In this episode of Restorative Works!, host Claire de Mezerville Lopez welcomes Dr. Layla Dehaiman, assistant professor of special education at the University of New Mexico, to explore how school communities can become more equitable, inclusive, and transformative. Fresh from defending her doctoral dissertation with distinction, Dr. Dehaiman shares insights from her research examining how educators experience and make sense of restorative practices, offering a powerful counter-narrative to traditional implementation studies.
As a seasoned restorative practitioner, Dr. Dehaiman explains why restorative work is more than a collection of strategies: it's a philosophical shift that challenges educators to rethink discipline, relationships, and community. She discusses her research on school discipline, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the importance of centering educator voices as schools strive to build more just learning environments. The conversation also explores the role of mindfulness, co-regulation, and educator wellness. Dr. Dehaiman introduces practices like "Warm-Hearted Wednesdays" and explains why helping educators regulate their own nervous systems is essential for supporting students through challenging moments.
Dr. Dehaiman earned her doctorate in Special Education from Syracuse University, where her scholarship focused on restorative practices, equity in school discipline, and inclusive education. In her professional career in education, she has collaborated extensively with school districts, state education agencies, and institutions of higher education to design, implement, and evaluate comprehensive teacher preparation and induction programs. She has mentored and coached pre-service and early-career teachers and developed curriculum for teacher residency and certification pathways. Her work has centered on the implementation of restorative practices, social-emotional learning, mindfulness, and other holistic approaches to behavioral support, with an emphasis on fostering equitable and sustainable school environments. She was named a recipient of the 2026 Career Achievement Award, part of the Paul Bartlett Ré Peace Prize, for her work supporting students with restorative practices. Administered through the UNM Foundation, the prize honors individuals whose work advances harmony, healing, and nonviolent approaches within their communities.
Tune in for more practical insights to create more inclusive schools and remind us that investing time in relationships today creates stronger communities tomorrow.
Transcription
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
Hello everybody and welcome to Restorative Works!, a podcast where learning, practice, and research open new paths for transformation. My name is Claire De Mezerville Lopez, and it is my joy to introduce our guest, Doctor Layla Dehaiman. Layla, welcome. How are you today?
Layla M Dehaiman, Ph.D.
I'm doing very well. Thank you for having me.
Claire De Mezerville Lopez
I'm looking forward to this conversation. Before getting started, I'm going to introduce you to our audience. Layla Dehaiman currently serves as an assistant professor of special education at the University of New Mexico. She earned her Ph.D. in special education from Syracuse University, where her scholarship focused on restorative practices, equity in school discipline, and inclusive education. In her professional career in education, she has collaborated extensively with school districts, state education agencies, and institutions of higher education to design, implement, and evaluate comprehensive teacher preparation and induction programs. She has mentored and coached pre-service and early career teachers and developed curriculum for teacher residency and certification pathways. Her work has centered on the implementation of restorative practices, social emotional learning, mindfulness, and other holistic approaches to behavioral support with an emphasis on fostering equitable and sustaining school environments. Layla, congratulations are in order. You recently defended with distinction your dissertation on restorative practices at Syracuse University. I am so happy for you! I want to ask you how you feel. I want you to tell us about your study, but first of all, congratulations. How are you feeling?
Layla M Dehaiman, Ph.D.
Thank you so much. I got back from Syracuse on Monday and I think that's when it really started to hit me that I'm done. I defended successfully. Really, the distinction part I was not expecting. And so, it just went through a couple of surreal days where I was trying to make sense of everything. You know, you put your all into your dissertation and your research and it's just, you know, closing a chapter to open up a new one. So, I'm excited about this.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
It's going to be an exciting new chapter, and I think there are so many people that are going to get to learn from you. Will you tell us a little bit about your study?
Layla M Dehaiman, Ph.D.
Yeah, absolutely. So as a restorative practitioner, I really wanted to focus my research for my dissertation on restorative practices. What I was seeing as kind of a big gap in the literature is many of the studies that have been conducted are about the implementation of restorative practices. And I think throughout my career, doing restorative work, I really wanted to get a sense of how teachers were perceiving restorative practices. What were their experiences and their stories, almost as a counter narrative to some of the implementation studies. And so, I interviewed 15 educators and really collected their stories. I had two research questions. One was really how they made sense of school discipline in the school-to-prison pipeline. And the second question is really just what are your experiences with implementing? And one of the criteria was they had to self-identify as a restorative practitioner. And so, I had educators at all ranges, educators that have been doing this for years, were saying things that I was making note of as that's a great practice, that's a great way of thinking about things to educators that were in their first couple of years of teaching. And so I collected their stories and analyzed that data, and so that should be published within hopefully the next month.
Claire De Mezerville Lopez
Looking forward to getting into more detail and learning about that. Layla, we read about your 2026 Career Achievement Award, and it is an honor to interview you and to learn from your experience. Will you please tell us how was it for you to learn that you received this recognition?
Layla M Dehaiman, Ph.D.
