The Leaders of Tomorrow

As a community, as a society, we value our youth. We know that the children of today are the leaders of tomorrow. We know that the next generation are the most important and most affected global stakeholders of our future. We know that an investment in them is the best investment we can make to take care of the world of tomorrow.

But what does that look like?

How do we prepare our youth to grow into the adults we hope to have in our community one day?

That list of dichotomies is seemingly endless: how do we allow our children to be young, while equipping them to be responsible; teach them to use their voice, while also teaching them to listen; encourage them to stand behind their convictions, while fostering within them the acceptance of those who think differently?

What we do is simple.

We teach them how to fight.

Disagreements are an inevitable, normal, and healthy part of relating to other people. Healthy friction leads to increased creativity, learning and productivity.

But how do we foster a HEALTHY, mediated environment for our children of today to learn to sit with conflict?

Denisa Dyck, a Restorative Action Facilitator with Abbotsford Restorative Justice and Advocacy Association (ARJAA), spends her days doing just that.

For almost two decades, the Abbotsford School District and ARJAA have been working together to empower students to resolve conflicts in a restorative and constructive manner. Through the Restorative Action (RA) Program, ARJAA provides middle school students with the skills and tools to develop empathy, self-awareness, and emotional regulation. The goal is to support students in navigating conflict, building resilience and to promote a safe and caring learning environment. Denisa joined the program in September of 2021 as a practicum student and became a full time staff member just one year later. “I was completing my diploma in social work and had a practicum component that I needed to finish. With UFV, you say what you’re interested in and they reach out to different organizations in order to find a placement. I had said that I wanted to work with youth in the school system and so they put me in touch with ARJAA. After about a week of doing the work with the students, I just fell in love with this organization and what it does.”

Rather than having a focus on controlling the students’ behaviour, restorative action is centered on the development of relational attributes. This work aims to build a stronger school community by focusing on equipping students with the necessary skills to cope with the conflict that naturally arises in a school setting.

“When I first started, I couldn’t believe that something like this program actually existed and that it was actively used within our schools. Every time I facilitate our programming with youth, I think to myself, I WISH that I had this when I was in school. I wish someone would have told me that conflict was okay, that being assertive was okay. I’m a textbook (recovering) people pleaser and I wish that I could have had someone tell me that saying “no” is actually a healthy thing to do, that my emotions are okay, that I’m allowed to feel big things.”

In Denisa’s experience, conflict is a natural part of life. Understanding it, and yourself as a part of it, is what complicates matters. “Youth often just need to be heard. Just to have a program that helps them learn to manage conflict, communication, friendships, and how to be assertive in a healthy way is incredible…to be able to do this while supporting our teachers in creating that safe learning environment is very rewarding.”

The work of restorative action in schools is twofold in focus: prevention and intervention, and is facilitated in all eight public middle schools in Abbotsford. Prevention work is rooted in dialogue circles wherein students are engaged in discussion and activities to build relational skills, such as communication and conflict resolution strategies. These skills assist students in better managing their relationships both at school and in all of their circles of belonging.

Intervention work takes the practices of restorative justice and modifies them to work with students in situations of conflict within the school community. These conferences or mediations are an excellent real life application of the skills youth learn in the dialogue circles. For students who need extra assistance in learning the skills presented in the learning circles, ARJAA offers one-to-one Conflict Coaching.

When asked what a day in an RA position is like, Denisa explains that every day, every student or class, is different. Some days are dedicated to the facilitation of the learning circles that raise awareness and engage students in dialogue covering various topics related to the social competencies necessary to succeed in school and in everyday life. Topics include Values and Attitudes, Emotions and Empathy, Communication Skills, Conflict Resolution and Bullying and Mean Behaviour. “These circles are often with grades 6 and 7, and what I love about this age group is that they are so capable of thinking deeply. They just need to be challenged to and they will. I have learned so much from pre-teens… I’ll ask them difficult questions that don’t sit well and they will actually think it through and come up with answers that get me thinking. They just need to be asked and given the space. It’s not me teaching-its all of us talking together through principles, thinking outside the box, engaging in activities and games to further that learning.”

Other days will consist of the program’s intervention components: Restorative Youth Conferencing, Conflict Coaching, or Bullying Interventions.

“For these, I work on referrals from administrators and teachers for one on one sessions. Some are mediations between two individuals, others are more. This usually happens after an incident and the school has asked me to work with these youth to help them work through the conflict after it’s occurred so that they can work through it in a healthy way. Sometimes we just need to equip them with the tools to make a different choice in the future, when conflict does arise.”

Restorative Interventions, alternatives to traditional disciplinary approaches that aim to respond pro-actively and restoratively to student wrong-doing, address the behaviour and the impacts on the school community; promote responsible conduct, as well as resolve conflicts, restore relationships and build bridges for student reintegration and a healthy school community.

For Denisa, an important part of this process is encouraging face-to-face conversation. “With social media and technology it’s something that youth aren’t always used to. I normalize for them that it will feel uncomfortable and that’s okay. I share with them that after this conversation it’s probably going to feel a lot better and that they’re going to learn some important skills as a result. I have them visualize what moving past a conflict can look like too. Oftentimes they don’t know how to recover from a conflict because it can feel so big.”

At the end of the day Denisa, and others like her who facilitate this program in schools, hope to simply help our youth explore and identify underlying issues or concerns contributing to their behaviour and attitudes.

Because when we understand ourselves, we can better understand others.

We can more easily build a shared understanding.

And from a shared understanding comes the empathy for others that is necessary to create positive change.

“When we can help our youth dig deep and understand themselves, we give them the ability to understand others. We give them the ability to feel confidence that they do have a voice in the things that are bothering them,” Denisa explains. “In a process we ask them things like: Are emotions okay? Is anger a necessary emotion? Why do we need communication? Why would you need it at school with teachers, friends, with parents, in a job setting? What causes conflict? What does it mean to actually be a good listener? What does it mean to be a good friend?”

Youth are also encouraged to explore their values. Moral compasses that guide individuals, communities, and societies in their beliefs, choices, and actions, these systems of deeply held principles and convictions play a crucial role in shaping our identities, influencing our decisions, and impacting the world around us.

When we teach our young people how to find out who they are, what matters to them, we build an innate leadership within them. This sense of self, of responsibility for themselves and for others, is an integral piece of building strong, safe communities in the future.

“I think that the people who work with youth have such a vital role in society because they are working with the next generation. I consider the fact that I’m working with the kids who could very well be the next leaders, the next teachers. We’re helping them to develop the interpersonal skills so key to their future. We help them understand that it’s okay not to be friends with, or even like, everybody. But here’s how to handle that. Because you don’t get to choose your classmates, just like you don’t get to choose your co-workers. These lessons will see them through more than just their middle school years. We have to normalize that conflict is okay, that it can be healthy.”

“Conflict actually helps us to understand the other person even more. If we avoid conflict, we don’t get to that level of deeper understanding of the other person. When we build understanding, we build empathy.”