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Repairing our schools through restorative justice
(Jermel Collins-Day)

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Repairing our schools through restorative justice: Jean Klasovsky at TEDxWellsStreetED

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The strict discipline plan used in this charter school is described as a way to build a collective caring community. What do you think?

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YES Prep Cultivates a Culture of Achievement

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A supportive and caring environment underpins a strict discipline program.

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The Sensory Room: Helping Students With Autism Focus and Learn

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Imagine a safe space where students with autism can go to calm their bodies and then get back to the business of learning.

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As some of you wrote about, restorative justice always sounds like a great idea but it is not easy to put into practice because of differing perspectives on classroom management. This video shows how difficult but rewarding it was to implement restorative justice practices in Oakland, CA schools. It required dialogue at all levels of the community to change the mindset and ideas about how to discipline students who misbehave, and build a shared belief in the essential practice of using dialogue circles.

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Restorative Justice Takes On Oakland Schools

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Looping a song (or part of a song) suggested by the students.  (Anh-Thu Phan)

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Looping a song (or part of a song) suggested by the students.  (Anh-Thu Phan)

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I volunteered to teach at Poe Park's visitor center in the Bronx last summer. The students were free to join and must be 7 and above. I taught a Vietnamese 17-string zither instrument for a Southeast Asian non-profit organization. The purpose is to increase the present of the organization in the community. With such a wide audience with a "foreign musical instruments," I decided to teach universal musical concepts like melody and rhythm, concepts that are broad enough to relate to any musical cultures. I invited students to let me know their favorite songs. After listening to them a thousand time as many of them are unfamiliar to me , I picked on short sections (often <10s) and loop them. I posted the looped section on YouTube so it can be slowed down and speeded up based on students' preferences. The looped sound tracks have helped me as a classroom management strategy because it tied all students together. If someone missed something, they can just get ready when the music comes back again. If someone finds that something too easy to them, they are free to make their playing more complicated. Most importantly, since classmates know that this song is the favorite song of someone in their class, they feel more "respected" and "responsible" as if they are playing for that one person. And the one who suggested the song feel proud of everyone playing their songs. I was able to get through songs suggested by 80% of the students. Using materials from students are a great approach, although it does take a lot more time for teachers to learn, plan, and justify where they would best fit in the curriculum. The benefits are countless, especially this materials by itself is the intrinsic motivation of the learners, thus preventing them form off-task feelings/ behaviors.

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Cell phone use and Creative Humor Lisa Stubenrauch

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Cell phone use and Creative Humor Lisa Stubenrauch

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Our school does not have a cell phone policy and there has been much heated controversy over this seen in debates between admin and staff during our monthly and weekly PLC meetings. This does leave room for teacher discretion in creating and co-creating policies in their own classrooms, however complaints about students cell phone abuse and off task behavior remained. In my own classroom I've come up with a couple of humorous ways to redirect attention back when we are all learning. I feel it is also a good way to build rapport and create a safe environment as you are creating trusting relationships. I usually have the physical space in tables of 4. I move around the room as much as I can and that alone lets students know to keep their phones away. One day I started circling around one table and the students were like Ms. S what are you doing. So I said that I was circling around them like a shark would with their prey lol (at this point I felt the class and I were safe enough to joke this way, and we all laughed together). From then on I called this shark attack and students knew that if I was circling they were off task etc. I think this created a bond between us and opened up a path for "respect." Further the groups of 4 I usually group students multiple times throughout the year for various strengths and make room for growth best I can with all students. For example, I would do a formative assessment and group students with low medium and high. In group projects I would assign individual roles based on strengths from learning and interest inventories I've collected. Sometimes I would group according to relating to learner profile attributes from my IB program. Leadership roles also rotate within each table group as after I established "shark attack" students would want to do it themselves, so I would have a shark at every table lol. All of this fluidity I think helped keep students accountable for their own learning and helped me learn more about their potential for leadership, group roles, and individual needs. This also brought to mind the "conformity over curiosity" in what Noddings quotes of Kohn in neglecting needs. I think being creative, especially with a combination of various individual needs, is key in helping teachers manage huge classrooms like mine of 35+. Moreover, if you can find something that creates a safe environment and bond with all then that strengthens and fosters a collective relationship.

