Marisol Quevedo Rerucha:
We have forgotten that we belong to each other. That is not something that our system sells, but that is what I pose is the solution is how we transform, is that we not just do the work of belonging to each other, but we have to understand what it means to belong to ourselves.

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton, and that was the voice of Marisol Quevedo Rerucha, author of Beyond the Surface of Restorative Practices. Marisol sat down with Nikki Hinostro, director of school redesign at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education to talk about her work and what led her to it. I was there too. I was mostly running sound, but you’ll hear me a little bit. This is just a wisdom-filled episode, so I’m going to get out of the way and get right into it.

Nikki Hinostro:
I’m very, very happy and I have inside of me this energy that is filled with gratitude bursting out to be here with you, Marisol. I found you because I am a school leader, a queer Chicana who was searching for some statements around how to show up and be when it comes to restorative practices. Historically, there were some texts that I found and I used with some of our staff, and as a Chicana, I thought to myself, “Wait a minute. I really want to seek out folks who are like me, and this is a practice that is sacred and indigenous in its history, and where are my people?”
And so I was on a search and I scrubbed through the interwebs and was so grateful when I found your book. Then what I did was then I reached out. I just thought, I’m going to try every social to see if I can find you. And then you responded on Instagram, which I remember that moment being like, “Oh my gosh.” I felt so fangirl about it. And now here we are in conversation and we’ll see where this goes. But I’m just super grateful to be here. I’m hoping that you might share how you’d like to introduce yourself and where are you from, for real, who brought you to this moment?

Marisol Quevedo Rerucha:
Thank you. It’s really important to me to recognize that our society has taught us things, I say sold to us that we bought. And one of the things that I think that our society has sold us that we’ve bought is really just the idea around our value and our value being more in the jobs that we’ve had, the titles that we’ve had, the money that we make, the exterior components, the things that live on the surface. With that, that’s where our ego lives. That’s where our issues of self-esteem or issues of control are like all of our -ish, all of our stuff. Along with that, I really believe that our society has taught us the way that has taught us to deny our own humanity and that of others. I see that through the way that as professionals we’re told to wear a mask, you can’t show up as who you are in the world, but let me get back. It can be very difficult. I think just accepting the space and the role that we’re supposed to have in this life.
And that’s why it’s so important for us to live the things that we believe. And you were talking earlier about wanting to find somebody that was doing restorative practices in an indigenous way and ceremonial. And when we think of the word indigenous, a certain construct and idea comes up. But this is indigenous to every single human being on this planet. It’s indigenous to everybody. We’re inside of High Tech High because everywhere across this planet and every land are people gathered around a fire and they gathered around that fire not just for warmth and to make food, but to connect, to celebrate, to solve problems, to build community.
And our society teaches us to put things in boxes. And I want us to give ourselves permission to accept that this is a part of all of our blood. It’s inside of all of us, not just who we think of. Those who have reminded us, our indigenous communities in the United States and New Zealand are the ones who have reminded us of the ways, but it belongs to all of us. And so with that, you asked me to introduce myself.

Nikki Hinostro:
Please.

