Through a Trauma-Informed Lens: A Discussion on Restorative Practices with Joe Brummer

Joe is an expert on restorative justice, restorative practices, and I just knew I was gonna fall in love with you anyway. I knew you were a person I needed to meet in my life. Now I'm very honored to call you a friend, and I'm so happy that you're here. I'm gonna let you introduce yourself and tell all the all the great things about you, and then we're gonna get into a few things.

Uh, so I'm Joe Bremmer. I'm a consultant, uh, working in the field of trauma-informed restorative practices. Um, but I'm also a husband, uh, doggy daddy, uh, brother, child abuse, survivor hate crime survivor, trauma survivor, uh, uh, healing focused, uh, person. Uh, I don't know. That's, that's probably all I could magically say about myself today.

Like let's create a world where a kid like me going through a bunch of crazy stuff that kids shouldn't go through would be okay. And so that has slowly become my sort of mission statement that I wanna make. I wanna create a world where, where a kid like me growing up in chaos and violence would've been okay. Yeah. Um, and not need.

I know you're a High ACEs score and not that ACEs are all encompassing, but it's a way to communicate, like we've been through some shit. Yeah. Right. And now we're holding space for adults who are also holding space for kids who are going through shit. And so when you're saying like, I am here to create a space for the, the little Joe. That's out there, out there to be okay and be all right in the world. What, what would that entail? What do adults need to know?

What kind of, how do adults need to show up for kids like

I think, I think we need to start with this notion that kids are not a blank slate. Hmm. We seem to look at kids and say we have to mold them, make them into some, they already are something. Mm-Hmm. You don't need to mold them. You don't need to like manipulate them. You don't need to twist them. You need to allow them, and, and I think, I guess that's the message I would want for people is like, that's already a little individual. You don't own them. You don't own them.

You don't get to tell them what they're gonna be in life. You don't get to tell them where they're going. Or like, we literally adultified kids right from the get go. We, we, we strip them of their identity and say that they're a blank slate and we're gonna mold them right away. You just strip their identity away from them. And, and then on top of that, we, we take kids and then we. We really legitimately think that they are strategic in being able to manipulate the world.

Yeah. But the assumption of children is dark and, and sinister and, and like children are these little evil things that we have to control. And like I just, I hate that view. So I guess the first thing, I think the first step of this whole process is realize and recognize that that little human is a little human. Mm. With likes and dislikes and a personality and, and, uh, they are not your, they're not your clay. Mm. You don't get to mold them. They're not your art project. Mm-Hmm.

They are a child and they have their own likes and their own personality and their own sense of humor and their own world to find. Yeah, and so that'd be my first, the first step is you, you've gotta recognize that that thing in front of you is human. I love that and not yours to manipulate.

You telling her, you know, there's a difference between right and wrong and how we show up in spaces and all that, but he really wanted her to turn the volume down. And I was like, that's just not who she is. She's just not gonna do that. Yeah. I'm not gonna get in the way of that. Like, you two gotta navigate that. And so I just love the idea that. You know, and, and most attuned parents know that their children are born with temperament.

They're born with personality, they're born with these things already,

right? And so, uh, part of what you're talking about, I've really been sinking into this idea called the Cortex

They shouldn't feel the way they are. They shouldn't have the right they're having because we can logic it through and we can reason it, but they don't have that. Right. It also shows up when we think they should be molded a certain way. They should be acting anytime we use the word should. The cortex is in involved. Yeah. And, and so we have bigger perspective.

We have different, like we have wisdom that they don't have, and so it sounds to me like you're really like, Hey, adults, let's see these kids as kids. Let's let them be kids. Let's let them experience and get curious and provide a safe space for them to do

And the more you can acknowledge and hold space Yeah. For a kid to be who they are. Mm. Which by the way, might not be who you want them to be, and you don't get to decide those truth bombs.

Right. And I, I say that as the, you know, like I say that as the out proud gay man, right? Like, you don't get to decide who this child becomes. Yeah, they get to decide that. And some of that just might be who they are. Like a young gay person or an artist or a musician or something that's not part of the norm. And that might scare you. Yeah, because I want them to be happy. If you wanna be happy, love them for who they are. Yeah. Not who you want them to be. Ooh,

I, I, I'm amazed at like, the questions people ask us, the, the, the space you have to hold, but also most people don't recognize Mm-Hmm. Maybe in today's world they would with, you know, governor DeSantis and, and, and, and, and other things. But I, I don't think on the day-to-Day, most people realize the struggle gay people have, um, and especially gay men. Mm-Hmm. Like, I will, I will absolutely call that, you know, gay men I think have.