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Laughter has the power to fuel engagement and help students learn

Create a Comfortable Learning Environment

When teachers share a laugh or a smile with students, they help students feel more comfortable and open to learning. Using humor brings enthusiasm, positive feelings, and optimism to the classroom.

Even if you're not naturally funny, you still can lighten things up a bit.

The key thing to remember is to do what's comfortable for you. Not only will it make you more approachable, it will also help put students more at ease in your classroom.

Fire Up Their Brains

During her research on learning and humor, educator-researcher Mary Kay Morrison looked at brain scans that showed high levels of activity in multiple areas of the brain when humor was used in conversation and instruction.

"We're finding humor actually lights up more of the brain than many other functions in a classroom," says Morrison, author of Using Humor to Maximize Learning. "In other words, if you're listening just auditorily in a classroom, one small part of the brain lights up, but humor maximizes learning and strengthens memories."

Check out the video below of a Q&A session with Morrison and two other humor advocates: Steve Brinder, a teacher and stand-up comic, and Kathy Buckworth, the author of several parenting humor books.

(See also HealthWatch: Stanford Study Shows How Humor Activates Child's Brain.)

Bring Content to Life

Teachers can use humor to bring content to life- through games, parody, or comical voices (or wigs or hats). Students respond to their teacher's playfulness and appreciate the effort he or she puts into making a lesson fun. Here's how three teachers (on NEA Today Facebook) use humor to bring content to life:

Final Thoughts

Every teacher's goal is to be effective in the classroom and help students learn. Educators want their students to be eager and engaged. Humor has the power to fuel that engagement.

"Humor must be used in the classroom," says Pamela Matway, a sixth-grade social studies teacher at Sedgwick Middle School, in West Hartford, Connecticut. "Joke, laugh, dance, sing, shout. I do it all; I think every teacher should. It helps kids stay focused on the lesson, and sometimes it even helps them remember ideas and motivates them. So stand up on that desk and tap dance while you give instructions, talk in an English accent, or sing the answers to a homework assignment."

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When teachers share a laugh or a smile with students, they help students feel more comfortable and open to learning. Using humor brings enthusiasm, positive feelings, and optimism to the classroom. Even if you're not naturally funny, you still can lighten things up a bit.

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One of the ways I am thinking about classroom management is the physical space and the materials of the classroom. This is especially prevalent in early childhood settings. The way the literal room is set up invites certain expectations for children to "follow" My first year as a teaching assistant I worked in a Montessori classroom (1st to 3rd grade), and at a first glance, there is no real structure to the classroom. For example, there was a lot of open space with spaces at tables or the rug to work. There were not rows of desks. The majority of the day involved individual or collaborative work time. This meant that the head teacher did not teach group lessons but had small group lessons (1-4 students) while others worked. If it was too noisy, students could ring the bell and ask for students to work quieter. It was definitely student driven in that students were making choices about what activities or work they wanted to do. However, it is interesting to think about how the physical space of the classroom creates a structure for these individual work times. For example, the shelves are carefully organized with materials, where everything has a certain place for it to go. This invites a certain level of tidiness to the classroom setting. Student are expected to return materials to their home before moving onto something else. The materials themselves are also supposed to be used a particular way, meaning there is little room for exploration. So in this way, the free flowing work time still invites a particular structure to the school day. Students aren't allowed to get messy with their work, they are expected to engage in a certain level of organization. Which begs the question of who and what type of learner are these structures resources intended for? And who is excluded?