Marisol Quevedo Rerucha:
And so I very, very, with a lot of honor and humility, earned humility, want to introduce myself to you. I am Marisol Quevedo Rerucha. I am the mother of Camerina, Emilia, and Sophia. I am the grandmother to Isabella Luna, Cynthia Eliana, and Lorenzo Martin. I am the daughter to Irma Castro, Abran Quevedo, stepdaughter to Nancy Gates Quevedo, and daughter to Yolanda Castro. I am the granddaughter to Carmen Rodriguez Castro, Carmen Bedoya Quevedo, Francisco Quevedo, and Alejandro Castro, who I am the honor of being with you doesn’t belong just to me and the honor of being in this space with you and anybody who happens to be listening, that honor doesn’t just belong to me and it’s not about the things that I’ve done in this life. It’s not about my degrees. It’s not about the work that I’ve done. It’s not about the staff that I’ve led. It’s not about any of that.
I take that back. It is about the staff that I led. It’s not about the leadership. We enter space with the honor of being representatives of those that have poured into us pain, joy, trauma, harm, goodness. And we do this work and we join together in the work, not just for ourselves, but to honor the seven generations that came before us. And we do the work to honor the seven generations that are coming. I offer that way of introduction because each of us in our space representing not just themselves and who they are and all they’ve done, even if they’ve picked themselves up by their bootstraps, but representing those that have poured into them, and not just birth family, but those that have chosen you and that you have chosen. Dr. Sharon Grant-Henry taught me that when you love each other, when you connect, you become a part of each other’s DNA.
And so that impact you and I have connected and our connection we know is one that will continue in this lifetime and throughout, and we’re going to learn from each other. We already have. That’s going to impact your children. That’s going to impact my grandchildren. So we’ll continue to live through our generations, blood or not. And I want to offer to people that idea of who do you bring with you when you enter space and how do you honor them? I think that it’s so important for us to then in our space, whether it’s at school, in the classroom, and church, that we share that with each other. We sit in a circle and we share who do you bring with you?
Because in that sharing, we see each other from a different lens as a human being from the lens of those that love us that we love. And when you see that, when you connect with somebody in that way, it makes it harder to otherwise them. It makes it harder to, when you’re having difficulties with them or even you’re annoyed by them, irritated by them, dismissing them and makes you more likely to want to do the difficult work of building the connection and the bridge when potential harm is happening.

Nikki Hinostro:
I feel grateful for that connection with you for the ways that you’ve impacted me already and want to share that if I can just who I’m bringing. Right now, I feel real strong presence of my abuelita. She passed, but she’s that woman who taught me about the love where you are so loved that you are the most brilliant genius in that space. She’s that woman who taught me what it feels like to be loved like that, and just feeling a lot of her presence right now. So when you named who you’re bringing, it brought her into my energy as well. I had a moment where we were making tortillas together and she had very arthritic, disfigured hands, but she was patting them out and made this beautiful tortilla, and she put it on the griddle, and I looked at it, it was wonderful. I couldn’t wait to put the butter on it to have it.
I mean, I had like 10 tortillas with butter a day as a child. I remember when she gave me the ball of dough, and I patted it out, my little four-year-old self, pat, pat, pat, pat. And then I put it on the griddle and I took it off and it looked like it was the state of Texas. And I looked at it and I thought, “Oh no, my tortilla does not look like yours.” And she said, “No, nicolasa, your tortilla is beautiful because there’s no other one like that.” And that’s how she made me feel at all times. I just felt important to bring her into right now. So thank you. Thank you.

Marisol Quevedo Rerucha:
And I think you talked about her the first time we met. I remember that. And it just also reminded me of my abuelita’s hands and I remember holding her hand at church and holding her hand in her home. I would lay down on her bed and she would rock in her chair. She passed when I was 16. But I’m just so grateful because I believe that in the spirit world, that our ancestors and creator are doing the moves that they have to make for all of us to connect here in this world, to do the work that we need to continue doing. So I feel that you felt her because they’re all here hanging out like, “Yeah.”

Nikki Hinostro:
Let’s go.

Marisol Quevedo Rerucha:
Let’s go. Because I do want to say this, and I think it’s, for me, these are my beliefs, but because I believe that when we pass, we go into the spirit realm. And my hope is that we continue to do the good that we want, that our ancestors are continuing the fight, continuing the struggle, continuing the goodness on their behalf in that world and on our behalf in this world. I thought one day, if I believe that that’s true, then the people that I know are destructive and harmful and hateful, they have ancestors who pass that to them that are continuing their work. And when mine celebrate in the goodness, they’re celebrating in the darkness.
That for me, it is just important for me to be thinking about and aware of because where there’s light, there’s the dark. And so whenever I acknowledge them, I also want to be like, give them some extra strength and protection to continue to do that work that we’re doing here, fighting against inequity, fighting against the school to prison pipeline, fighting against continued generational poverty, fighting against the dehumanization of people that aren’t citizens of this country. We’re continuing, and while we pull from them, we also want to give some of that back to fight that other dark side.

