>> Jennifer Peterson: If you have colleagues that you would like to share this learning later, you can send them WebJunction where all the webinars as well as library-specific courses are hosted for free for folks who work or volunteer in libraries. Thank you to support from OCLC and state library Agencies across. It is an excellent way to stay up to date on all things WebJunction. Today's session also has a learner guide that you can use to extend your learning on the topic. It is created with questions to help you discuss with others or consider on your own. It helps you apply your learning to your practice, provide some motivation and attainable goals, it could be customtized. If you have specific questions or steps you would like your library to take, you can customize the guide. I am excited to introduce today's presenters, stephen Jackson and Tatiana Swancy. Tatiana is our restorative Practices Coordinator. We are so glad to have both of you here today. Welcome, thank you so much. 

>> Stephen Jackson: Hello, everyone. We are happy to have you here today. Take a deep breath. We are here, I don't know how many people are here at the moment. 

Last I checked was about 40 something.

It is good to have this many people in this space. 

As I share in the chat, I am honored to be here. Next slide. 

>> Tatiana Swancy: Do you see the next slide? 

>> Stephen Jackson: I have now. For those who do not know much of Oak Park.

It is a western suburb of the Chicago land area. It is located about five square files of land, west of the Austin community. 

Okay, Bethany, Oak Park, you know what it is. West of the community of Chicago. What is unique is you can see there is 52,000 residents in Oak Park. What is unique is various around community and disparity and education and it is very unique. It has about 52,000 residents. 96% of that population have a high school education. 70% have an undergraduate degree and the median income is a little over $94,000 annually. 7% live in poverty. Then, you have Austin community to the east of Oak Park going into the city has a little bit more than oak park. There are almost 100,000 residents, 97,000 residents, 36% have a high school diploma. The median income is $31,000. So, that is on the east side, east border of Oak Park. We go to the west border at Forest Park as well as oak park and River Forest. I will talk about River Forest which has a little bit over 10,000 people. 99% have a high school diploma and 80% have a graduate degree and the median income is under $29,000 annually. 3% live in poverty. Then, we have in to the north and west, we have Gayle wood which is the Chicago area. Forest Park is to the west of Oak Park. Median income is hovering at $62,000 annually and poverty rate is between 9% to 12%. I will let that sit with you.

The reason why I mention it to you is because the information is really relevant to some of the resources we are providing at Oak Park public library.

It gives you a snapshot of what things actually are when you see in the community and 28% live in poverty. You see 70% in Oak Park and the smallest 3% living in River Forest are at the poverty level. That shows you the distinct and disparity between the surrounding communities. 

Not only that less than 50 yards away from the front of our building, we have a metro line, and we have a public transportation line that runs from if west side of Chicago to the south side of Chicago. Then, more than three miles down, we have another public transportation which runs along the highway, most people call it 290 but some people call it the Heroin Highway. I just want to share this snapshot just so you will have a context of what we are sharing about when we are talking about Oak Park, Illinois. Next slide. Oh, this is the time where I will open the space for Tatiana to share a little bit of who you are. 

I see you are all active in the chat. There will be some time where I will ask questions. If you can remain active in the chat, I truly appreciate that. We talk about restorative practices and justices, it is about relationships. I find it personally kind of hard to receive information from someone. I find it more difficult, not hard, but a little more difficult to receive information from someone that I just don't know anything about. So, I am pretty sure maybe a few of you may have looked me up online or Tatiana online so you know a little something about us. We'll share a little bit more about who we are. So, I am going to open up to Tatiana and we'll go and ask a few questions and if you can respond in the chat, we truly appreciate. I am about to hit send in the chat for the first question. 

>> Tatiana Swancy: Thank you, stephen. I am going to say three words or phrases.

I will say I have a dog that I talk about all the time. I love very much. I live in a big city which in Chicago specifically outside of a park and I am married. I will turn it over to stephen and some great photos. 

