Circles now called community dialogue

So on Friday my coworker, LS, ran the staff circle. It was attended by JC, GB, NL, CFG, and me. I have to say that LS did a great job running that circle. She started off reading a poem called Wild Geese and then we did the check in. Along with how we are doing she asked what did we want to be when we were younger. Me...I wanted to be Curly from the 3 Stooges. When I was in elementary school I was Curly Crazy. I would rush home from school to watch the Stooges and I could imitate all of Curly's noises and gesture. "I'm a victim of circumstance!" "Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk" "OH Wise Guy!" 


So the big topic was talking about what was going on with RJ and what were we going to call the circles if we weren't going to call them circles anymore. I conveyed my talk with BY to the staff and how he would be ok if we just called the circles something else. As I've said before, I'm fine with calling it whatever as long as we can do them. We went around discussing how we felt about the change and what was going on at our school. People voiced their displeasure about having to change things. In particular, JC thought it was bullshit that we had to change anything and thought it was lame that we had to use different terminology. CFG commented that her job was tied to restorative justice and in particular with circles as the process to get there. GB understood where BY was coming from and said what I've said before that this is a bellwether of things to come. The Native students that we work with are part of the Native community in this area. We have to make sure that the relationship between the Native Community and us are cool. When the talking piece got back to me, I actually found myself in the ironic position of defending BY and the native students' views. This is something sacred to the students and BY and we need to be sensitive to that, especially considering the history of the US and Native Americans. With the history of genocide and assimilation, we don't need to be viewed as appropriating their culture for our uses. For as much talk as I do about oppression, I don't want to be oppressive. One of the better quotes I've read recently is, "One does not need to denigrate that which is holy to others, in order to emphasise the sanctity of the freedom of speech." (Undskyld Muhammed) from a facebook page apologizing for the Danish cartoons about the Prophet Muhammed. We want to be restorative, but we're not doing restorative justice when we face a situation where we are being oppressive to others. This discussion lasted two rounds with everyone having their say about the situation. 

After hearing where we were at, we decided to talk about what our new name for the circle process would be. GB really wanted the term "community" in the name and I wanted something like forum or dialogue. LS synthesized our ideas and now the new name is community dialogue. The talking piece we will call the one mic and we will actually have to figure out what we will call our circlekeepers. 

LS ended the dialogue with asking us what got us into doing the work that we are doing and to share a story. Interestingly, GB, LS, and CFG all got into things by first doing prison work. NL had a family history of math teachers so it just seemed genetically fitting. Me? I got into doing this thing while working at an afterschool program. I was running my promotional items business and started doing an afterschool thing because the business was sucking my soul dry. I found that when I was working with the kids I was happy and joyful and I felt my interactions had meaning. The kids were happy to see me, gave me hugs, and I loved what I was doing. Why ever then did I go to teach high school?