Nikki Hinostro:
Absolutely. Thank you for bringing that. And that’s a responsibility, that’s a responsibility I feel proud to carry but it’s felt.

Marisol Quevedo Rerucha:
For sure.

Nikki Hinostro:
I’m going to ask if you wouldn’t mind, there’s so much to your book that I want to bring in. And so first, when I found the book, I wanted to just… The title, Beyond the Surface of Restorative Practices, for me, I was excited because I care so deeply about having restorative community wherever I am, that we practice in the ways that will bring community together and deepen and strengthen community. And I learned so much through restorative justice and restorative practices when I was a school leader.
I want to say that this Beyond the Surface of Restorative Practices for me was like how to be a leader for equity handbook. It was so much more, it says restorative practices. But what I realized is this is about actualizing the practices to create liberatory communities and whether a teacher or a leader, what I realize is, to me, restorative practices kind of gets put into this one silo, but this is much more for me. So I really want to know a little bit about the history. When was the moment that you realized or a series of moments that you realized, “I need to write this book,” and then we’ll go from there?

Marisol Quevedo Rerucha:
So I was actually asked by the publisher to write the book because I was doing work. So my restorative journey started when I was a school leader. I was the principal of an alternative charter high school, and they were using restorative practices with students. So specifically circles during when harm would happen in mediations. I was introduced to it as a school leader, but I really saw that we were providing that work with staff. So they were already doing circles in the morning, but we really started to embed the practice with the staff as well. And so after I left that school, I moved to the county and in the juvenile current community schools, we had a restorative practitioner coordinator. I don’t remember her exact title. And that was the first time I had the official training. But then I wasn’t working with students because I was leading all staff who were then doing the work with kids.
I ran the CTE and work readiness department. And so that’s when I really, really started seeing, “Ooh, this is where we need to do the work.” Because that team had been together for about 10 plus years, and there had been harm that happened that was carrying over into their work. And so once I had the training, so we started doing the circles and work with staff, or I started, not we, I don’t have a mouse in my pocket. My mom used to always say, “Who’s we? You have a mouse in your pocket?” No. So that’s how I started the work.
And then when I started really thinking about, really what is it that I’ve done and how have I done it? And because I’m somebody that saves everything, I had all my agendas, all my meeting minutes, and one of the things I could say to you that I think I really base the work off of with the adults was how do I give people voice in the work, in not just the solutions, but identifying the problems and then together doing that, and how do I, as the school leader, make sure that they have voice?
And then how do I then hold them accountable? And within that, in the work context, when as human beings, they’re not getting along, or factions start to happen in workplace culture, how do I use all of that that we’ve created, that togetherness, that voice, and that trust in order to support the healing of harm and the identification and prevention of harm. That’s what I was able to encapsulate and then put down into the processes in the book.

Nikki Hinostro:
That makes a lot of sense because the handbook really, it seems to me like a strong handbook as a leader, and I wish I would’ve found it earlier, or I wish I would’ve found you earlier, because the processes really guide through building. I hope you’ll kind of name the different steps you’ve designed because as a leader, this is about strong leadership, whether you’re the leader of a classroom or a leader of any group of people really. And although things aren’t linear, there’s a process by which you outline for us. I wonder if you can kind of share a little summary of what you put in there. Because to me it was just like, “Huh, why didn’t I have this before?” It kind of took what I intuitively felt in my gut that I would do because I felt it and it put it into a very clear process.