A bigger challenge than I, I think other people in the, the initials. And, and that's because the ICH factor, right? Like we get, we all we're gay men. We're not oblivious to what is said about us. And, um. I think living with that in the back of your head that people constantly think you're a danger, but you're constantly perceived as a threat while at the same time you're supposed to be entertaining, be able to cut hair and decorate people's apartments.

Like yeah, that's a lot of expectations to live up to you and And most of them are just crowd. Yeah, just crowd. And like, I couldn't decorate my, like my house is like the craziest place ever. There's hardly any decorations because I'm not. Good at decorating. That's just not one of my things. It's not part of your DA as a gay man, it's not part of my DNA as a gay man. Like, and I can't do costumes. I can't dress up. I'm not fashionable.

I'm literally wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt with no shoes. Um, and this is how I show up for work. So, you know, that was not one of my, you know, so all this stereo. So you live in this bubble of stereotypes that you know. You just have to put up a, but most of those stereotypes are evil. Hmm. That you're out to indoctrinate children and, and, and hurt people.

And the term, the term groomer has become popular, but I don't think people realize how hurtful and how detrimental that stuff is to developing brains. Yeah. Yeah. Hearing that stuff at 50 is not the same as hearing that stuff at 12.

And, you know, you sort of grow up in a world of rejection. And so the best thing that people could do for gay and queer people is, is. Minimize the levels of rejection, the repetitive nature of rejection wears you down. Yeah. And to constantly turn on the TV and be like, Hey, more rejection. Let's ban books about gay people. Hey, more rejection. Don't let those people in your kids more reject. Like, it's just so much rejection. Yeah. And, and I think that really wears down on people.

So the more aware we can become of that. The more we could create a society that says, you're okay, you're, you're welcome. We love you. Yeah. And that, that would be, I mean, I'm lucky that I've surrounded my life with people like you and people like Meg and, and, and, you know, our friends, you know, in, in the trauma-informed world that we've created this great circle of people. Yeah. And then I of course have a circle of people for a band that I follow and, um.

You know, when you have those circles of people to minimize rejection, that's awesome. And I think that's why queer people stick together often is because at least we won't reject each other. Of course, that's not totally true either. Um, you know, but at least you have the space. But that's, that's I think what parents on the journey need to know. Yeah. Your, your kid needs to know that no matter what they do, there's no more gonna, there's not gonna be rejection. Love that.

And, and that's very different from my own family who, you know, my parents, my parents did not kick me outta the house for being gay. Uh, my parents kicked me out because I challenged them about being abusive and, and hitting us. And, and, and so that didn't work out so well. So I ended up homeless. Um, but, uh, you know, I know a lot of gay kids, you know, come out and end up homeless. Yeah. And so it's the, the levels of rejection that people feel from society.

No wonder, you know, there's a 50%. Suicide temperate for, for young queer people. Yeah. And of, of course there is like, no one can deal with that kind of rejection in that, you know, we know rejection shows up on a brain scan in the same place as its physical pain. Mm-Hmm. And, and so like, that's one of those things that hurts us. It's humans regardless why. But for, I think queer people, it's, that's a, that rejection is everywhere you turn.

We need to have books that support love and belonging. We need to have. And I was like, it's just so simple. It really is so simple, right? Yeah. It doesn't actually have to be about all the various categories or all the various pieces of our identity. It can be love and belonging for all races. Love and belonging for all sexual identity people, right? Like all those pieces. Love and belonging for kids who are abused.

Love and yeah, love and belonging for homeless and, you know, unhoused humans like, and I just love that the through line for that for her was love and belonging is all that va the values we need here. What, how does it land for you when you hear that?

You had a 15% turnover. It's like, we haven't gotten anywhere because you keep losing everyone. Um, and, and, and that's really not the district's fault. It's, there's only so much they have the ability to do.

But what I definitely see as a need is, is there needs to be, for every SRO that we hire, we should be hiring three social workers. Like the state of mental health for children has become so toxic and traumatizing and normalized, like we've literally normalized trauma for children to a degree we think they need. Things that actually traumatized them. Mm-Hmm. And so teachers are then left with children who can't handle these big feelings. Yeah. Who can't manage the stress of the trauma.

And then in order to fix it, we add more trauma. Like punishments and rewards and incentives and, and positive behavior systems and, and other nonsense that is just harmful. Yeah. And so rather than actually taking these hurting kids and giving them support systems, we're actually normalizing the trauma to the point where the way you fix trauma is more trauma. Like that's bizarre, isn't it? But the people paying the price for this are teachers.

Educators who are then left to be parents, to be support systems, to make connections with kids who don't wanna connect. Uh, yeah. That's asking a whole lot of a group of people who didn't get trained in that. No.

You know. Will you, will you talk a little bit about the work you do in schools? What are some of the things? What, what, why in the world would a school bring Joe Bremmer in?

