Young leaders groomed at Woodland Hills
The fifth- and sixth-graders sat in hard metal chairs arranged in a wide circle on the concrete floor of a classroom at Woodland Hills Intermediate School on Friday.
Some slouched, some sat ramrod straight, some perched on the edge of their seats — but all 32 students kept their eyes on Shawn Thomas, the school’s restorative practice coordinator.
He and James Huguley, a professor of social work at the University of Pittsburgh, handpicked these kids for a pilot leadership program aimed at giving students conflict resolution and peer-mediation skills. They hope to reduce school suspensions and create a core group of student leaders who can become a stabilizing force in the intermediate school and, later, at Woodland Hills Junior/Senior High School,
which has been hard hit by violence recently.
The week after Thanksgiving, an eighth-grader and a junior at the high school were killed in separate shootings and a third student survived being shot in the abdomen.
Standing in the middle of the circle of students Friday, Mr. Thomas posed a question.
“What are some characteristics of a leader?”
Hands shot up and kids shouted back answers as they were called on. “Empathy!” “Smart!” “Focused!” Respect. Pride. Responsibility.
“Good,” Mr. Thomas said. “Here’s another. In what way are you a leader?”
He called on a sixth-grade girl.
“I try to make sure everyone is not fighting,” she said.
“Good,” Mr. Thomas said, and moved on. But after the session, when the students were gone, he took some delight in her answer.
“Literally, last year she was like the enforcer of the grade,” he said. She’d been in fights. But so far this year, he said, even when other students egg her on, she takes a step back and doesn’t fight.
“She comes from a hard background,” Mr. Thomas said. “And to see the maturity over the past few weeks, just by placing this responsibility on her, I’m in awe of her progress. We’re seeing these people that outsiders might look at as the culprits — we’re seeing change.”
Funded for three years by a $450,000 grant from the Heinz Endowments, the program, “Just Discipline,” is trying to disrupt the schoolto-prison pipeline, said Mr. Huguley, who founded it. The leadership group is one part of the multi-layered approach, he said.
Research shows that students who are suspended or expelled from school are more likely to become involved in the juvenile justice system — a2011 study of nearly 1 million students in Texas found that those suspended or expelled for a discretionary violation were three times more likely to have contact with the juvenile justice system in the followingyear.
Black students are also disproportionately more likely to be expelled and suspended, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has found, with black students suspended at three times the rate of white students.
There were 41 suspensions at Woodland Hills Intermediate between the start of the school year and the end of October, principal Allison Kline said. During that period last year, there were 53 suspensions. The school has about 600 students.
“Thekids in [Mr. Thomas’] group are less likely to act impulsively when there is a conflict,” Ms. Kline said. “They’re more likely, if they can’t talk it out themselves, to seeksomeone else to talk to.”
Mr. Huguley and Mr. Thomas started at the school in March, mostly to observe and plan, and really got the leadership group up and running at the start of this school year.
The students, selected from 89 applicants, meet with a facilitator in small groups once a week for about 20 minutes to learn leadership skills, Mr. Thomas said.
“We’re teaching them how they can influence their peers with skills they didn’t know they had,” Mr. Thomas said. “A lot already have a lot of influence, but sometimes it can go to the left.”
If the students in the program seriously misbehave, they’re kicked out, Mr. Thomas said. He has done that twice so far, for two boys who were suspended from school for fighting. Most kids in the group are on the honor roll.
Starting in January, the students will turn what they’ve learned into action. Some sixth-graders will mentor fourth-graders, and others will begin to lead formal methods of conflict resolution among their peers.
Part of the program also focuses on developing resilience and coping skills. The violence at Woodland Hills Junior/ Senior High School doesn’t exist in a vacuum — some of the older students who were slain had younger siblings at the intermediate school.
In Mr. Thomas’ leadership group alone, three students have lost immediate family members to gun violence.
“They don’t always have the skills to process those types of emotions,” Mr. Huguley said. “We’re talking about the high-profile events. But many of these kids have events in their lives all the time, every day, that don’t make the news, but that make it difficult for them to process and be ready and focused every day.”
He and Mr. Thomas hope that catching the students when they’re young will plant a seed of leadership and solid conflict resolution skills that will grow as the students do and follow them to high school.
“In fifth and sixth grade, they are just beginning to think about who they are and what their identity is,” Mr. Huguley said. “And we can get them at the beginning of that process.”