Front page story, continued |
| Under the Shade of a Schoolyard Tree Peacemaking as an Alternative in School Discipline
Humbling yet transformative, the ritual rests on the recognition that the bonds of the clan
take precedence over any other issue. Everyone has the right to speak, but also the
responsibility to bring offenders back into close connection with a caring community.
Now that time-honored Native American peacemaking ritual has made its way to the
schoolyard, in an alternative to traditional methods of school discipline at Little Singer
Community School in Winslow, Arizona. Rather than removing a young wrongdoer from
the community via suspension or expulsion, this technique aims for healing and harmony
by “feeling our relationship with one another,” as a Navajo description puts it.
In the past year, this 130-student school serving a largely tribal community has used the
peacemaking technique to resolve conflicts not just with students but also with faculty,
parents, and board members. And for the first time last spring, instead of the usual springtime
spike in the number of disciplinary disruptions, the school had “zero incidents,”
according to Mark Sorensen, its executive director.
Connections Trump Anger, Hurt
In this spread-out rural territory with only 3,500 residents, that connection is often
through the family, the tribe, or the clan. Even so, Sorensen asserts, “You
can’t start by saying to a youngster, ‘Why don’t you feel
connected to me?’ This process must begin with someone expressing to
the student that I care about you.”
At Little Singer, peacemaking sessions take place in a traditional small Navajo dwelling
built on school grounds. They are facilitated by a designated peacemaker, chosen
from the tribal community by the school’s leaders. A crucial element is the participation
of others who are somehow important in the wrongdoer’s life.
“What you do matters, what they do matters, how you express yourself matters,
” Sorensen said. “You’re part of the fabric of the whole situation.”
In one incident, for example, a sixth grade boy burst out in angry curses at a teacher whose
instructions were frustrating to him. After an emotional hour with the peacemaker, the youngster
returned to the classroom and asked his best friend, who had also been present at the session
to speak for him. “He wanted his classmates and the teacher to know he did care about his
connection to them,” Sorensen said. After the apology, the whole class agreed to help
him continue to be part of their group; and since then, “everyone has noticed a change
in the atmosphere of that classroom,” he noted.
With Thomas Walker, Jr., the Navajo chairman of Little Singer’s board, Mark
Sorensen has written a paper that compares the school’s peacemaking policies
with standard school disciplinary policies and outlines the peacemaking procedures.
[For a pdf file of the paper, click here.]
To be effective in healing, the authors assert, a peacemaking session requires not just
one’s physical presence but also full emotional, mental, and spiritual engagement.
It begins with a moment of focusing, in which participants call on a higher power for guidance
and strength, recognizing that the solution must transcend any one participant.
Sorensen himself, a non-Navajo who has led the school for ten years, has himself felt the
power of the peacemaking ritual when resolving a staff dispute. “As head administrator,
I was one of the people who cared about the person involved,” he said. “But I
was not prepared for how emotional the experience would be.”
And far from being too gentle a method to deal with violent or disruptive behavior in schools
, “it can be pretty tough,” he said. “Some adults who have been through
it would rather end up going to jail than do it again, because all their relations come in and
hold them to whatever is agreed upon.”
Read more of this WKCD feature story, "Making Peace, Restoring
Justice"
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In Navajo tradition, two parties in conflict retreat to the shade of a spreading tree, where
they work out their differences with the help of a designated peacemaker and anyone else
involved in the dispute.
“Hurt or angry people are often basing their hurt or anger on misunderstanding
,” he said. A peacemaking session starts, for this reason, with someone expressing
caring and interconnection directly to the person who has disturbed the peace.