But first things first, we need a team. Like we need somebody that, I, I'm an outsider to your community and your school. Schools are little communities. I'm not part of that community. I'm an outsider, and so I don't believe that I can come in and make a whole bunch of change. And, and I don't think that's my place to do that. Like, I can't go around disrupting everything. Although Matthew Portell might tell us we should, um, you know, unapologetic disruptor.

But, but I, I, it's not my place, right? And so I wanna go into school, I wanna form a team. I wanna train that team as indepthly as I can. And get them going on their journey. 'cause you and I both know this is a journey. Like there's no one and done, there's no, there's no I'm trained. No, you're, you're just, you're never trained. There's just not a thing. And so I wanna work with the schools that wanna form the teams that wanna create a vision for their school.

Like what will this look like when we're trauma informed? What would this look like? One we're. Purely restorative. Like there is no punishment to be found in our schools. 'cause you

know me well enough too. I have no use for punishment. I, I just think it is the bane of our society and it's caused us more problems than it is ever solved. Um, mass incarceration, detention, suspension, none of this has solved anything. And then if you bring in corporal punishment, my God, like that shouldn't even be a conversation in 2023. It's like flatter theory. Like, let's debate punishment. Let's not debate punishment.

'cause that's like debating whether or not the earth is round or flat. Like does, does hitting children to, you know, a problem? This is a flat earth conversation. We should stop having. Um. You know, I'm, uh, that's where I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll Pop Stacey Patton in and say, everyone should read Stacey Patton's book, spare the Kids, which is primarily written about, you know, corporal punishment and, and black children.

But, but I think the book is universal for everyone and, and has a lot to teach white families about, uh, you know, what, what hitting children does to their nervous system, um, and how we just keep supporting that and all the problems that it causes. Are, are then this revolving cycle.

But I, I, I think, you know, the messaging at this point in schools is that I wanna go in, I wanna train a team, I wanna then start implementing slowly all these processes that are gonna take us a good three years to really put in place. So, you know, borrowing a line from my friend Justin Carella, uh, it's evolution, not revolution. Mm-Hmm. And I don't want it to be a revolution. I don't. Because then I think it backfires. Yeah. Or it gets kicked to the side after a couple years.

But when we, we really intentionally make change within school systems that we change our language. We change the focus of school to be about connection first and learning second. That way the kids that came to school to get love, get love. Yeah. And they also happen to get an education. Like I think education needs to be secondary in education. Love needs to be first. Right. And, and, and I know our team would love that, right?

James Moffitt's going, you know, love, I love you, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's, it's James' is, is, is, is, is lying that I love. And, and so can we make the focus of school about a, a space to just grow and be a human. Hmm. And, and, and so that's kind of what I wanna see in schools and what I wanna help them do. But the only way we can do that is to have adults recognize the significance of trauma. Yeah. And responding to that trauma with punishment is just effing cruel.

Like, I don't even know a stronger way to say that is fucking cruel. To take a child that's already struggling at home, that's showing up as a behavior problem in class, and our response is to add suffering to their life. That that's where like the passion comes from for me on like, that is so wrong. Just wrong on so many levels that we have these struggling children. And our response to them is to make them suffer, which is what punishment is.

I've done this exercise in my workshops for, for years now, where I get people to define punishment, consequences, accountability, and discipline. Tell me what those words mean. Yeah. And now tell me how they're different. What is the difference between a consequence and a punishment? What is the difference between discipline and punishment? And across the board, we always come to the same conclusion. Punishment is inflicted on you. By somebody who has power and the goal is to make you suffer.

I have yet to have a group not come to those three conclusions. No. So lemme get this straight. A person abusing their power to get someone to change by using suffering when other options were available. Sounds pretty much like violence to me. How do we get people outta that framework?

And, and I think the real answer is to make our restorative practices trauma-informed to understand how brains work. Yep. And to make sure that when we circle up that we're not doing that through a lens of behaviorism. 'cause if you still think that kid made poor choices with the little cortex they have, you're off. You're off, you're wrong. And that there's nothing restorative about this circle anymore. Like it lost its restorative quality when you didn't recognize the what, what got us here.

Yeah. And what got us here is, is a kid who's developing cortex couldn't handle big emotions. Yeah. Yeah.

And one of the things that comes up, and I know there are gonna be people listening to this who are gonna have this question, and I think it's such an important question, I wanna ask, I'm dying to ask you on record for a while. Uh. You and I have been parts of these conversations where people are like, restorative practices don't work. We have them in our school. Restorative justice doesn't work. We've been doing circles and they don't work.

And I, I know, I know they work and I know you have an answer to that and I wanna know what your response is to that. When people say restorative justice, restorative practice doesn't work. What do you, what does Joe Bremmer restorative practice experts say to them?