Marisol Quevedo Rerucha:
I want to go back really quick to the writing of the book. So because I was coming at it from the staff component, I asked my spiritual brother, Pedro Terrazas to write the highlights from the classroom because he’s actively doing the work with kids. And then I also invited Dr. Carolyn Gery to write a chapter on trauma and Dr. Enjolie Lafaurie on listening. So they’re included in that. That was completed, and I think it was published in ’21. Since the beginning of the writing of it and now, I would write a different book with a clearer process with it linear because I understand what it is now.
And what I want to start with is I want to start with a why and the problem. And the problem is that our system is a system that was built to continue to perpetuate harm because it was built to elevate the few and the powerful. And because of that, and it was built on the backs in the bones of people in our land, and not just people from this land, but Black, brown, indigenous, poor people. So the system does what it’s meant to do.

Alec Patton:
And when you say system, we’re talking like school system.

Marisol Quevedo Rerucha:
I’m talking about our society. I’m talking about Western colonized society, and I can specifically speak to the United States because that’s the system that I know. Because it’s doing what it needs to do, that’s why we continue to see the school to prison pipeline, generational poverty, poor mental, physical, emotional, social health in certain populations and the way that we treat our Black, brown indigenous people, specifically our boys, our elderly, the poor, those with IEPs, our queer community. There’s so many. Those that do not have citizenship, those that do not speak English, there’s so many that our system, so if I see the system, I’m going to explain that system is the circle that we all want to be a part of. And what I’m hoping our goal is that it is the circle of compassion, but our system pushes everybody out of that circle of compassion and otherwises us.
And so the way that we fight that is, and I got this from Father Greg Boyle is we do what Mother Teresa said, when we have no peace, it’s because we’ve forgotten that we belong to each other. This system is not a system that was made to create peace. It was made to create wealth and power. But as human beings, our goal is peace. And I had mentioned earlier in my rambling introduction, our system, the way that it works, is it convinces us to deny the humanity of others in our own humanity, which is why it’s okay for us to continue to sit here knowing that there could be a school being shot up right now and our children dying and being murdered, which allows us to still sit here and have this conversation knowing that we have that big unhoused community that’s continuing to get pushed out, out of the streets and out.
We’re continuing to hide them and knowing that it’s predominantly elderly Black women that are increasing in numbers. So the system, we almost have to deny our own humanity to live in the system that we want to so importantly be a part of. The system if we believe that, so there’s no peace. So we have forgotten that we belong to each other. That is not something that our system sells, but that is what I pose is the solution is how we transform, is that we not just do the work of belonging to each other, but we have to understand what it means to belong to ourselves. And so the solution is we have to do our deep individual work, our deep community collective work, and our system at the same time. And we start it by being super clear about what we believe and how we agree to treat ourselves and each other.
Every single system has a mission, has a vision, has values, has codes of conduct, and none of them know how to live to them. If they live to them, then we wouldn’t have the issues that we have, and they don’t live to them because our egos are human. We’re not doing our individual work. And then also the people that are doing the work did not have voice in creating them. So they were created. They go into a binder, they go on a wall, we don’t look at them, we don’t bring them up at our meetings. We don’t use them as guiding lights, and we don’t use them to hold ourselves and each other accountable when we start to do things that we know we shouldn’t do, which that’s how harm happens, that’s how toxic workplace cultures, that’s how violence happens in classrooms. Because we don’t know how to have those uncomfortable conversations when, in a meeting we have that thing, “Everybody pay attention, put your cell phones away,” and your home girl who you teach next to is playing a game or taking a nap or grading papers.
She’s breaking the contract you have. We don’t know and we don’t practice having uncomfortable, challenging conversations in a way that is loving and respectful of you, of that other person and of your work. So we have to create space for all the systems. Sorry, let me start with this. For us as individuals to be clear about what we believe and how we want to be treated and how we treat others. We have these beliefs, but we’re not clear with ourselves about them. When we’re clear about them, then we can use them. They become more present for us. They come more to the surface. So we’ve got to go beyond the surface to identify what we believe about who we are and why we are what I believe about kids, about education, whatever those core things are for you. Identify them so that you can bring them to the surface and you have them so that when you’re making decisions, you remind yourself who the hell you are and who you want to be.
And also to remind yourself around your agreements about how you want to treat others and be treated so that you can catch yourself when you’re starting to violate what you believe and what you’ve agreed to. And also you now have the language to have that uncomfortable conversation with your homegirl that’s honoring of her and honoring of you because you know that you have your expectations, you can state them clearly. So Nikki listening is really important to me. And for that reason when you talk, because I see you’re giving me a gift, and so when you talk, I look you straight in the eyes. I don’t know if you notice, sometimes I’ll position my body and put my feet on the ground. I’m trying to keep myself lined because I want to make connections with you and have to remind myself, you’re giving me a gift. Calm myself down.
I just want to receive what you’re giving me. And so do you feel that with me? I would give that person time to say, “Yes, of course,” blah, blah, blah. But you know what, the other day I was sharing about the struggle that I’m having with my daughter, and you got on your phone and it’s really hard for me to share because it’s something that’s so deep. And I just wanted to share with you how I feel about that because it hurt me. And I started feeling like, “Why am I going to give this person my time? Why am I going to put so much effort in them?” But I don’t want to do that. So I wanted to let you know. Imagine if we could all approach even the smallest things, because then what could happen, I’m like, “Fuck, Nikki.”

