We had special guest facilitators for our last in-person workshop of the Fall 2024 semester! The Circle Keepers are a youth-led organization that seeks to “dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline by training & empowering youth as restorative justice practitioners, community organizing activists and socially conscious artists.” The youth leaders were high school students and one recent high school graduate, so it was wonderful to cultivate an intergenerational learning space. The Circle Keepers, along with director Martin Urbach, an Urban Education PhD student at the Graduate Center, facilitated a session that brought healing and restoration to us at the end of a stressful semester.

The Circle Keepers first engaged us in a casual and interactive Bingo game so that we could get to know one another before introducing ourselves to the whole group. We also participated in an activity where we made mixtapes and shared music, and also did a picture hunting activity using our phones. Some of the prompts included: “find a picture of a time you felt safe or like you belong” and “share a song that would play as the soundtrack to your biography”. These activities allowed us to build rapport in an authentic and engaging way. Many of us learned important details about one another that we never knew, despite being in the cohort together for several months.

After building an intentional community, The Circle Keepers took us through a conflict resolution exercise where we learned strategies for peer mediation, including how to clarify (mis)understandings and help people feel heard. We practiced using these strategies in a role-play situation and discussed how they could help us to be fair and restorative in our everyday interactions.

The afternoon was a great opportunity for us to learn from youth and reflect on those lessons as we work towards creating the just, loving, and equitable world we want.

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