Want to build trust in your gatherings?

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Dr. Robert Spicer arrived late to his third-grade classroom in Chicago. Overwhelmed with worry for his family in New York as news of the attacks unfolded, he tried desperately to hide his tears from his students.

At the time, educators in high-poverty neighborhoods were expected to be tough and command the classroom. Chicago Public Schools also had a zero-tolerance policy where teachers were encouraged to remove students who for their misbehavior could be “suspended, expelled, or arrested in order for us to teach the remaining students to reach their full potential,” Dr. Spicer explains.

But that day, one student noticed his teacher’s distress. Antwoine, a student whom other teachers had warned would be a troublemaker, quietly stepped up. He grabbed Dr. Spicer’s pointer, led his classmates through their morning math and science routines, and gathered the children in a circle on the reading rug to read his favorite picture book entitled “No, David.” Then, Antwoine brought Dr. Spicer into the reading Circle.

“I told the students about what was happening in New York and my fear for my family’s safety. And before I knew it, I began to talk about my parents. And then we started talking about their parents,” Dr. Spicer says. When another student, Percy, looked out the window at the Sears Tower and nervously asked if they were going to be attacked, Dr. Spicer promised to protect them. Percy then asked, “When I feel bad, my mommy hugs me. Can we hug you?” 

Breaking the formal rules against physical affection, every student wrapped their arms around Dr. Spicer. “It was at that moment that I realized that my approach was wrong,” Spicer reflects. “That the mentor teachers that were teaching me and telling me that you have to be hard and tough with these young people in order to get the best out of them was wrong. What we needed to do was to build relationships.”

That epiphany reshaped Dr. Spicer’s entire career. He left teaching to design programs that diverted young people away from the juvenile justice system. He later worked to help schools transition away from zero tolerance policies toward restorative practices, which are strategies that help build relationships and repair those relationships if damaged.

Central to this work are Circles. Rooted in Indigenous wisdom, Circles offers an intentional structure for slowing down, listening deeply, and creating space for people to connect. Dr. Spicer, in his work as the Culture and Climate Coordinator at Christian Fenger High School, set up a “Peace Room” designed to help students resolve disputes before they turned into suspensions or violence. “In the Peace Room was an actual standalone circle with a rock, a rug and talking pieces placed on the rug in the center of the Circle. The students knew that the Circle was always accessible,” he describes.

Rather than pushing students away when they made mistakes, Circles gave them space to take accountability and give sincere apologies. “What you’re telling children is that we care about you and that no matter what mistake you make, you’re not a mistake,” Spicer says. A Brookings report later found that introducing restorative practices into Chicago Public Schools “led to a 19% decrease in the number of overall student arrests and a 15% decrease in the number of arrests out of school.”

Today, Dr. Spicer helps groups build restorative cultures through his consulting company, Restorative Strategies, LLC. Dr. Spicer also partnered with Weave and K Scarry of Trust Labs to create a free, self-paced course on Creating Meaningful Gatherings in the Weave Learning Center on Weaving Us. The course guides you through the steps on how to craft a meaningful gathering for your context, and offers models to try, like the circles process.

Ready to deepen your gatherings? Join a free 3-part workshop series starting Nov. 12 hosted by Dr. Spicer, K Scarry, and Weave’s Shaden Dowiatt. You will learn basic facilitation skills, tips for navigating hard moments, and hands-on guidance from Dr. Spicer on facilitating Circles.