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August 2024
Ideas and Suggestions for Restorative Practitioners
August is a time for harvest. The gardens and the fields yield the work of the sun and the rain and the seeds. It can be a time of abundance.
Deepen Your Practice
A Note
It is with a feeling of abundance that I share my plans to retire from state service September 19, 2024. Over 30 years, I have had the honor to work with educators, community members, youth serving organizations, evaluators and researchers, and colleagues at other state agencies. The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) has provided me with an abundance of incredibly gifted and dedicated colleagues and leaders with whom I have collaborated. The restorative justice community in Minnesota – and especially the MDE trainers – have offered high expectations and high support, without which I could not have done my job. I deepened my practices in these relationships.
Grace Yang, Restorative Practices (RP) Consultant, and the team at the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Center will continue to support educators in their equity and restorative journey with insight, care, and dedication.
One of my first projects back in the last century was to work on a statewide violence prevention mass media campaign, You’re the One Who Can Make the Peace. That tag line offered a personal challenge that is deepened by restorative practices: The community has the collective wisdom to resolve problems, to make the peace. Mitakuye Oyasin: We are all related. Ubuntu: My humanity is bound up in yours. I leave that to you: As educators, you touch the hearts and the minds of young people. They in turn teach what you taught to others.
We are the ones who can make the peace.
– Nancy Riestenberg
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Nancy Riestenberg Presented the Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice Conference
At the conference in Washington D.C. this month, Nancy was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award. This award recognizes an individual who has made vital contributions to the fields of community and/or restorative justice. Nancy met all the criteria and beyond. She has impactful leadership, sustained advocacy and engagement, and inspiration and influence. Nancy has been known to have a warm demeaner, so during her acceptance speech, she invited all 109 Minnesota Restorative attendees to stand and expressed her gratitude to all of them. Nancy is deserving of this award and we celebrate this wonderful achievement.
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Retrieve Your Learnings
As you prepare for the fall, we want to remind you of the resources on the Restorative Practices webpages. Here are a few guides that can help you and your team take what you have learned from training, reading and discussions and use that learning in new or different settings.
Restorative Practices Planning Guides
Plan for the start of a restorative year with the MDE RP planning tools. Invite your friends to help you identify your restorative next steps:
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Build Your Knowledge
The school year will begin soon. The teacher workshop weeks will start along with the State Fair. If you would like to gather with your team, or your staff, but did not think of that last April when you organized August, we got you! Here is a re-connection circle of superpowers and stories. (See Circle for the Adult Community, Page 5, for ideas on how to hold circles with a large staff.)
Staff Circle: Superpowers and Stories
(Thank you for agreeing to be a circle keeper! Here is an outline for the circle today. Use it to guide the discussion with your colleagues. The talking piece goes around in order to the left.)
Welcome: I invite you to take a moment to pay attention to your breathing. Purposefully follow your breath as you breathe in and out, thoughtfully, three times.
Here are our Circle Guidelines: Respect the talking piece (when you have the talking piece you may speak, and when you don’t, you may listen), talk and listen with respect and from the heart, take the time you need knowing that others need time, what is shared stays, what is learned leaves, expect non-closure, and you may pass.
Opening: Share your name and the pronouns that make you feel seen and a mundane superpower that you have. Mundane – not necessarily fantastic, but something you can do – like always find dimes when you walk, or find a parking space, or clean up after a dinner party for 10 in 10 minutes.
Round 1: Share the name of a relative or adult in your life, when you were a kid, who had the power to make you feel seen or feel special. Tell us a little about the person.
Round 2: Share a story that when you tell it to friends or family, everyone laughs.
Round 3: If you had a magic wand that only worked work between the hours of 10 and 11 a.m., what would that wand do?
Final round: How was circle?
Close: To close, here is a quote from Maya Angelou, “When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love prosperity, happiness…all the good things.”
Thank you for being in circle!
Resources
MDE Model Bullying Policy
The Minnesota Department of Education’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Center has developed the Model Bullying Policy in accordance with MN Statute 121A.031. The purpose of the policy is to provide guidance for schools and districts so that they understand what their obligations are under MN law to respond to and address bullying. Schools and districts are invited to use this Model Bullying Policy and to adopt it as their own to ensure that all required components of the policy are fulfilled under MN law. Districts are encouraged to add to the Model Bullying Policy to include specifics of their processes, procedures, and additional supports. The model policy is available on the MDE website.
Mental Health Trainings for Licensed School Mental Health Clinicians/Practitioners
The Project AWARE team in the Minnesota Department of Education's Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion (EDI) Center is hosting free, virtual CBITS and/or Bounce Back trainings in August and September. Eligible participants are Minnesota licensed school mental health clinicians/practitioners who want to be trained in and have the capacity to deliver the intervention(s) for the intended aged students. Participants should have a familiarity with childhood trauma, group therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. See the registration link below for further information. Those interested in attending should register for the Summer 2024 CBITS & Bounce Back Training. Spots are available on a first come, first served basis. There is an option to sign up for a wait list if an offering is full. For assistance with questions, email Emily Denight Kelly, Project AWARE Lead Trainer.
12th Annual Restoring Hope Circle Keeper's Summit – September 30
Register for the Restoring Hope Circle Keeper's Summit, which is open to Circle Keepers for relaxation, rejuvenation, and connection. Monday, Sept. 30, 3 p.m. through Thursday, Oct. 3, 3 p.m. The summit will take place at Timber Bay Camp, 18955 Woodland Rd, Onamia, MN 56359.
The Restoring Hope Circle Keeper’s Summit is coordinated by Sharon Hendrichs, 507-227-6858 and Julie Marthaler, 320-226-0586. Email them at restoringhopeconveners@gmail.com.
Ted Lewis
A restorative pioneer in Wisconsin and Minnesota, Ted Lewis died on July 24, 2024. Ted started his restorative journey in Barron County Wisconsin in the 1990s and was for many years a trainer and adjunct professor for the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota – Duluth. He was a board member for the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice, which gave him the Bert Thompson Faith Based Award at their conference in July.
But those specifics do not capture the kindness, the twinkle, the ability to listen deeply, that you would only feel and see in his presence. It does not count the people he supported in facilitating restorative conferences to repair harm, some very serious harm.
Ted liked to dunk his head into any open body of water that he passed, at any time of the year. The next time you see a lake, consider doing that, or at least smile in his memory.
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Further Information
For further information about Restorative Practices, visit MDE's RP webpage or contact Grace Yang, 651-582-8777, or Nancy Riestenberg, 651-582-8433, Minnesota Department of Education.
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