>> Stephen Jackson: Thank you, Tatiana. These are my three identities. What I am seeing here is learners and big surprise. I am a four of four boys. I mean -- I have three boys. You can see on the first picture. 

My fourth child is over in the far right. He's my oldest son. Aiden and we have stephen Jr. And our newest addition is Sofia. I am a four of three boys and one girl. I am a husband, I am a twin. If you look at the far left on the middle picture, that's my twin sister. Her name is stephanie. She is from Colleen, Texas. I have an older sister in Africa. I have Ahmadmiddle sister living in Oak Park. Those are my identities that I share. 

Tatiana, are you seeing in this chat as well? 

>> Tatiana Swancy: I am seeing in the chat, there is a lot of great identity here. 

>> Stephen: I see you are doubling down. The TLC referencereference. I see y'all. 

Shout-out to y'all breaking the ice. This is a check-in. There is several questions that I ask to check in that's a restorative practice and we'll get in a little bit more of what restorative practice are. I appreciate you all and all the people in the chat and having access to it are sharing who you are. We are getting to know a little bit more about you all. The thing that I am going to sound and don't go out on a limb.

I am going to say we have a bunch of learners and readers. Shoutout to my learners and readers. Next slide. 

>> Tatiana Swancy: I see a lot of people who are identifying as disabled and QUEER, and different accessibilitys and I love how assessable this program is and the diversity that we have with us right now. 

So, stephen and I are going to explore these objectives. Exactly what are restorative Justice and Restorative Practices. Oak park public Library's restorative and implementation. What you can do in your own library institutions and in your life. Back to you, stephen.

>> Stephen: Thank you, Tatiana. I am going to read off the side. You can read what restorative justice is and I am going to give you a little background of what restorative justice is and practice. In the chat, how many of you are familiar of restorative justice and in what context? Let me see it in the chat and I will look through the chat after I finish my little explanation. So, for those who'll be typing yes in the chat, restorative justice is a term that was coined by a man named Robert E. 

Glass in 1959. The term was new at that time, but the practice was not new at all. The indigenous people of the Americas were all too familiar of the process of healing, but not only physically but mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. They believe in order to exist and have optimum health and balance of those four quadrants of humanity, that's what the indigenous people of Americas believe. We borrow many things from these people. We did not do an announcement today but shoutout to the ancestor who came beforewho came before us and offered to be on this land, I appreciate you, ancestorancestors, thank you. You may be familiar of the term medicine-will. They use the term called "sacred circle," anybody is familiar with this and "medicine wheel," it is becoming more popular. 

Medicine today for the indigenous people meant power. They thought it is in every living thing. 

Anything that's living there is power. Appreciate that. So, there is an ailment in the community of indigenous community and healing was done. All power were in the middle of the circle. Figurative, it is us as an individual. So, if you look at the definition of what I said restorative justice is. You can look at it being a reactive way of making sure that healing takes place when harm is done. It is reactive in nature. When we are talking about in the context we are using these terms, we'll talk about restorative justice and a reaction to a perceiveperceived harm of the person. We are including anyone who had any tangents to relation or impacted by the harm. As a therapist, I have seen and have clients who have been bystanders of instances of harm but have never recovered from the traumatic instances of those harms. Restorative justice is a way to get therapist and getting all party involved and the person who will apart of the situation can get some type of healing. As I look through, I can see some of you have shared. Amy and public school is a really big place and one of the major places of the people here in restorative justices the mainly because of senate Bill 100 where they had alternative solutions from a suspension. That was a strategy a lot of the schools specifically in Chicago are using so that black and brown boys were getting suspended in schools. They know the disproportionatetylity who showed up. That's the first contact of people here of the term of restorative Justice. With Restorative Practices, shoutout to the Houston schools with Dr. 

Wald in the group there in the picture in 2016 whn we did our circle in our books in the discussion room. 

When we talk about Restorative Practices, I would like to make a distinction between what restorative Justice is and restorative Practice is. 

When we talk about these practices, we don't always want to be only when we -- we want to be proactive. That's where we'll talk to you about coming into place. 

