January 2025 Updates
Happy new year educators!
We are wishing you a year ahead of rooting in and sharing your gifts, and finding nourishing community in these uncertain times. We wanted to share with you a few updates and resources for this month.
We are very excited about the first monthly restorative circle of 2025 on Wednesday, Jan. 22nd, 5-7pm. Two awesome art therapists, Lucy Scott (LCPC) and Angela Lopez, will be keeping circle with us and guiding us in creative play and art-making. We hope you can join us and invite your colleagues - the flyer is below.
CPS teachers, the Office of Social Emotional Learning (OSEL) also hosts Teacher Circles and PLCs around restorative practices as part of their mission to inspire and empower teachers in building restorative communities. They have virtual check-in opportunities for teachers and PDs. You can learn more and sign up here.
Later this month, the recently elected President will be inaugurated on Monday, January 20th. That day is also Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a national holiday in honor of his life and legacy. Some ideas/resources if you are guiding conversations with students or colleagues are:
Centering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a beloved community and the radical hope he had for the future. Students can learn about King's fight against poverty or read and discuss this article from Teen Vogue, and consider King's vision and our American reality today.
Learning about Howard Zinn, who, when asked how important the President was to what happens in the next four years responded: “the fact that the really critical thing isn't who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in--in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories...” His perspective of history always centered the everyday actions of regular people in creating social change. Here is a video about his thoughts on the state of our democracy, and here is a trailer for a documentary about his life titled You Can't Be Neutral On a Moving Train.
Exploring further for yourself and with students the central tenets of Restorative Justice philosophy and practices - which is essentially about the importance of relationships and what it means to be in relationship with yourself and others. Such an approach stands in contrast to the society in which we live today - one that isolates or tears relationships and communities apart. Here is a resource from Project Nia (other resources also available) about creating community in classrooms centering restorative and transformative justice if you are thinking of ways of resetting norms as you start this part of the school year.
