Claire de Mézerville López welcomes Dr. Ellen Skilton to the Restorative Works! Podcast. Dr. Skilton joins us as we explore how creative expression and restorative pedagogy open new pathways for repair, resilience, and transformation. She shares moving selections from her poetry manuscript Collateral Repair, weaving together themes of grief, love, and unexpected healing. She reflects on her personal journey of “unexpected repair,” finding possibility for restoration in spaces shaped by loss. With honesty and depth, she invites listeners to consider how grief can be not only endured but transformed into an opening for connection and creativity. Dr. Skilton also discusses her work on restorative pedagogy. She emphasizes the importance of disrupting hierarchies in education, fostering “with” rather than “for” orientations, and cultivating classrooms where risk-taking and mistakes become essential parts of learning. Highlighting programs like Student Pedagogical Consultants, she demonstrates how shifting power dynamics in higher education empowers both faculty and students to thrive. Dr. Skilton is a professor at Arcadia University in the Department of Education and the faculty director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Mentoring.  She is an educational anthropologist, applied linguist, teacher educator, and poet. She first encountered restorative practices embedded in Quaker decision-making processes as a student at Earlham College more than 35 years ago. Supported by her continued education with the IIRP, she now engages in restorative practices pedagogies in more thoroughly embedded ways and sees restorative processes and practices as a crucial element of addressing harm on campus. She and her students were past presenters at the IIRP’s Restorative Practices in Higher Education Forum in December 2024, and she will be presenting her session at the IIRP World Conference, Artful Integration: The Art and Science of Restorative Practices, in October 2025 in Tennessee entitled "Poetry-writing, Online exhibit-building, and Image/Forum Theater-making as Restorative Pedagogical Tools for Addressing Individual and Structural Harm." Tune in to hear about poetry as a tool, teaching as a collaborative practice, and the courage it takes to lean into vulnerability.