Alec Patton:
You wouldn’t be the first one.

Marisol Quevedo Rerucha:
Imagine the difference that can happen in your office, in your home, at the supermarket even, when you’re parking, when you’re driving. So part of that process is we got to give our staff time to do that individual work for themselves so that then we can collectively in your community with your system, then create our collective beliefs and our collective agreements. So we work in schools and we know teachers that have been harmful to kids that say that they don’t believe in them, that want them out of their class, that basically if they could move them to a different city, they would, they can’t stand them so much, but nobody calls them on that. And that becomes an HR issue. Or you might have to blah, blah, blah.
But if we have a belief that we all have created and we’ve all agreed to, that says something like, “We believe that all children can, and all children deserve the highest quality, academic, social, emotional,” whatever. We believe that and we all agree to it. So now me as her next door neighbor, “Hey, we read this belief every day. There’s some things that you’ve said that are going against it, and I know that it’s a belief that is important to you because we’ve agreed.” But the way that I’m seeing the students feeling or being treated, that’s how we can use the beliefs and also our agreements to start to be that change and be the work.

Alec Patton:
What I wonder about is that all makes sense to me, but that teacher, people often don’t do well with being put… No matter how you present it, when they’re like, “Oh, I’m the bad guy here.” And even the way you’re presenting it, if it’s like, “Oh, I’m not living up to these things here.” A lot of things going through their head like, “Oh, a lot of those kids are Black and brown who I like have these feelings about, that means she’s calling me racist.” And you’re suddenly in a whole different place. So after you give that message and the person doesn’t take it in the spirit in which it was intended, what’s the next step?