Restorative Practices, a proactive way from preventing both instances of harm from happening. So, I would like to give practical examples of Restorative Practices. In my seven years of being in the library world, there is a common thing and say "yes" if you agree and "no" if you disagree. A common thing in a library world is how to handle team behavior. I am not a librarian, I forgot to put that disclaimer. The chat is going. Yes, yes, 100%. 

That's the theme. I am not mistaken with that. That's why you are here. 

Hopefully, we can give you practical solutions and hopefully, you are coming to L.A. this year so we can meet. When we talk about team behaviors, you know there are - I do want to add there are several rock star libraries across the nation, who are doing a really rock star job handling the behavior of that specific population of patrons whose brains who are not even developed. 

When we talk about teens, their brains are not developed. They come into our public library spaces and in some cases are causing mayhem is to use the light term. The library is doing a stellar job. I can imagine that the people who are doing the stellar job with teens are more than likely using Restorative Practices whether consciously or unconsciously. They are using Restorative Practices to mitigate. What I have found the organizations who are doing an amazing job are implementing these Restorative Practices by proactive attending to the specific needs of that patron's demographics. In the case of our public library and also I would like to preface this, our public library in Illinois are not a utopia. We don't have all the answers. I am going to share some cases. 

In our cases, things have been working, and we are working to get where we want to be. What we did as an organization that's restorative practice that's focused in ways to create and welcoming environments for a team of demographics.

Prior to 2020, we did not have a dedicated space. I am going to say that again.

We did not have a dedicated team space prior to 2020. 

It never existed. One of the first things we did was when we realized that we wanted to make this an intentional and wanted to create this space, we separated teen services from adult services because they were combined. We created a team, we did outreach and went out into the community and we'll talk more about outreach and what's happening in the community and find out what they need. That's one of the first things we did. We went out to the community and formulated an advisory board.

That's one of the first steps we did. That's a Restorative Practice because we are going outside of ourselves and we are building a relationship for people who we did not have a relationship, otherwise. We made sure that advisory board have a voice. They chose what the space looked like and they chose anything that had anything to do with the space that would ultimately become their space. We also created an engaging activities such as a local creation competition and we challenged the teens to create a logo for the teen services department. We gave three levels of winners of first, second, and third place. The winner was chosen to use the leading gauge. They created a logo.

There was a sense of pride.

The community that was never really -- I am not going to say value but it didn't seem to them they were valued due to the infrastructure. When you get to be 30 or my age, we are not going to say how old I am, you can bring your kids to the library and say I created that when I was 13. Something that's lasting and the impact they could have and something that they can be proud of is a restorative Practice, they are buying what we are doing in there. And, we are here to serve them as well as we are to serve the adults, and we know our most pride population in the libraries are the littles.

I am sure you can think of your organizations has had an initiative to build relationships with people and the communities they belong to. Restorative practices are not contingent harm being done.

They are actions preventing harm from being done through building a relationship. Before I move to the next slide, I want to use an overused analogy that I want you to think about. Look at every human, it is about relationships. 

Look at every human as being a book. You can judge a book by its appearance. 

You can. All of us readers and learners, you can judge the book by its appearance and you can review the book by someone you read or you can read an exert from the book. There is several ways to find out about a book. 

There is nothing actually like going from cover to cover. I like to use this term, everyone has a story.

Always remember that when you are dealing with people. Everyone has a story. You know you see the outside, you see the cover of each one of us books but you know there is intricate intricacies this side these books and how it is. I am going to pass it to Tatiana sharing more of our Restorative Journey. 

>> Tatiana Swancy: For the rest of our timing here, we'll focus on the earlier years. Earlier, stephen discussed of the indigenous group of Restorative Justice and the belief that balance is essential to our well-being as humans. We believe that the same thing is true for our libraries and institutions. So, a library, we could say that needs to be healthy in all aspects to be restorative. 

We focus on different things. How our library engages with its community.

