From the Editor: Circle Time Controversy in Raleigh

Trouble has been brewing in a school system in Raleigh, North Carolina regarding a school-based group initiative known as “Community Circles,” that was implemented to support students’ social-emotional learning (SEL). On the surface, the Community Circles seem like a good idea, but not everyone agrees.

According to reporter T. Keung Hui, “The Wake County school system says having students discuss issues in a circle helps build school relationships. Critics say the practice is invasive and are demanding that it be stopped.” (2019).

A group of Raleigh parents who identified themselves as “Parents for the Protection of Students” hired an attorney to advocate for them against the school system’s use of community circles.”

I obtained a copy of the attorney’s letter, which was addressed to the Apex Middle School principal and which lays out the parents’ concerns. Following is a portion of the attorney’s five-page letter (Brooks, 2019):

“I represent PARENTS FOR THE PROTECTION OF STUDENTS, an unincorporated grassroots association of concerned Wake County parents who have been disturbed by recent actions taken by the Wake County Public School System.

“The specific concern addressed by this letter is a practice that has been instituted at Apex Middle School and perhaps other schools in the system as well – ‘the Circle’ … As described by our parents and their children, as well as the school’s own materials about the Circle, it is expressly intended to address ‘difficult emotions and difficult realities.’ Moreover, this activity effectively compels disclosure of highly sensitive and personal information from students, including the following [partial list]:

• What it means to “listen from and speak from the heart.”

• Answering, “If you were a kind of weather today, what would it be?”

• What it feels like to be “bullied.”

• Talking about a “high point” and a “low point” in the student’s past week.

• Describing “friendship” for the student.

• Aspirations for whom the student wishes to be.

• Experiences of being “hurt” and “angry.”

“The program makes clear that its purpose is to ‘talk about [the students'] feelings’ and furthermore that there is ‘no hiding behind a desk.’ These are not academic topics; they are topics for a group therapy session.

“Group therapy, like other forms of traditional psychological treatment and counseling, can bring great benefit to many people. But it is not within the purview of a school to conduct such treatment during the school day, without parental consent, and outside of the supervision of duly-trained and licensed psychological and counseling professionals. Therefore, we call for the immediate discontinuation of this activity.”

In researching the implementation of the Community Circles, what I discovered was that although school personnel were trained in the use of the program protocols, an important step was either missed or inadequately addressed in planning these groups.

From what I have been able to gather, the parents were not well informed about the Circle groups or offered the choice for their children to opt out.

One critic of the Circle program expressed her objection to it in a blog (Dillon, 2019). She cited the program rules that she was able to extract from materials available at one of the participating schools. The rules were framed under the heading: “A Few Things to Remember” and included some typical items like: Information that is shared in the group stays in the group, It is okay for participants to pass and Only the person who is holding the talking piece may speak.

The blogger commented about these rules as follows: “ … much like the movie Fight Club, the rules for Circle Time say that information shared within the circle is supposed to ‘stay in the circle.’ Good luck with that.” I found it interesting that her frame of reference for the Circle groups was a film about an underground club, with strict rules, in which young men engage in bloody bare knuckle brawls.

Balancing the tenuous relationship among parent, child and school should be paramount when a group-oriented program like the Circle is being considered. This requires foresight and careful attention, particularly before rolling out a program that is not academic in nature.

Group workers worth their salt understand that planning, which has been considered the most neglected phase of group work, is essential to launching a successful group or group program. The seven components of planning – need, purpose, composition, structure, content, pre-group contact and agency/social context – must be carefully considered, understanding that not all components of planning will be of equal importance in all situations.

In the case of the Circle, it was pre-group contact with the parents that was either ignored or minimized, as was attention to the social context – the community of parents and prevailing culture in this locale. Certainly, the parents desire to have a say in the matter of forming these groups was overlooked or, at least, underestimated.

Although it would have required extra work to check the temperature of the community and to enlist and fully engage parents in the start-up, in the end, it would have been well worth the effort to build a successful program and prevent the kind of fallout that the school system in Raleigh is experiencing. Of course, there is no guarantee that would have prevented the resistance.

What group workers know, is that taking the time to plan is invaluable in beginning new groups. Applying the knowledge base of social work with groups could have made all the difference.