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A Peek Inside a Montessori Classroom (Old branding)

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Maintaining Control by Silencing Students (Maria Nadal)

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Maintaining Control by Silencing Students (Maria Nadal)

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When I was in middle school, the dominant classroom management strategy was to teach students to only speak when called upon. It seemed as though teachers were afraid that by letting us work on our own or in groups they’d lose control of the classroom. As I’ve learned about student-centered pedagogy, questions that constantly came up for me were: how do teachers maintain control over classrooms when students are working together in groups? And how do teachers avoid distractions and misuse of time that can result from students exploring concepts on their own rather than being guided through a pre-determined thought process? The author of this Education Week article, Richard Ullman, seems to have a strong opinion that student-centered classrooms and effective classroom management are mutually exclusive. He reminds me of my middle school teachers, and I think a lot of other educators who are worried about classroom management. He maintains the position that teachers know what should be taught and how it should be taught, and students are incapable of accurately making those decisions. He says, “Many students, especially those most at risk of academic failure, are simply not sufficiently motivated or self-aware to advocate for their own education needs, and require the direct, focused instruction that a truly effective master teacher should be encouraged and empowered to provide.”

This reminded me of the difference between expressed needs and inferred needs, from the Noddings reading. Ullman argues that although students think they know what they need, they are not intellectually mature enough to distinguish between needs and wants. Instead, teachers’ professional training should equip teachers with the knowledge to determine what students truly need and how to meet those needs. It seems counterintuitive that someone would understand a person’s needs better than the person in need. As this relates to student-centered classrooms and classroom management, I think giving students the freedom to explore new concepts and figure out how they learn best is a way that teachers can meet students’ needs. By working with individual learning styles and giving students a voice in the classroom, not only are their needs more likely to be met, but students are probably also more likely to respect their teachers and engage in class work. I can confidently say that while my middle school teachers may have achieved their desired outcomes of keeping our class under control, this classroom management strategy definitely didn’t validate students’ identities and needs. I think that by giving students the agency to speak up and express themselves, not only are they validated, but classroom management can be maintained as well.

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mobile first webpage developed by mobiletech

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Restorative Justice for Whom? (Ty Gwara)

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Restorative Justice for Whom? (Ty Gwara)

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I am on my school's discipline committee, which means I am one of about 8-10 adults (including teachers, administrators, and the school chaplain) who hear discipline cases and decide on outcomes about behavior that violates our community expectations. We recently had a case surrounding an article students published for the school's satire magazine. The article in question was racist, sexist, and homophobic, and once students in the community saw it published, the outcry was immediate and the article was taken down within an hour of being posted.

From the outset, our administrators seemed hesitant to treat this case the same way we've treated others. They felt it was an opportunity to explore restorative justice rather than being punitive, especially since the students involved seemed genuinely contrite and ready to learn from their mistakes.

I never questioned (and still don't) the students' remorse, but I did question leaning into the idea of restorative justice part way through a school year, without any training, and in contradiction to how we had handled previous discipline cases dealing with similar issues of power and privilege. When I glance at the linked checklist for implementing restorative justice, I see that my school and my committee didn't follow any of these guidelines, and that concerns me.

I like the idea of restorative justice, but without careful consideration for how it's implemented, I fear it can just become another tool for allowing those with power and privilege to escape consequences. I hope my school and our committee carefully consider how we move forward from this point.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Doug Lemov's accessible welcome-to-teaching anthem has become the Bible for Teach for America corps members and charter networks everywhere. The handbook offers over 60 "techniques" for classroom management and other helpful hints for running a classroom. I must admit, TLaC offers a starting point for educators, especially those who are new to teaching or are shifting careers. However, there is a limit to which the individual educator must ask themself the reason behind tasks in the classroom: Am I having students perform this task to show my power? Or does this task serve a purpose in my students' academic growth?

In combination with texts like "With All Due Respect" by Morrish, some managerial texts are based in deficit-based thinking. Classroom management is confused with socialization where it is implied that the teacher's responsibility is to train children the "white" way to act. Morrish's text emphasizes the importance of student compliance, which makes me circle back to aforementioned self-questioning. What is the GOAL of this system? It seems like the goal is to perpetuate teacher/ student power dynamics of behavioralism.