How the library as an organization treats its own staff. The types of the relationship that the library enables staff to build with each other. So, we break down our journey in these four ways, turning outwardoutward, informing, intention, and focusing internally. I will let stephen talk about "turning outwardoutward." 

>> Stephen Jackson: Turning outaard is not a new term. 

I don't know if many are familiar With Harwood. We really focus on how we can turn outward towards the community on the organizations that we intend to focus on. How many y'all are familiar? 

Yes, I see Sarah, you are familiar. Anybody else, please check it out. 

Harwood is doing an amazing work. Please check him out of what he's doing across the country with always engaging with the community. The Harwood Practice is grounded in the philosophy of the term Civic Aid.

It is the concept of putting people, community, and the shared responsibility at the center of our shared lives.

So, you would see a theme and how I connect each one of the themes are the topics that we talk about are restorative in nature. 

I don't know if Harwood Institute have been labeled as restorative but I am going to say that. When you are talking about the people, community, and shared responsibilities, I don't know how much restorative that could get.

So, we are thinking about libraries and we are thinking about these organizations, look at some of the things that you are already doing within your organization, a lot of things will be in the strategic planning if you have one and your vision and your values. So, I wrote an article for the library journal several years ago and we did share that resources well. You can look at some of the ways that you can go about to see with where your organization is doing restorative practices. 

Thank you very much, WebJunction for saying that. Putting Faith in the practice, we have to turn outward which is getting out and having conversations where people are at and not just our physical library space, though. Sometimes it is the community of. Libraries can be the community of where everybody can go to get the information. You want to get out into the community where the people are. As I said, this will look different in different communities. In my community, we have a lot of festivals and they go on all year around and in particular in the summer, we have a whole bunch more.

We have a book-invite that frequents a block party and we have a whole team that Tatiana is apart of called "community engagement" where we focus on getting out into the community as well as Tatiana sharing some of these initiatives how we focus on our staff. 

In reality, our staffs are the ones who are addressing the public. We do focus on the liberty of what we are doing internally as an organization. Next slide. 

You may know that person to the left there. That would be me when I was younger, thank you. When I was younger, a little older now, that was seven years ago -- a few kids more. The person to the right of me is Robert Simmons. He's the director of social services and Public Safety. In 2016, we were the fourth library in the nation hiring social workers. We came behind Denver public, shoutout to Denver and D.C. public library and San Francisco, shout-out to them. We had conversations with them on a regular basis to discuss their model. As shared with you of the proximity of the library of what is considered, what is called the heroine highway and public transportation, there were several behaviors that we noticed that were not aligned with what we wanted the library to represent as a community. The thing is and with social services, we didn't criminalize or do not cast judgment on patrons who would show up in a certain way. We connected them and gave them a warm hand-off to people within the community who can empower them to access housing and employment opportunities. 

Accessing services, early childhood and mental health support. We talk about mental health support, that's one of the critical place and key components of what we saw and looking at what we see showing up in our spaces. People suffering mental health issues as well as people experiencing homelessness and substance abuse. The barrier. We had a barrier in the community that through a lot of agencies, there was no infrastructure to give a baseline assessment which was needed for a lot of those vulnerable patrons to get housing. We proactively sought all these. We were reaching out and building Restorative Practices and reaching out and building relationships with people so we can feel that void and serving our people coming up to our library spaces. We listened to our community and found out what they needed and put in the action place to fill in that void. What ended up happening is we built a partnership at the university of medical center with on-site professions that you can conduct with for free. 

Those assessment can cost really costly. Shout-out to the Rust Medical Center providing this free mental health assessment. 

Listening to the community helped us come up with this resource and we partner with the organization to serve this specific demographic and avoid that barrier that did not allow them to be needing of housing needs and other needs they get. Listen to the community and find out what they are is what we do readily. We do it in many different iterations. 

>> Tatiana Swancy: If we have security guards, which you may want to talk about that. That's a great question because we have evolved on that as well. 

