bars to support his rehabilitation so began to educate myself about that in the system and it was then that I learned about the pause powerful model of restorative justice now our
conventional system you're all familiar with it asks the question what law was broken who broke out law and what's the punishment unity but his little attention to the needs of the victim or the community the restorative model on the other hand works on the assumption that would harm happens in our community it is a violation of relations and the questions are slightly different we want to
know what happened who's been affected and what are we going to do to make things right Brian served three out of five years of a sentence and during that time we did a properly facilitated were sort of process called the victim offender mediation I spent an entire day in jail Cryin when I hear the political rhetoric about getting tough on crime than that's what we did
that day we got tough on crime lots of tears what's the one finances were neither of us could find the words but ultimately was an opportunity for us to find some humanity around a situation that to this point had been anything but skimming I don't think that Ryan went out that day with the intention of killing somebody but what I understand now is even with a
series of poor choices throughout his adolescent fifteen years culminated in a fatal one that brought our lives together rather than a small child he had a speech impediment he was picked on and bullied in school was parents divorced him know where he belonged we lost a friend in the drinking driving crash he did understand the getting drunk and put your fist through the wall does not
qualify as grieving the more time we spent together the more that we realized we had things in common because that is what happens when you share space with we talked about the things that matter to us our families a love of the outdoors we discovered we had a mutual interest in art he went to a south you're going to skip back to show me a strong
I brought my laptop a shuttle presentation that I developed for use around social responsibility and I said to him it's a powerful message but it occurs to me that it's only half story perhaps you'd like to share with me and after you got a detailed Ryan and I work together for a number of years sharing her story with thousands of kids in the city but we
don't work together anymore for what I like to think of all the right reasons because Ryan's finish a sentence has moved on with his life his employee just got married I found out last week there expect the fact that Ryan seems incapable now inflicting any further harm is the gift that I was looking for I reflect back the lessons that my father taught me about stepping
up accepting responsibility moving forward and forgiving how that shaped the way I parent how that shaped the way I chose to deal with Ryan and I feel grateful but what does this have to do with education it has everything to do with education because what we're doing is we're teaching young people to engage in and me tame relationships and the way that we do that is
by modeling quality such as tolerance inclusiveness respect integrity empathy and forgiveness the restorative mall that I encountered when I was looking for truth and accountability has applications far beyond the bounds of criminal justice system the colored restorative practices when we're talking about problem solving in our communities and our places of work and most especially in our educational settings only the measurement of the performance and the
efficacy of restored of props is up to the practitioners in the academics but let me say this is an advocate has had the opportunity to visit hundreds of schools all over the world there is a palpable difference in our sort of school as soon as you walk through the door greater connection between children of different ages greater connection between students and teachers between teachers and administration
students describe a sense of pride in their community because they feel like it they have ownership they develop a skill set for problem solving at the ground level teachers describe their possums is being calmer administrators spend way less time doing up suspensions and much more time delegating piece I wonder what would happen to the trajectory of Ryan's life had he had an opportunity for restorative conversation
when he was in school and you see young people will take this goes home with them I visited an inner city school in Baltimore recently in elementary school that was renowned for its restored of programming the school is located in the midst of a number of housing projects there was open drug dealing going on right outside the door but as soon as I walked through those
doors every classroom I visited was using the circle in some way to other facilitate learning or problem solving and the principal shared a story with me she said to mothers came bursting through the front door of the office screaming at one another obviously engage in heated argument and they stopped yelling just long enough to ask to see the principal and when she appeared they said we
need one of those circle things are kids keep how it call for our children I believe if we raise a generation of young people who expect a restorative opportunity and learn that hone those skills while they're in school then they will take that into their lives and when they become employed when they have families their own that is what they're going to look to I'm concerned
about what I see in the media in terms of the way restorative fabrics he's news the way I'm pulling an anti bullying initiatives are portrayed I feel like the focus is so much on labelling people as either being the bully or the victim or the bystander when I think if we're honest with ourselves as human beings capable of being all three we need to drop the
labels we need to focus on the behavior that our roads our sense of community and I know of no better way of doing engaging in our story when they were parents where there were teachers aware they were both what we're engaged in here is raising and nurturing human being human doings I'd love to think that my children to find meaningful ways food on the table but
what interests me more is who they're going to be well as they can do whatever it is they do I want my children to be kind people I want them to be good partners parents co workers I haven't spoken to Ryan in a long time that I felt the need to check in with him recently I called him and he told me about his new job
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