And so this is relational work, right?

You, if you just think you can circle a kid up with your power and make them, you know, amend, make amends, then, then you didn't get it. But most of these schools where people say this isn't working or the kids are running the school, or you and I both are to all of that stuff, um, you find that they're doing very little of the practices, oh, this isn't working well, that's 'cause you're not doing it. Yeah. Yeah.

Like I can deliver this punishment and then I've done my job and my hands up. It's easy. Yeah. And the reason this other stuff is harder and more effective and works is because it's based in

No. And so I think one of the things that we, we don't talk about in restorative, we don't talk about it in trauma informed, you know, we see this as relational work. It means that you as a human have to show up to do it. Yeah. And sometimes we show up and we realize we don't have the capacity to show up the way we need to. And if I haven't done my own work on my own stuff, I can't show up because I'm not gonna, I can't do anything.

So that other stuff like punishment and suspension, that stuff's easy 'cause I don't have to address my own shit.

And I had this woman and I do this exercise about triggers and why is a kid triggering you and these are the five questions you should ask yourself. And she was like, I never in a million years thought that I would have responsibility in why this kid is triggering me. And I'm sure you see that, right? Like what a powerful journey this is on.

When we show up as humans, when we do relational work, when we figure out how to connect and feel safe and build relationship, it really does start to shift the whole dynamic, doesn't it?

Some of whom are, you know, you and I both know, I, I'm sure you've seen the CDC report on adolescent mental health right now. And, and we know that the adolescent, we, we know that children's mental health over the course of the last 15 years has just tanked. And that's meant that educators and adults and anyone who works with children, whether it's youth services or um, you know, diversion programs. 'cause I'm doing a lot with, you know, juvenile justice right now.

Yep. You know, when we show up in any kind of youth serving capacity, whether it's education or juvenile justice, we realize we have to show up. Yeah. We have to show up. It's huge. And, and if we don't, they're, they're not talking to us 'cause they know we're not real. They can te like kids have a bullshit meter that's still good that they know when you're not being authentic.

And, and, and I. Prevents us from having some of the really meaningful conversations with kids that would actually let them know we love them. Yeah.

You can find me, uh, through the Trauma Informed Educators Network with Matthew Portel. I, I'm a proud member of that group. You could also find me through the Attachment and Trauma Network. Yeah, through their, um, their PD collaborative. And so I'm also a member of the PD collaborative and I, I happily do workshops and things through a TN and do things through their conference. You can always stalk me and come to the A TN conference in, in Dallas. We'll be in Dallas in February.

You, if you so choose to spend the money, you can come stalk me at, at A A TN I'm, I'm sure I'll be there doing something. I volunteer every year, uh, to, to work with that conference. I, I. A hundred percent support that conference. Um, and, and also the trauma-Informed Educators Network Conference, which happens I think in two weeks. Yeah. I'll be presenting on, on at that conference as well.

So there's lots of ways to find me, but, uh, one thing I want people to know all the time is I'm super approachable. Like, don't, yes. Like, I, yes, like, send me an email. I don't, you know, I'm, I'm super happy to chat. I'm like, I, I, I someday will, if it might not be coming already. Like it's, it finds overwhelming sometimes how many people are trying to like, talk to me. Um, but I, I wanna make space for people and I don't want people to feel like, uh, you know.

I'm just a regular guy, so like, please reach out and, and, and I'm a trauma survivor that wants other trauma survivors to to, to survive. And so I, I want people to be able to reach out and I want people to, to, so yeah. And even my email's easy. It's my name joe@joebuer.com. Love that. So you have Reach

You're seeing a lot of things that people really need to hear, and you and I both know that. When you're the delivery of the truth bomb, it's all in how it lands. And I think at the, at, at your heart, you're creating space for, for those Joes to feel safe in education with adults who are responsible for them. I just appreciate you, brother. Thank you so much.

And so, yeah, that's, there's something to be, um, this, this group of people that includes you and, and people like Meg Baldwin and, and, uh. You know, Matthew Portel, James Moffitt, ginger Healy, like this huge group of people that, you know, Dustin Springer, Lori Desel, Bruce Perry, like all these people that are literally out there trying to make other people's lives better. Yeah. When ours wasn't exactly kosher. Hmm. Like that. That's the kind of like, I have such admiration for that.

Team of people and, and I feel a hundred times, um, honored to be even part of that little group. Same what I, I see my name sometimes placed up with other people's names, who I like, like literally like I find my heroes and I'm like, really? I'm being thrown in the same conversation as as X And I'm like, yeah, that's, that's mindboggling to me. Oh, and so, but I, I love this team and I love that you're a part of it. And so thank you.