Brashear Student Leader Leon Blair
Rising up: Leon Blair
Recent Brashear Student Council President reflects on Restorative Practices and the art of leading peers
2019 | Written by Faith Schantz, Report Editor
If there’s one thing Pittsburgh Brashear High School graduate Leon Blair would like the staff there to know, it’s this: “Your students are affected by you more than you believe.”
Now a freshman at Robert Morris University and an active member of the Army National Guard, Blair hopes to be a nurse practitioner. While at Brashear, he served on the Restorative Practices student committee, held a historic two-term student council presidency, and was elected to the district Student Advisory Council that was restarted by Superintendent Hamlet in 2017. He describes Brashear, which is located in Beechview where he grew up, as both “extremely diverse” and “welcoming” to students. In his time there, the opportunities he was given helped him develop as a leader, even if that process wasn’t always smooth.
Blair first ventured into a leadership role after the school adopted restorative practices as an alternative to suspensions. Restorative practices, which have been promoted by A+ Schools and are currently in use in all schools in the district, involve shifting the focus from punishment for offenses to addressing the harm done and repairing relationships. Blair says students know that most of the time, peer-to-peer is the best way to resolve conflicts, but he was surprised to learn students would be trained to facilitate sessions.
Watching the slow implementation of restorative practices, however, was frustrating. As he saw it, the lack of staff buy-in, lack of trust and follow-through, and some “pessimistic mindsets” were responsible. From his perspective, the adults he worked with didn’t always realize that “staff morale rains down on students.” Getting a few teachers on board made the difference, he says, and students ultimately took ownership of the process. For example, when an ongoing argument between two students escalated during class, a student who was trained in the approach intervened, and the whole class participated in a community-building “circle.” Blair also saw students who had spoken up during mediation circles participate for the first time in class discussions. Sitting together in the circles, students discovered they were ignorant of one another’s lives. Restorative practices were brought in for conflict resolution, he says, but as it turned out, “our main focus was building relationships.”
As a junior, Blair ran for student council after an older student said, “You have a voice, and a lot of students follow you.” He remembers thinking, “Whoa…You have to check yourself and freshen up more things” as a sense of responsibility sank in. In his first term he was elected president, the first time in the school’s history an 11th grader had held that position. But even after the election was over, his right to be there was questioned. “Students were mad” about an 11th grader overseeing the senior class, and the challenges continued throughout the year. Principal Kimberly Safran strongly supported him, however, giving him responsibility and “a lot of leeway.” In his second term, he started to push boundaries. Brashear students and staff wrote a groundbreaking transgender policy and the school has a large “Gender Sexuality Alliance” (formerly the Gay Straight Alliance), but some gendered traditions lingered. A transgender student proposed that graduation caps and gowns no longer be color-coded by sex, and Blair took that on. He spoke on behalf of all student groups when Safran invited him to present on how students felt about the school at a professional development session.
The chance to be a leader at Brashear showed him who he was and what leadership means for a young person finding his way. One lesson he’s taken with him is “Leadership is lonely.” Serving on the council, he saw himself in a new light. He’d been brought up to “get things done.” At school, however, he sometimes looked back on a successful effort to see that he’d offended people. Leadership required empathy, he realized. It wasn’t about making people like him.
At the same time, Blair says he preferred to think he needed to change rather than admit some of the criticism was because he is black. “People would say, ‘I don’t like your delivery,’” or call him aggressive when he challenged the status quo. And he couldn’t help but notice that white student leaders didn’t get “the pushback” he faced. Even if the differential treatment was unconscious, he concluded, it was there. Now, “You say no, I say why?” is his leadership philosophy.
On the Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council, which includes students from all schools with grades 9-12, Blair had a district-wide view. What he saw was adults all the way up through the School Board using students’ backgrounds as an excuse for not educating them. In his view, whatever’s happening at home “means nothing” when it comes to students’ ability to learn. “A lot of students can shut that down when they get to school and do what has to be done,” he says.
He also believes students have more to offer than the adults in the system recognize. Many students he knew would have stepped up as leaders if there were more genuine opportunities, and if they had been asked. Given the chance they would run with it, he says. With more student leaders sharing their views, and more adults listening, leadership might be less lonely in the future for students like Leon Blair.