Yeah. I think at first going through the nomination process was very... I was very excited. I was very humbled going through the nomination process. And then it was just kind of waiting. It was in the back of my head, like, this should be announced soon. And I got a call from Dr. David Munoz, and he contacted me to say that I got the career achievement award from the Paul Ray Peace Foundation. And so, I was able to have a very, very beautiful conversation with David. He has actually done restorative work in Honduras. And so we were able to connect on that. He had facilitated circles with community members, with adults and with youth in Honduras. And so, we were able to talk about that and the work that I do here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And so that was something that was very special to me. And then after I got the announcement, I was in touch with the foundation, and we were planning. Paul Ray, who this award is, you know, named after and started by Paul Ray, had contacted me and invited me to his home to get my award and also to get some of his collected works. And so, I got two of the books of his collected artwork. And it really was just a beautiful experience to sit with Paul in his home to talk about his work and then to talk to him about the work that I do with youth.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
What I love about having space for this recognition is that it allows you to pause and take a step back and connect with others and the work that they are doing. And it sounds so incredibly inspiring. Layla, your work around equitable restorative practices, I think it's so important. What are ways in which we can make restorative practices more inclusive? What do you think? Would you share some examples also?
Layla M Dehaiman, Ph.D.
Absolutely. So first of all, with my approach to restorative practices, it really is decarceral work; it's decolonizing work within our school communities. And so it's really about redefining classroom dynamics; it's about centering community, which for many educators, you know, new incoming educators, it's not something that they've learned, and for many of our veteran educators, it's not something that they've learned or practiced. And so it is a mind shift. It's a shift in a paradigm of thinking. And so I'll give one example of when I was doing a mediation once. So, I was working in a middle school, and I was serving as a restorative practice coordinator. And there had been an incident where a student with autism had flipped a table, right? And so he's in a small classroom setting and became overwhelmed and had flipped a table over and in that process the table had hit another young boy. And when the students got referred to me as I was kind of doing my intake process, I was doing my pre-work before, just to make sure everyone was prepared to go into mediation, I really got a sense of kind of what happened, right? And so this young boy with autism is also a young black boy. And so really looking at that intersectional lens of how do we usually approach this? And so, the work that I do utilizes DisCrit as a theory and looking at the intersections of race and disability within school settings. And so as I was kind of thinking through this, I had a second facilitator that had joined me in this mediation. And she is a well-known restorative practitioner. She does a lot of decarceral work here in the community.
And one of the things that she said that really stuck with me was: this is too much. I don't do special ed. I don't work with those kids. Right. And so here is someone who proclaims to be a critical race theorist, understands these systems and these institutions, when it came to disability, put up a wall and said, this is too much for me. I'm not going to do it. And so I just got very creative in my approach and said, how about, you know, we sit with the boys, we see what they want to do, right? Because it really should be youth driven. And the boy who had been harmed said, I just want to understand what happened. Why did this happen? And I want an apology. And I said, Okay. And then I went to the young boy who is identified with autism. And I said, what do you want to see happen in this mediation? And he was very nervous about having to sit face to face, about having to have that social interaction. And so I said, how about we do a shuttle mediation and I'll facilitate back and forth. And you can stay in the room on your own. And you won't have to come face to face, but you can still share that message. You can share what happened, what was going on, and try to make that apology through a shuttle mediation. And so, we engaged in the shuttle mediation. And my co-facilitator was just kind of watching this, right? And she had she was a mentor to me. She had taught me these practices. And she just kind of kept saying, like, this isn't gonna work. This isn't gonna work. But I continued forward. Once I had, you know, shuttled a couple messages back and forth, the boy who had been harmed said, you know, one of the things I would like is to be face to face. I would like to at least be in the same room to hear this apology. Okay, let me take that message back. I went to the other office, took that message back to the other student, and he said,
Okay, but I'm gonna need, I don't wanna make eye contact. I don't want to sit at the table. And I said, okay. What do you want to do? And he said, can I sit on the floor? And I said, okay, let me take that message back. Let's make sure everyone's on board. Let's get permission from both parties. I took it back and the other boy said I don't care. That's fine. We'll be in the same space. And so the kids understood it, right? The youth understood it and they were willing to make those modifications to the process to adapt and be flexible in the moment. And so I brought the young student into the room. And he did. He sat under the table on the floor. And I asked the other student, do you also want to sit on the table, or on the floor? Do you want to sit at the table? He said, I want to sit at the table. And they were able to talk without kind of being seated next to each other. And I just think that that is the way in which we can truly be inclusive, right? This isn't about just our students of color being harmed in the school to prison pipeline. It's also about the students of color, the students with disabilities, students that are living at any intersection of identity, really being able to engage in a process that works for them. Engage in a system that has historically harmed them.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
I think that is such a powerful story because it challenges us, as you said, to be creative. And I continue to think about how your co-facilitator had this opportunity to witness something different. And restorative practices are helpful because they offer us a structure, but at the same time, we really need to create this broadened view where we can try to see all of these other things that we need to consider. Layla, we're going to take a very short break so we can continue with this interesting conversation. Please stay tuned.
