Growing Circles at The Bush School

A SAFE SPACE TO COME TOGETHER

In Indigenous societies, coming together in a circle has been as natural as sitting around a fire and reflecting on shared concerns. It inspires a different quality of conversation. People tell stories and share experiences. We are more likely to speak from our hearts and listen from our hearts as well. We want to experience each other not as adversaries but as fellow human beings. We find a place where we can share what is going on with us, whatever that may be.

The Circle process brings these qualities into modern experience. Circles offer a different way of dealing with the challenges of everyday life as well as of responding to the larger challenges we face. Circles help us learn how to “be in a good way” with each other, and they give us a place and time to practice this positive way of being.

Circles draw on our best values

Circles help participants respond from one’s best self

Circles build community

Circles create a space for deep listening and being heard

Circles generate mutual understanding and respect

Circles honor all voices equally

Circles make decisions by consensus

Circles cultivate mutual support

Circles honor the gifts, knowledge, talents, and experiences that each participant brings

Though participants may not realize it at first, Circles offer a structured form of dialogue. The idea is that we can engage in difficult conversations most fruitfully when we first nurture our shared values. Setting aside time up front to build relationships based on what we have in common, Circles create a safe space for participants to express different viewpoints and strong emotions as they discuss difficult issues later on. The process is useful for both communicating and making decisions.

Participating in Circles is inherently transformative, because we experience the world from more perspectives than our own. Drawing on diverse knowledge and experiences, Circles generate options and solutions that are often outside the box of conventional thinking and that often go beyond what one person could generate on their own.

Three and a half years ago when I interviewed at Bush to become an Upper School Math Teacher, I knew almost immediately that I had found my landing place in Seattle. Despite having great experiences at other schools during the interview process, Bush just felt like home: a place of deep comfort, but also, ironically, a place of discomfort—the kind that facilitates growth. Nothing encapsulated that more perfectly than my interview with Dr. Jabali Stewart, Director of Intercultural Affairs. We talked about nearly everything diversity/equity-related; while it felt like we were speaking different languages, I knew that our visions were aligned. I remember him talking skillfully about the power of Peacemaking Circles, a process I both knew and didn’t know. Growing up, I regularly sat in circles with my family, but circles... in schools? I have to admit, I was skeptical.

Circles reappeared in my life at the right moment, and I paid attention. Circles have become as meaningful to me as teaching.

After joining the Bush community, I studied under Jabali while also teaching. I became excited about how circles could be used in the classroom. I sampled and experimented, and saw the real and tangible results of circle work with students. In those first two years, I learned the main components of circle (Talking Piece, Centerpiece, Opening Ceremony, Values, Guidelines, Rounds, and Closing Ceremony) and how to use them. I have also begun to understand the nuances of power and creation in the circle. I watched how Jabali worked to integrate circle in Administrative Group work, Human Relations classes, Third Grade, Fifth Grade, Seventh Grade, Eighth Grade, and into some of the Upper School classes. I also began to use circle in my advisory, and Susanne Eckert, Jabali Stewart, and I used circle once a week in an interdisciplinary math and history course called Seattle, Statistics, and Social Justice. I felt as if something really exciting was taking off, both for myself and for the school.

I knew that it was time for me to invest in this kind of work in the world. Last spring, I attended a training on the East Coast with Kay Pranis, who is known lovingly in the circle community as the ‘Grandmother of Peacemaking Circles.’ Kay started her work with circles in the 1990s when she was working for the Minnesota Department of Corrections as the Restorative Justice Planner. I immediately felt a connection with her work, partially because of Kay’s storytelling, dry wit, and clear instruction, but also because she had majored in math and I recognized the mathematical undertones of her work. After that training, I wrote Kay a six-page letter, exploring some of the connections of Peacemaking Circles with mathematical concepts. For example, what does it mean for our circle work that circles in math are unbounded yet finite? What is the metaphor? At the end of that six-page letter, I sheepishly asked if she might have the time and energy to take me on as an apprentice. I could not believe it when she emailed back and agreed to take me on. But what would it mean to step away from teaching math, into which I had invested nearly twenty years of my life and I love with all of my heart? I’m not sure there is an answer to that quite yet, but I suspect that it will reveal itself slowly over time.

So this year, I have continued to work part-time in the Office of Intercultural Affairs, allowing me the flexibility in my schedule to travel with Kay. I have traveled to New York City, Raleigh, North Carolina, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa to assist and learn from Kay. It has been an honor to learn from someone with such deep roots in Peacemaking Circles (twenty-five years worth!), particularly in a context other than schools. There are a wide range of circles that can be used, ranging from talking circles to healing circles to problem-solving circles. What is useful about learning from Kay is that she learned circles and worked with them in one of the most challenging combinations: in prisons and with sentencing circles. My exposure to circles up until that point had been talking circles—mostly community building and teaching/learning. Hearing the stories and wisdom from Kay, it gave me confidence that circles can hold so much more than I could have imagined. Most importantly for my learning, I have thought deeply about power differentials in circle and the role that the keeper plays when a circle goes out of balance.

This apprenticeship is coming at the perfect time. Jabali has invested seven years working to embed circle practice into the culture of The Bush School. As I have learned from Kay, shifting an institution’s culture is the best way to support higher-stakes circle work, such as re-entry and discipline circles. Of course Jabali knew this, and has put in the time and effort to make that happen. With the circle process rooted in the school community, we now have the support to move to a more restorative framework for discipline, which is beginning to emerge. And, as my work with Kay has continued to develop, I am able to bring back my learnings to support this work. The Bush School is ripe for a glorious blossoming of the labor that Jabali, along with faculty and students, have put into circle work.

I am truly honored to call both Jabali and Kay teachers. Both embody wisdom, levity, confidence, humility, flexibility, and a deep honoring of each person in their presence. I have learned so much.

And, after twenty years of teaching, it is time for me to tip the balance from teaching to learning, so I can give back to a line of work—teaching—that nourished me for all of those years. And the more I learn about circles, the more I want to learn.

I invite you to join us on this journey; join us in making this a cornerstone of the school. Attend a training, ask a Bush student what they last talked about in circle, brainstorm ways you could incorporate circle into your own spaces— we would love to have you as part of this transformative process.