Before We Decide, We Have to Listen
How educator Vikki Kent brings restorative questions into moments of behavioral crisis and the IEP process.
In this second of a two-part article, we continue exploring Vikki Kent’s work at the intersection of restorative justice and neurodiversity. Part One examined how circles can make meaningful participation possible for every student. Here, we explore what happens when that same commitment to student voice moves beyond the circle.
When a student is in crisis, adults often begin searching for an immediate solution. How do we calm the student? What intervention should come next?
Vikki Kent begins somewhere else.
“What happened?”
Then she listens.
Vikki is a stabilization coach with Framingham Public Schools. She runs a crisis-response line for behavioral emergencies and is often called when a student is already highly escalated. In practice, this means she enters at one of the most difficult points: a student may be yelling, swearing, striking out, or unable to communicate what is wrong, while the adults present work to understand what happened and determine what to do next.
For students who communicate without speech, those adults may not yet have the familiarity needed to recognize what the student is communicating or understand what they need in that moment. The student could be overwhelmed, hungry, distressed by the noise in the room, or reacting to something no one else saw.
In the urgency of the moment, behavior can overshadow the student’s experience. Vikki asks what happened and lets the answer come however it can. It may come through yelling, swearing, silence, or blame. She does not require a perfectly calm account before taking the student’s perspective seriously.
That does not mean accountability disappears. It means accountability does not begin with adults deciding what happened without the student.
When the questions become familiar
A familiar set of restorative questions guides Vikki’s response:
What happened?
Who was affected, and how?
What needs to happen to make things right?
In a previous role, Vikki worked at a school where students became so familiar with these questions that they sometimes asked and answered them before she could.
A call would come over the walkie-talkie. Vikki would arrive, and a student would step into the hallway with her. Before she could begin, the student would say, “What happened?” and start telling the story. Then: “Who did I harm?” The student would begin naming the impact while Vikki waited.
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The questions belonged to the students too. For neurodivergent students, that familiarity and repetition can be especially important. Used consistently, the questions become a predictable way to process what happened and communicate a perspective before adults interpret the behavior.
A student who becomes overwhelmed may be described as disruptive. A student who responds literally may appear defiant. A student who cannot explain an experience in the way adults expect may have everyone else reconstruct it for them. Vikki begins with a different assumption: the student has a perspective worth hearing, even when reaching it requires time, patience, observation, or another form of communication.
When the student disappears from the meeting
Vikki sees a similar dynamic in the IEP process, as both an educator and a parent. Too often, she is invited only after the relationship between a family and a school has become strained. The school may be defending its decisions, the family may be defending its child, and the child can become strangely absent from a conversation about their own education.
Vikki believes the restorative work should begin earlier. Ask families what they want for their child, what the child does well, and where they hope to see growth. Most importantly, ask the student.
When Vikki worked with middle school students, she asked them before their IEP meetings, “What do you want to say?” Many initially assumed their role was to sit quietly while adults talked. But once invited, they had plenty to contribute. They knew what helped them learn, what frustrated them, and what they hoped high school would be like. They had not lacked a perspective. No one had asked for it.
Bringing a child’s voice into the room
Vikki experienced the power of that invitation as a parent when one of her daughter’s special educators interviewed her before an IEP meeting. The educator asked what she wanted to learn, what she hoped to improve, and what she wanted for herself in the coming year.
Vikki’s daughter wanted to build friendships and feel more connected to her school community. The educator brought those goals into the meeting and returned to them at the next one, sharing what the child believed she had accomplished and what she still wanted to work on.
The educator did not ask the child to manage the technical demands of an IEP meeting. She ensured that the meeting could not proceed as though the child had nothing to say. The meeting did not merely describe her. It included her.
Vikki sometimes imagines an IEP meeting conducted in a circle. The required forms, goals, assessments, services, and decisions would stay the same. But people might sit in a way that reinforces their shared commitment to the student. A talking piece could create space for each person to speak and listen. Families could name their hopes alongside the school’s recommendations, and students could contribute by speaking, writing, drawing, using a device, or preparing something in advance.
The point would not be to stage a restorative ritual. It would be to change the relationships within the meeting.
Listening before the relationship breaks down
Schools often turn to restorative practice after a student has escalated, a family has become frustrated, or trust has begun to erode. Vikki’s work suggests that restorative listening is most powerful when it begins earlier.
In a crisis, that means asking what happened before building the entire story around the behavior adults witnessed. In an IEP process, it means asking students and families what they understand, value, and hope for before deciding what support should look like.
Part One of this series showed how Vikki prepares circles to receive different forms of participation. The same responsibility extends beyond the circle. Students are not merely recipients of support or subjects of decisions. They are participants in what happens next.
And before we decide what that should be, we have to listen.
Nkasi Wodu PhD. writes for the Center for Restorative Justice, Suffolk University, Boston.