Welcome back to Restorative Works. I am so appreciating to learn today from Dr. Layla Dehaiman. And Layla, as part of your work, mindfulness and other holistic approaches are a support to behavioral supports, especially if we're trying to walk with children through intense emotions. What has been your experience integrating these approaches?
Layla M Dehaiman, Ph.D.
Yeah. So, with these approaches, I always first start with the educators in the community. And so it really is about us as teachers or educators, adults that are in a school community showing up with a regulated nervous system. And so, we have to be those leaders. And when we have those moments, we have to engage in co-regulation with our students. We have to model these practices and be able to be vulnerable with our students to say, that was heavy. I need a break, right? Like everybody, just kind of stop what you're doing and let's all take a break and just be in community for a moment. You know, one of the things that I see in my teacher preparation work is a lack of understanding for teacher wellness, teacher safety, engaging in self-care. And something that I've heard repeatedly throughout my career with restorative practices, with mindfulness, with any of these strategies or ways of being, is “I don't have time for that”, right? I don't have time for that. There's no time to take a break, there's no time to do a problem-solving circle. I don't even have time to breathe. And it really got me to start to think about how do we support educators in being okay with taking that time, in engaging in those mindfulness practices, whether it's in a time of crisis and we're modeling co-regulation, we're modeling these practices with our students, or we're just setting that foundation of every day when we start school, if we're in elementary or every day when you know, every period if we're a secondary education, we're just gonna take a quick mindfulness break. And so, one of the things that I do with my college students over the summer, right now I'm teaching a class on Wednesdays, and so it's warm-hearted Wednesdays.
I had worked with an educator, Erin Chavez. She was a school principal. She's now a restorative practice coordinator, but I worked with her and she had implemented warm hearted Wednesdays at her middle school when she was a principal. And so it's something that I took into the higher education space. And so I have my college students and their master's level teachers that are just starting their career in education. Most of them are career changers. This is their second career. And the teachers have to come up with a social emotional learning break. They have to come up with a mindfulness break. And so we have three kind of different things, right? One is just kind of a start off: how do we start off our class? How do we do a quick just two, three minute, just get grounded in being in community with each other. The other is obviously right, a brain break. So, when we are transitioning in a lesson or when we're seeing that kids maybe are kind of falling off, they're not paying attention, they're getting exhausted, how do we engage in those quick just resets, those quick brain breaks? And then the last is that wind down, right? Something that I've seen in all of my observations of teachers is closing out that lesson and closing out that time together. And often it's just kind of like, okay, we're done. And then all the students kind of start packing up their stuff and it turns a little chaotic. And so how do we have those moments to wind down and to close out those practices? And really, you know, when we close out our circles, it's something very similar, right? We're thanking each other for that time spent together and we're thanking the community for showing up and being vulnerable. And in the same way we can do that with these mindfulness breaks, with these other kind of holistic approaches to how we engage in community and a classroom.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
Layla, as we get close to wrapping up our conversation, what is your hope as to how to improve restorative practices so that they offer everything they can to students and communities?
Layla M Dehaiman, Ph.D.
I think it's a couple of things for me. Right. First, it's that this is a philosophical approach, right? It's about kind of changing our own mindset and our own behaviors as adults when we're working with children and families and community members. As the adults that are there for our students and for the community to serve that community, that we continue to engage in that radical love, right? And so I draw a lot from bell hook's work around love. And so even when we're harmed, even when we're exhausted, we continue to show up and be that model for our communities. I also think that for me, I interact with a lot of schools that say: we're doing that. We're doing restorative practices. And when I get into school, they might be doing practices, but they're not really grasping the philosophy behind restorative work. And so my hope is that schools continue to do that deep work to heal the adults in the building to really look at the adult behavior rather than just looking at student behavior.
When we kind of follow the, you know, antecedent, behavior, consequence model, we're not seeing what else is happening in a school community. And so, I want to push teachers and principals and all educators to look a little more deeply at how their behaviors impact the larger community. And I think with that, we do that by continuing to heal ourselves, we do that by continuing to be in community with each other and really again going back to that radical love, right? If the adults aren't doing this with each other, how do we expect our students to buy in and believe in this work? And so, I think for me, really having those leaders, those school leaders to make that time.
And I always write, when I hear that we don't have time, we can't do this. When we spend that time, we earn it back. We know that, right? As restorative practitioners, we know that you're not going to have to be putting out so many fires. You're not going to be as exhausted. You're going to have better behaviors. Our students are going to perform better. Our students want to be there when they feel needed, when they feel a part of that community. And so, for me, it's really that shift in adult behavior and how we're showing up.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
Layla, that is incredible. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today, and thank you for allowing us to celebrate with you.
Layla M Dehaiman, Ph.D.
Thank you so much for having me.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
And thank you all for tuning in to Restorative Works. To learn more about our guests, log on to IIRP.edu and let's continue to build transformation through dignifying relationships, kind conversations, and stronger communities. Until our next episode.