Marisol Quevedo Rerucha:
Let me go back because part of doing that work is you have to do some work of going beyond the surface to really get to your beliefs and your agreements, the individual and then the collective. Part of that is starting to develop an understanding and an awareness of where you have a fixed mindset and where you have a growth mindset. And also, so your beliefs, and these are your personal beliefs. If your mindset, if you know that you have a growth mindset in these areas, which is that you feel uncomfortable about something, but you’re going to do it anyway, you believe that failure is a way to growth, but you know that you might have a fixed mindset as a parent in that you might have a 22-year-old daughter who is doing things that you don’t agree with, and you’re stuck in the idea that that is not the child that you raised, or they shouldn’t be that way.
So I see fixed mindset of when you get stuck in the should or shouldn’t. You get stuck in that why because the growth helps us work through it. So the reason why I bring this up is that when you have an awareness then of your mindset, then you can start to have ownership of why you are being triggered by things in the moment so that work would’ve been done with the staff already, so that teacher would have the opportunity, and this is where leadership is important to say, “We’re sharing a difficult message, we’re going to take some time and we’re going to have a reflective moment or whatever, to think, am I getting stuck in my fixed right now or my growth?” Because we’ve already developed this common language. So this goes back to the processes. So the step-by-step process where we have agreed to do this individual work so that when we are reacting to things, we have an awareness of what’s coming up for us.
Because if we have an issue with a 6-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 14-year-old, that’s our issue and our trigger. So we have to have some agreement as the staff that we’re going to do some of that so that when that teacher is feeling like that, they can take some time to pause and help them work through that and then get on with a conversation. And if they stay stuck in that, at some point you have to go through your HR processes, and people’s perspectives are going to be people’s perspectives. Not everybody is going to buy in to this way of being because it’s so dramatically different, but that’s life. But there has to be some of the agreement and the practice of some of that work. So it’s not just you recognizing that that teacher is reacting and responding and going and doing all of those mental gymnastics and all within themselves that you’re providing space for them to do that so that they can think through it before reacting and responding.

Nikki Hinostro:
I want to bring up this part because it came up in the book and I was struck by, there’s mindset, there’s also a heartset. And so can you talk more about heartset?

Marisol Quevedo Rerucha:
I like to make up words and heartset isn’t a made up word, but I kind of made it up and wrote my own definition for it. And that’s because one of the things, again, that our society has sold us that we’ve bought is that our value is in our mind. What I’m so grateful of is my generation, I’m 49, so the Gen X generation, is that we did enough of our work so that our millennials and our Gen Zers could really help us push into the work of self in a really beautifully healthy way.
And so I thought, my emotions, those aren’t coming from my head, those are coming from my heart. So where is my heart? So if I understand mindset, fixed mindset, growth mindset, the power of my mind, the power of the belief of effort, I understand that, what’s the power of my heart and what are then the beliefs that I carry from my heart that guide my actions? For me, the beliefs that come from my heart is that we belong to each other. A belief that comes from my heart is what Bryan Stevenson said, “We are more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
And I think that heartset, it’s coming from someplace else. And I think imagine if every teacher believed that every student was more than the worst thing they’ve ever done. Imagine if every teacher felt that about other teachers that may be harming kids that they love, that they’re more than the worst thing they’ve ever done. Imagine if we believe that about ourselves, that we are more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. That belief that guides my actions and my way of being and how I perceive and react to the world, that’s my heart. That’s why I use the term heartset. So in the work part of the process is we go through the why of restorative practices. This is the problem, the systemic harm, here’s the solution. We need to be really clear about our beliefs and our agreements and learn how to live them, learn how to be the work, not just do it from 8:00 to 9:00.
And we have to do our individual community and systemic work. And then we start with the individual. So what is our mindset? What is our heartset? So then we can sit down and write like what do we believe, be really clear with ourselves, and then our agreements, how we want to treat each other. And then from there, the next step of the process is we do that collectively. And everybody has voice. That’s one of the most exhausting things that I have to do as a facilitator, but I’ve had the honor of doing that with 500 people to 4 people. And what’s beautiful is that also part of the work is you’re modeling for people how to do this, how to build a trust for that to be able to happen.
From there, then you start to do the work of starting to implement both with your staff and with kids and with your community, and starting to develop your restorative team or your equity team. I call it the work of the JEDI, the work of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, which is the most powerful work. And you’re right, restorative practices fits under there. For me, it’s starting to set the belief and the understanding that we have to live it. We have to be it. And it’s not something that we just do. It’s about who we are in this world and always with everybody.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted by me, Alec Patton. This episode was edited by Brent Spirnak. Huge thanks to Marisol Quevedo Rerucha and Nikki Hinostro for this conversation. You can find out more about Marisol’s work in the show notes. Thanks for listening.