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"a retributive justice, but a complement. It seeks to rehabilitation of the wrongdoer and the repair of the victim's injury."

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"a retributive justice, but a complement. It seeks to rehabilitation of the wrongdoer and the repair of the victim's injury."

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Restorative justice is a collaborative process that involves the victim, the offender, and the community. It seeks to resolve conflict in a way in which all parties involve work together to acquire healing. 

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Restorative justice is a collaborative process that involves the victim, the offender, and the community. It seeks to resolve conflict in a way in which all parties involve work together to acquire healing. 

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So why bring social justice into the mainstream classroom?

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So why bring social justice into the mainstream classroom?

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In today's date and sadly to say many conflicts arise within the perimeters of a school. Children are constantly bullied. Despite attempts to control violence and aggression, it continues to appear and re-appear through distinct faces, yet bringing forth the same feelings of fear, sadness and despair within the lives of our children.
Restorative justice could also be a great tool to help students with learning disabilities' mainstreaming process into the general ed a lot more smoother. Students could come to terms of understanding how special each student is despite any disability that brings about more challenges at times. Students would have a voice and the connection established within a restorative justice circle would increase their understanding and willingness to help.
Restorative justice is a mediation tool used to find resolution to these types of situations. Simply ignoring important matters or attempting to address them in a superficial level is not going to bring about true change. With restorative justice at hand, we as teachers can hold hands together with our students and work out a plan in which both parties are heard and an understanding is progressively acquired.

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Community Circle:"A safe discussion place in which students and the teacher sit in a circle so that all members' faces are visible to one another...In a community circle, the teacher participates as an equal member of the classroom, facilitating discussion rather than directing it."

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Community Circle:"A safe discussion place in which students and the teacher sit in a circle so that all members' faces are visible to one another...In a community circle, the teacher participates as an equal member of the classroom, facilitating discussion rather than directing it."

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Harm:"Anything that impairs or adversely affects the safety of patients in clinical care, drug therapy, research investigations, or public health."
Healing:"The process of helping someone return to health; compassion by a health care provider is part of this. Authentic perception of the experience of illness in the particular person is the essential basis."
Inclusivity:"An intervention or policy of including people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized, such as handicapped, learning disabled or racial and sexual minorities."
Restorative Justice:"Restorative justice is a process to involve, to the extent possible, those who have a stake in a specific offense and to collectively identify and address harms, needs, and obligations, in order to heal and put things right as possible."

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Author: Howard Zehr

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Authors: Pete Wallis & Joseph Wilkins.
A comic book for children

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Using Dialogue Circles to Support Classroom Management

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Using Dialogue Circles to Support Classroom Management

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Using Dialogue Circles to Support Classroom Management

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Positive School Climate and Restorative Practices

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Positive School Climate and Restorative Practices

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Positive School Climate and Restorative Practices

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Restorative Justice What is it and is not Authored by the editors of Rethinking Schools

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Restorative Justice What is it and is not Authored by the editors of Rethinking Schools

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Moving to the concept of zero tolerance to restorative justice in classrooms.

The concept of restorative justice was adopted from indigenous approaches.

It requires a strong commitment, a collaborative system of support and a growing circle of trust.

"Restorative justice won’t work as a band-aid when schools are being torn to shreds.

A Re-focus on academics and social grounds must play forth in order to offer the presence of restorative justice a place that counts.(:

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The rise of restorative justice in California schools brings promise, controversy

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The rise of restorative justice in California schools brings promise, controversy

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This article calls restorative justice a new approach to an old problem.

A conflict arised in a classroom in this classroom. The climate had spiked and the girls involved decided to take a more positive resolution to their physical altercation.

Tatiana Chaterji is the restorative justice specialist at this school who helped the two girls amend their differences using restorative justice approaches.

This is a real life situation that helps us see the beauty and helpfulness restorative justice brings to the table.

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The two 9th-grade girls heard the laughing the minute they walked into their third-period class that December morning at Oakland's Fremont High School. And they knew why: a video of one of the girls being slapped by a classmate had gone viral among students on social media.

It was one of those moments that could have gone bad in a hurry - like so many others had at Fremont High, a school that had more suspensions last year than any other in the Oakland Unified School District.

Both girls (whose names are being withheld to protect their privacy) acknowledged later that their first instinct was to lash out at their snickering classmates. But they didn't do that. Instead, they left the classroom and walked down the hall to Tatiana Chaterji's room.