>> Stephen Jackson: We do not call them security guards because they are not necessarily securing anything. A lot of libraries do a lot of things. Some of them doing illegal things - the model that we have was a monitor and remove methodology. 

Now, we have and we ask, hey, what can we do and how can we serve you. An outreach model. We are not looking to kick people out.

We are looking to resource them. A lot of times people show up in that way because they don't have the resources. Sometimes it is.

A person does not need to be there if you are going to come there causing harm and not willing to reconcile that harm with the people who you are causing harm to. We do have and we call them public safety. They were initially called security. Now, we call them public safety because they are there for the community as well as the staff. Yes, we do have people coming around and more about outreach to people. They know people and our regulars, they regularly know and someone comes around, they build relationships. They wear khakis and Polo shirts. 

Recently, they recently had body Cams as well. They have body Cams -- the main reason was just for accountability purposes. 

Sometimes we would need assistance and the assistance would show up in different ways and we want people to be accountable. 

Not just the patron but people who show up on the space -- into the space. 

>> Tatiana: We have a lot more to cover so I am going to move on. They do not carry a weapon. What I have seen is it is important that we think our public safety team to take the time to get to know our patrons so they know them and they know who we can refer them to if they do need to be excluded. It varies depending on how long. That is excluded before they can return and hopefully, use our services. Unless, you want to add anything more, stephen or I will move on. 

We also look at our collections for ways to to be restorative and applicable. One way that we are proud of is our multi-cultural collection. 

In 2016, Oak Park Elementary and middle school district gave the library ownership of its collection of artifacts from around the world. And since then, we have curuated and grown the collection and donated by members. We house our collection at one of the branches, a couple of photos here. Some of the items include dolls, games, textiles, art work, even have some musical instruments, they can almost all be checked out by patrons, or teachers or other community organizations for learning purposes. The idea is as we say, we are people in the community, you can go be yourself and reflected and you can also learn about other cultures in a way that's intangible and hopefully, this helps build empathy and understanding. 

We have a multi-cultural learning operator. Our main library is a small room that is in the lobby or right outside the lobby. 

You can't miss it if you are walking into the library. She often collaborates with other community members. She used displays honoring our cultures and events like Ramadan and other events. 

Then -- another way that we have worked to really be acquitable and accessible. 

Our library became fine-free. Meaning that we eliminated late fee materials.

For us, we really saw it as an equity issue. We saw that fines are often impacted our patrons who could -- who have the hardest time paying back. 

It made a lot of interactions between patrons and staff very stressful. It also impacted hard as many of you have seen families who trying to check out a lot of materials at once. If they are late, those fines can add up. Also for us we were in a good position because fines were only accounting for about 1% of our revenues stream so we could practically ruled that out without changing our ability to serve our community. We implemented other ways that encourages patrons to return their materials which some of you may be doing it at your own library or familiar with. 

Those ways include suspending your library card if you have more than three items that were due until they are returned. We started doing automatic renewal which where we'll renew items up to five times unless it is a special item like a hot pick or another patron puts a hold on it. Doing this has made and really improved our relationships and made patrons happier. 

It has not had any remarkable effects on items not being returned. So, we have not seen a negative consequence like that. We did implement proof-reading up to 50 pages and we still do that. Now, I will turn it over to stephen. 

>> Stephen Jackson: I want to share a restorative practice that we did in 2017. I came in the library in 2016, and I was working with several demographic patrons and looking for a creative way to engage with the community, just in a different way. People who have gone through a lot whether losing housing or not able to get a haircut, it can provide a sense of control as well as emotional release and changing people's hair style can be a powerful tool helping to redefine or solidify people's identity.

Haircuts can boost our confidence and making you feel better about yourself and you can mark a new beginning and literally be symbolic of a sign of letting go. There were people who I personally have seen that were confidence I think going to job interviews because they received a haircut. The image that the bottom of your screen was the first page of the haircut. If you could not tell, this person is identified as a woman. 

Everyone was able to patronize the barbershop. 

