About Lets Circle Up Restorative Services
Our Vision
Let’s Circle Up Restorative Services LLC is committed to equipping and empowering communities to draw healing solutions from the collective wisdom of their gathered community members, by teaching their members how to embrace restorative practices as a way of being.
Our Approach
We honor and demonstrate this commitment to community by offering consulting services, trainings and workshops, and restorative circles to community members and leaders, local school districts, city and government entities, faith-based communities and the like. We believe in the power of community to heal itself when given the right tools, resources and opportunities to do so, and we use our efforts to that end.
Our Partnerships
We partner with Ramsey County Attorney's office, Gen2Gen, and other like minded community organizations in the hopes of making restorative practices the norm across the entire world.
Lets Circle Up Restorative Services
About our Founder
If I were to introduce myself, I would start with my name. My name is Brenda, which literally translates to both “flaming sword.” My temperament, according to the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, is “promethean” meaning to make man more like the gods. Loosely translated, I would say I am passionate and enthusiastic. I am passionate about things that matter and enthusiastic about everything else. According to my oldest daughter I am “the coolest mom ever,” according to my youngest daughter, I am bipolar. Teenagers, you know.
I am a product of Chicago Public Schools. I graduated in the top 10 percent of my class from one of the most racially diverse and academically rigorous high schools in the country, Whitney M. Young Magnet High School. However I realized that many Chicago Public School students were not afforded the same educational opportunities that I was. Even though I excelled academically, I was not challenged to reach my full potential. Somehow I thought my best would never be enough so I was never confident enough to offer it. I became much better at this when I continued my education at the University of Minnesota, where I received my BA in Speech Communications and Political Science. And even better at it (offering my best) after 12 years in education at Roseville Area Schools in Special Education and Restorative Justice, my students have taught me well.
It is because of the encouragement of my teachers through the years, that I now do my best, to offer my best, in all that I do. I, now, dedicate myself to using education as a tool to change the world, because when you change people’s minds things will never be the same. I am further inspired by one of the principles of Kwanzaa called, “Kuumba” (creativity) which is “to do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.” Through my work at E4E I hope to leave the field of education better than I inherited it. It has served me well and changed my life. I hope to pass on a new and improved version to the next generation.
The only other thing I would offer in terns of introduction is what makes me unique.
- I embrace simplicity.
- I define my own success, at all cost.
- I will always err on the side of humanity, a thing will never be more important than a person.
- I believe everyone has worth, no exceptions.
- I dream impossible dreams while I am awake.
That’s me. That’s it. That’s all.
