Sarah Eblen
June 2, 2020
Sarah Eblen (2020)
Sarah Eblen just celebrated her five-year work-a-versary at Southeast High School in the Kansas City Public School District. After teaching English for four years, she co-created the first in-house Restorative Justice Department in the district. The department – which offers conferences, mediations, and community accountability boards, serves as an alternative to punitive discipline practices that have shown to disproportionately affect students of color.
When she’s not at work or cheering on students at sporting events, Sarah loves cycling, reading, cooking, traveling, and enjoying the ever-growing Kansas City food and drink scene with friends and family.
What year did you graduate and what was your concentration?
I graduated in 2015 and my concentration was in Communication Studies.
What extracurricular activities did you do?
I was the proud president of Lambda Pi Eta, a member of Sigma Sigma Sigma, and a copy editor for Detours magazine. I also was a preceptor for JBA one summer.
Did you go to grad school? If so, where?
Joining Teach For America provided me the opportunity to obtain a Master’s degree in Middle School Education through the University of Missouri – St. Louis. Now that I’m working with angsty, wonderful children all day, I’m glad I was able to study middle school age development more.
What was your first job after graduation?
I knew I was accepted to Teach For America in my last fall semester at Truman (the type of security that makes going to Woody’s on a Wednesday night before an 8 am class on Thursday morning even more tempting 
). I left for a 6-week long training session a week after graduating and four weeks after that was placed in an English classroom with 32 seventh graders. It was the most terrifying and wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. Those seventh graders that watched me try to figure out year one will be seniors this coming fall. I’m lucky enough to still be in a building with them and watch them grow.
What work do you do now?
Sarah & a few students from her 7th grade homeroom (2019).
I work as one of the first Restorative Justice Coordinators in the Kansas City Public School District.
In urban education settings around the nation, when a school has high discipline issues, the next year they’re often staffed with an additional police officer and adopt stricter discipline policies. Three years ago, my colleague and I started tracking the results of this equation, finding that adding more police officers and stricter policies was not curbing discipline incidents. During our research, we started attending Restorative Justice trainings. Although widely used in city-centers like Oakland and Denver, Restorative Justice practices are not yet commonly used in Missouri or Kansas schools.
On notepads during these Restorative Justice trainings, my colleague and I started to sketch out an idea for a Restorative Justice Department in our school to improve our school culture and interrupt the school-to-prison pipeline punitive discipline creates. Three years after our first training, we joined in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation to create one of the first in-school Restorative Justice Departments in the city.
How has a Liberal Arts/COMM Education helped you?
As someone who works with students, staff, families, and community members to help them repair harm done to relationships, I have flashbacks to COMM classes – interpersonal communication, family communication, oral interpretation – almost every day.
As someone who is working on the forefront of the Restorative Justice movement in Kansas City, I also spend a lot of time writing grants and speaking to organizations about our work. Not only did I become a stronger writer at Truman, but I know how to research, consider audience, and tailor communication to the needs of the organizations we work with. I cannot imagine doing the work I do without my COMM education.
Sarah visiting Glacier National Park (2017).
Which class did you dislike at the time, but now you’re grateful you took it?
Oral Interpretation made me feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. I remember dreading the intimate, 12-person class. I’m very grateful for it now.
What was your greatest accomplishment at Truman?
I have always been a “go-getter” – that’s how I ended up at Truman. However, my time at Truman instilled the always-burning question in my gut: “Can we do more?” The culture at Truman is one of working harder, stretching your creativity, and doing more than the baseline requirement. Adopting that mentality is my greatest accomplishment because it has stayed with me in my career – what others have seen as impenetrable walls, I was taught at Truman to see as breakable. That mentality has paid off in dividends.
What would you say a COMM student should absolutely do while at Truman?
Enjoy the environment of critical thinking, invest time in your classmates, and schedule meetings to get to know your professors. Not only will this build connections for later in life (my Kansas City Teach for America 2015 Corps had three Truman alumni), but it will expand your worldview on what is possible.
Sarah and her students during a visit with KC, MO Mayor Quinton Lucas (2019).
What advice would you give someone who wants to go into the same line of work as you?
Working in education is hard; however, the beauty of working with young people is that their energy is infectious (along with their hugs – buy hand sanitizer).
If you could come back to Truman and teach a class for a semester, what would be its title and what would it be about?
Restorative Justice: Empathy and Communication – Restorative Justice is a movement that spans education, communities, and Criminal Justice. We are a society that has used punitive approaches for centuries – Why is that? What have been the consequences? And how do we challenge ourselves to communicate with more empathy, day-to-day and systematically?
What did we not ask that you think is important for people to know?
Truman State University provided me with so much – friends who I have stood by as they said “I do” or welcomed babies into the world, the confidence that pushed me to create my dream job, and a lack of student debt. For those considering Truman, know there is no better bang for your buck.
Sarah and friends on the quad (2014, 2015).
If you would like to learn more of Sarah’s story and the development of the Restorative Justice at Southeast High School, you can follow them on Instagram.