We were very happy about that. While in the space, we were sitting in circle and discuss what the public wanted to talk about or having guests come in sharing resources. How we connect and what I did, you can see we have assessable in the top picture and people assessable coming in and people who may have had disabilities. I reached the local barbershop at the Oak Park in the community. You can promote your barber shop and we'll pay you a flat rate for the first half of the day. We'll cut adults and anyone else. 

After school time, we'll cut things - just so we can be equitable. Teens are in school all day. There was one patron in particular that got the first haircut.

The mother decided to have her son to have his first haircut at the public library. It was really cool to see. We provided the space for people. Next slide. Your library is unique to you if you do the research and you talk to the community, you can find out what you need. We have quite a budget as you can see of the median income of where we are at. We have $11 million budget annually. We have resources and we are in the urban environment. We only have three libraries, three branches, three public sites, main and two branches. We just have resources to be able to do some things. I want to be mindful of that. I have shared with you prior to entering the library world, I bring those two methodologies of every space that I am in. Ill get questions regularly of peace circles and Tatiana will share about. Just in general of what restorative justice is. So, in 2018, we decided to start our annual restorative justice conference. In 2028, it was restorative Justice and in 2019 it was Restorative Community Practice building stronger schools and communities. That was a three-day conference, after our library is closed, we open it up to the community, having food and child care and families in.

We had school the next day.

We had communities and that was a day for us. Those are three days in 2018. In 2019, it was something we'll never do again. In 2020, we had a month's long restorative conferences, we had three sessions per week. We know it was covid and people needed that support. In 2021, we had a team-led Restorative Practices Justice. RestoraRestoration was the theme of that. This year in 2022, we'll resume our annual restorative conference. I will share details with you about that as it becomes available. 

>> Tatiana: Thank you, stephen. A little bit about my role. I have been at the library in 2015, in different roles, proficients and in January of 2021, I became the library's first restorative practice Coordinator. It was a new position that I was able to create with my manager at the time. I would also say the library was ready to that kind of role because of all the steps that we had taken and if work that people and stephen and the other people at the library to feel that foundation. My role was created in restorative programming. In my job, I was focus on well-being, social justice, arts and that's it for everyone, often centering and amplifying the needs and lives and stories and our community members who identify as black initiative or people of color. In practice, I often intentionally work with facilitators and community members, leaders and artists to identify and put on programming and I try to partner with the organization or community members who have similar goals. Then, also which we are going to talk about more now is a big part of my work has involved in Peace Circles which our way to help build the community and understanding among participants. So, I should talk more about that. The end of 2020 until now, we have offered peace circles for staff that's led by staff and for staff. I am curious if many of you have participated in a peace circle, if you have, welcome to say "yes" in the chat. And so in 2020 and 2021, as we all know, it was extremely challenging times for all of us. The pandemic with racial and social injustice issues have been frustrating for a long time.

So, for anyone who has not done a circle or one little refresher briefly, a peace circle as we practice them is inspired by indigenous practices, and North America and other places where people would gather in a little circle to discuss community issues. 

Whoever have the talking peace was able to speak without interruption and everybody was able to have the talking piece. Everyone gets a chance to speak and listen, which is equally as important. In our circles, we would sit in a circle, ideally, during covid we had them virtually. Now, we have integrated going back into it. A facilitatr or me or stephen would ask a question and pass the talking piece around. You can choose to speak or pass. Also, vital is that everyone were sitting in the circle agree to share their values and guidelines such as only speaking when it is your turn and respecting the confidentiality of the safe space that's been created. 

I know we only have five minutes left. I will say briefly of some circles we have held have been inspired by anti-racist attempts like the 1916 project, we did a circle on racial identity. That was very well received. We have done circles in response to current events. And - now, to talk about how the library has gotten so many people trained in circles, let stephen begin because he started all of that. 

>> Stephen Jackson: I will be brief of the rest of our time. You can look on our resource page for information. When I startstarted - [Indiscernible ] 

>> [ Audio is breaking up] 

] 

>> Tatiana Swancy: Oh, sounds like we have a little bit of your audio. 