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Teach To Make Connections and To Build Community (written by Yvonne Thevenot)

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Teach To Make Connections and To Build Community (written by Yvonne Thevenot)

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I teach mostly in informal STEM learning spaces, whereby I teach, co-teach, or work with my STEM teaching staff to facilitate the most inclusive PreK-12 STEM afterschool learning spaces as possible. We expose our students to coding, engineering, science, robotics and creative technologies. Because many of our students in our 12 school or community centers are new to disciplines such as Computer Science, Engineering, Robotics, Creative Tech, and, if they are in PreK-5, Science, I make a point to create community within my learning spaces.  Examples of things I do:
1. I greet my young Engineers at the door, and if they are small, I stoop down to their level to make eye-contact...and if they wish to hug me, I let them!
2. I have a greeting and an agenda already written on the board that reads something like this: "Welcome Engineers! Monday, March 25, 2019
Today we will... a. create our own circuit b. use our circuit to make a basic robot c. showcase our invention" I firmly believe that if you are going to insert critical thinking and advocacy in your learning space, you must share with the scholars what they will be doing, so they can be a partner in those learning activities.
3. On the very first day of every program, I always take a moment to find out about our students, ensure they are wearing a name tag, and create a dialogue with everyone. We sit in a circle (I rearrange the classroom so that we are in circles or half circles or community "pods", which are clusters of desks and chair together. I give our students agency and ask them what they'd like to do and know in our STEM program. For students who are already writing, I give post it notes or small slips of paper and ask students to share out what they'd like to do, or if they don't want to be vocal, I ask them to write on the papers or post its what they want to do. I then use that info to tailor the lesson plans/curriculum plan around what they said they wanted to do.
4. If I really need to get my students' attention, and I often do after they become engaged in their science lab or their coding assignment or after they start on engineering an invention, I use the West African call and response: "Ago! Ame!", which is borrowed from the Twi language of West Africa. Any member of the community may use Ago if she or he needs to get the attention of the group. Ame is the response that acknowledges a willingness to listen. Not only does this call and response demonstrate respect for other members of the classroom, but it offers an example of the cultural borrowings that give honor to cultures of the African Diaspora in the development of a multicultural classroom community. (Explanation retrieved from: http://www.sacschoolblogs.org/ujima/about-2/)
5. I call my students Engineers or Scientists, or Codesters or Robotics Engineers - whatever I am teaching, they are called this role throughout the session.
6. I introduce a STEM icon that represents the culture of the  students in my classroom. They get their own copy of the icon, including a photo and a one page biography. If our session is an hour or more, we take 7-8 minutes in the beginning, after we have connected, to introduce the ICON, so students can see that someone who looks like them or like a peer in class is also doing hip stuff in STEM.
6. I facilitate sessions that are hands on and use a learn-by-doing/learn-by-tinkering method, giving students an option to work with peers or solo.
7. I reserve time for closing out our session with what I often call a gratitude circle or a showcase. We gather in a circle and share one thing we learned that day and I give my engineers the opportunity to show the product they built/coded/experimented with.
Note: When students are having a bad day and they initiate fighting, arguing, or behavior that is clearly not a part of a community of love, I will...
1. Stop teaching and share with the entire class that we are a community of friends and in our community, we show each other respect.
2. I will pull the students aside and sit between them, forming a triangle, and I give some rules of engagement: I ask one student to share what happened, then I ask the other student to share what happened. I share with them what I observed and if the behavior I see is not part of the community of love, I call it and share that what I saw is not acceptable. I tell them THEY are acceptable, but their actions are not and that we are going to talk about it. I then start asking the students questions about what they like to do, what their favorite food is, and so on, until I start to see their faces light up over hearing things they have in common with each other. I then ask them to write about what happened and what they will do differently. I also require the students to sit together and continue to find out more about each other. They are then allowed to join the group once I see faces smiling and peace is in the air.  (Obviously, there are times when peace is still not in the air, and that is when I speak with each of the parents after the session or call them on the phone to request they join me in getting peace back into the space between the students.)

In short, my practice is to create a community steeped in love and care and to model ways of being, which go beyond expected behaviors, so that my scholars grow up to demonstrate care, respect, and love for themselves and for their peers.