Margaret Thorsborne - Building a Trauma-Informed Restorative School: Skills and Approaches for Improving Culture and Behavior

BUILDING A
TRAUMA-INFORMED
RESTORATIVE SCHOOL

Skills and Approaches for Improving
Culture and Behavior

JOE BRUMMER
with
MARGARET THORSBORNE

Foreword by Judy Atkinson

Joe Brummer writes: this book has been a labor of love and healing. Yet, it is clear this labor of love is balanced by clear and meaningful intent of purpose, and a sound toolkit for essential social change.

Restorative justice (in schools) is one of the most important initiatives we can endorse at this time. While the book covers Becoming a Trauma-Informed Restorative School the skills and approaches are for all situations, relevant to all peoples, everywhere. We all have a responsibility to consider how we can improve the cultures in which we live, and how our behavior reflects and contributes to those cultures. As we become more fully aware of and accept responsibility for our ill health or well-being, the social circumstances and behaviors within which we live, we can see clearly the opportunities offered to us by Joe Brummer to change what needs to be changed. Societies would benefit as a whole.

Perhaps story is important here. Eight years ago I was visited by a now close friend, school teacher/psychologist/principal, who had been asked to consider a principal-ship appointment at a school for (Aboriginal) children who had been expelled or suspended from all other schools in the region. They were considered badunteachableon a fast track to juvenile detentionprison. My friend moved to her new position, five hours drive away. Over the next three months we talked every afternoon, trying to understand the childrens behavior. Then a crisis. We located a child psychiatrist and received a diagnosis for one of the children. Emerging psychosis with some paranoiahe believes the world is unsafe. Suicide ideation. Complex loss and grief. Complex compound post traumatic stress disorder . This child was not paranoid. His world was unsafe. At three years of age, he had seen his mother killed in a domestic assault, and just before he went into crisis he had seen his aunt, who was his carer, hit and killed by a truck. He had attempted suicide twice, which had triggered our concern. However, his medical records said he was attention seeking. He was prescribed Ritalin and referred for speech therapy.

After this experience, the principal decided to bring theory into an Indigenous Healing Practice in response to the needs of the children in the school. She organized a skills development workshop over a weekend, grounded in trauma-informed restorative practices while also drawing on the theory and work principles of Dr. Bruce Perry. Sometime later, one Monday morning, those skills became vital.

Behavior on Friday afternoon is chaotic as children anticipate the weekend when drugs hit town. Monday is worse when they return to school. This Monday Billy had managed to bring a large carving knife to school, threatening the school community. The school went into lockdown as Billy ran riot around the grounds. The principal walked out into the grounds near him, without looking at him or physically engaging with him, but close enough for him to hear her. Billy, I always knew you wanted to be a ninja. Billy was in an extreme disassociated state, but her words reached him. He stopped his frenzy for a moment. Ninjas are really clever. Can you show me how you can throw that knife and make it stand up in the ground? He hesitated, then focused on throwing the knife, where it stood on an angle in the ground. Yes, she said, You are a good Ninja. But you can do better. Try again. By this time Billy was starting to focus on her. He retrieved the knife and threw it again. She was now close enough to engage with him, and again she praised his skills as she turned towards him, suggesting he have another go. He retrieved the knife as she told him he was a very good Ninja and she knew he could make that knife stand up straight in the ground. He was now in eye contact with her, then returned his focus to throwing the knife again. It stood up straight and she gave praise for his Ninja skills, while suggesting he now bring the knife to her, which he did.

I wanted to know where the principal had learnt such skills, to respond to the distressed child in this manner. I have seen many professionals escalate a heightened, dangerous situation. She explained. Be calm in times of crisis. Observe the child (in this case, enough to know he was disassociated, and understand that there was a story behind his behavior). Allow him to connect when he is ready, but keep him engaged. Do not challenge or pushconnect but in a non-confrontational way. Build on his interest and strength, she knew he loved Ninja stories. She was already prepared for chaos when she was told a shipment of drugs had come into town on the Friday. She was hence aware that his weekend may have been unsafe, and because she knew the history of the family, she knew his behavior was the language of his weekend traumawe later found out his mother had been stabbed yet again that weekend. Her objective was to disarm him without force, or harm to his already fragile state.

We learn valuable lessons on the ground. This book is a good balance of such valuable lessons with sound theory to practice examples.

In , The Foundations, Principles, and a New Understanding of Behavior, Joe writes of the need for a new lens in awareness, including understanding the trauma in the lives and behaviors of young people. In asking us to consider the four vital elementsrestorative language in community building, repairing relationships, and rebuilding communal attachmenthe provides a vital foundation for working with schools for change. However, these are not just skills for schoolsthey are for whole communities and societies.

It is, however, in that possibilities started to unfold for me, in the schools I know in Australia. The Five Skills of Restorativemindfulness, empathy, honest expression, the art of asking questions, and requestswere all present in the principals response to Billys distressed behavior. She taught me, as Joe also points out, restorative is within yourself. It is a way of being. And in that, the responsibility of adults working with children is to nurture disciplinemastery of which, as Joe writes, is cultivated. I am a gardener. During this time of Covid-19 I have turned soil and planted seeds. In the cultivation, the planting, and watering of seeds and seedlings I pondered the outcomes for children in the richness of a restorative cultivation. Can children teach us?

One cold winters morning, a child came to school with no shoes, a flimsy tee-shirt, and shorts. Freezing. Next day we saw children come to school with warm clothing to gift him. These were extremely poor families and yet the cultivation of mindfulness and empathy in the school provided a rich harvest, allowing us to see loving kindness in action. More particularly in the first full year of the application of a trauma-responsive, restorative practice in this school for bad kids, not only did children teach us loving kindness in action, but their literacy and numeracy levels under the Australian National Assessment ProgramLiteracy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) improved by between 150 percent and 300 percent (School Annual report 2014). The school, guided by the wisdom of an Aboriginal Elder: some trees need more water than others, taught us lessons about restorative in action.

The lessons learned in Restorative in Action () allowed me to reflect on what our school learnt in our work with the children and their families. Joe writes: restorative is best when we spend about 60 percent building community. The school became a drop-in center for parents, grandparents, and carers of the children. Accidental counseling happened, often. These were adults who had not had good experiences when they had attended school. The parents of the children at this school were only allowed to enter school, at the discretion of a principal, in the 1970s. The cane was used extensively. The Aboriginal students were not allowed to go to the swimming pool on Friday afternoons and had to stay behind and clean the school yards, while the rest of the school spent the afternoon at the swimming pool. Such were the experiences of the parents of the children at our school.