We can hear you a little bit and it cuts off. 

>> Stephen: We do have a community practice. You can join and find more information. The information is in the resource guide. You can go to the slides so we can get some questions. 

>> Tatiana Swancy: I will do that. So, I will just take a quick moment because I did see some questions, and we'll invite you to e-mail us on the last slide. The circles, it depends, we have the staff circle, and it is just for staff which I think is very important. If you are going to do a staff circle like to address the needs of your staff. We also have circles for the public and staff are invited to attend. It is for the public to see the main goal. So, with this I will just talk a little bit about family and community circles. We have done three series of circles the library have done. We train in a small group of students, middle school to college who are interested in the principles of circles, not a full training but the principles. We invite them to work with us to facilitate these communities of circles or conversations and these in particular are inspired by an anti-racist We hope people read it before they come. 

It is based on your own personal experience because as stephen says, we all have a story. That's what circles are really grounded on. And, I should also add these family community circles are a grand-funded.

There is a photo of the last one that we were able to hold in person. I will turn it over to stephen. 

>> Stephen Jackson: Can y'all hear me? 

>> Tatiana Swancy: Yes, much better. 

>> Stephen Jackson: We work with the local court to mitigate certain situations that happens in the community with the community members and the patrons. We only have done one but it helps us mitigate community and verses our community justice. Our public library is doing a wonderful job. 

Here is the community of practice that I was breaking up. You all can join and we have over 70 members. We have been meeting monthly since 2018.

The title of the call is called "restorative justice and restorative practices in public libraries," you can register to participate. With that being said -f I think that's the end, we'll open it I think that's the end, we'll open it up for some questions. Sorry we ran over and we only have a few minutes for questions. Shoot!

>> WebJunction host: You gave folks so much to think about. There was a quick question I thought was a good one, let's see -- have any internal OCLC policies have changed as a result of what staff have shared in staff circles? 

>> Stephen Jackson: Go ahead. Let me say this really quick. Our anti-racism community has really been there to instrument tallylly changing policies. Culture influences policies is what I would like to say. We'll be adding some of these languages into our policies. Yes, there is something to come in the future as long as our board agrees. 

>> Tatiana Swancy: The important part of our circles is it is confidential. That's one reason why it is so wonderful that our human resource directors have become trained because it is a whole different way of relating our staff to other people and we continue to get leadership and those making those policy changes change. There is also ways to integrate circle practices in your day-to-day work life. I see more and more in meetings doing a check-in or giving everyone the opportunity to share what they think. That kind of just, I think openness and trust that can be started with circles and training. I think can also lead to internal policy changes. Thank you. 

>> Tatiana SwancySwancy: Jennifer, you are on mute. 

>> Jennifer: There's still questions coming in. 

Stephen and Tatiana have offered their e-mails and we'll add more information they shared with us to their event page. That's where all the additional information will be collected. There are additional resources for learning as well. There is a really great webinar. 

Stephen mentioned the county public libraries work with teens. I encourage you to watch that webinar with that group as well. Lots of learning going on. I will send you all an e-mail later today once the recording is posted. I will send you an e-mail for attending, you don't need to request that.

I am going to send you a short survey as you leave. 

It will include this link. 

If you have to head back to the desk, know that you can find the survey link and the e-mail as well. We appreciate your feedback for this session. We'll share that with our presenters help us guide on our work. I also want to mention that questions around staff and library security and safety, there is a webinar scheduled for May, I am going to put that in the chat as well on the topic. Definitely register for that as well. Thank you so much, stephen and Tatiana, thank you for all the great work you are doing for your community and that you have brought this great work further out. I know you are continuing to work on this and how to share this learning. We'll continue to update the WebJunction community on additional resources that come from this fantastic work. Thank you so much!

CAPTIONING PERFORMED BY LNS CAPTIONING, www.LNScaptioning.com

	
Copyright © 2023
Show/Hide Header