Chaterji is Fremont High's restorative justice facilitator and among a growing number of educators in Oakland Unified charged with changing the district's approach to behavioral issues through restorative practices. This work departs from traditional school discipline in that it focuses less on punishment and more on righting wrongs and building healthy relationships within the school.

This story is the first of a three-part series on restorative justice in California.

Part two on Monday: The story of a South LA high school's journey back from the brink

Part three on Tuesday:Resources often don't match rhetoric for restorative justice in California schools

During the previous period, the two girls had participated in a community building circle, a cornerstone of restorative justice in which students gather in a circle, talk about the difficulties of their daily lives and work on responding to them in a healthier way.

"What would have happened had you stayed (in the classroom)?" Chaterji asked the girls after they had told her their story.

"They would have said some things, then I would have said some things...then things could have gotten ugly," said the more assertive of the two, who was wearing an ankle monitor from the Alameda County Juvenile Probation Department.

Had things gotten out of hand, punches might have been thrown. That would've led to an office referral and perhaps suspensions. Such an outcome would be an unfortunate but not uncommon occurrence at Fremont, which, according to district data, suspended 151 students during the 2016-17 school year.

Fremont High hired Chaterji last summer as part of a larger effort to improve the school's climate and cut down on suspensions. The school also employs three case managers who work to alleviate conflicts that crop up in classrooms before they become office referrals.

"People's trust in the process is growing," Chaterji said. "The leadership has really shifted to prioritize [restorative justice]...we are at an exciting moment, but it's just the start."

A new approach to an old problem

Small victories like the one that morning at Fremont High are being won to varying degrees in schools throughout California. Over the past decade, a mountain of research has shown that the so-called zero-tolerance approach to misbehavior, characterized by stringent rules and harsh punishments, largely doesn't work.

In particular, studies have shown unequivocally that students of color are suspended and expelled at disproportionately higher rates than their white peers, which has forced a reassessment of school discipline in many places throughout the nation.

Teachers and administrators have come to realize that a student's range of experiences - their home life, their neighborhood and the overall atmosphere of the school - has an outsized impact on their behavior in class. Research shows that by gaining insight into these experiences and building stronger relationships with students, educators can address a number of behaviors without having to resort to suspensions and other punitive methods of discipline.

This awakening, along with intense pressure on districts from the state in recent years to cut down on suspensions, have spawned a number of behavioral support programs under the umbrella of social/emotional learning, including Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS) and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS).

Interwoven in these approaches is the idea of restorative justice, which has both captured the imagination of many youth advocates and educators and generated controversy.

In recent years, some of the state's largest districts have made significant investments in restorative justice:

Oakland Unified budgeted roughly $2.5 million for restorative justice in the 2017-18 school year, which pays for 35 facilitators and a districtwide coordinator.

The Los Angeles Unified School District budgets more than $10 million annually for restorative justice and has a goal of implementing the practices in each of its more than 900 schools by 2020.

Following the lead of Los Angeles Unified, the San Diego Unified School District board last year approved a "School Climate Bill of Rights" that is centered on restorative practices. The board also approved a nearly $800,000 budget for restorative justice in 2017-18, which pays for a districtwide program manager along with several other staff members.

The Santa Ana Unified School District received a multi-year, $3 million federal grant to implement restorative practices in schools throughout the district.

Although the terms restorative justice and restorative practices were largely unheard of in the school setting as recently as a decade ago, the work in many respects builds on conflict mediation strategies that schools have used since the 1990s.

Yet many see restorative justice as groundbreaking because at its core is a repudiation of the punitive model that has been the foundation of school discipline in this country since the days of the one-room schoolhouse.

Because their use in the school setting is so new, there is scant research on the long-term effectiveness of restorative practices. But officials in districts that have devoted significant resources to them say they've led directly to fewer suspensions and better school climates.

"We have seen a drastic reduction in suspensions and RJ (a commonly used shorthand for the practices) is a big reason for it," said Deborah Brandy, Los Angeles Unified's director of district operations, which oversees restorative justice programs.

"We've also seen a reduction in truancy rates...and it goes beyond the data. Parents feel more welcome at their school sites; students remarked (in climate surveys) that their teachers seem more caring."

While awareness of restorative practices is high among school officials statewide, relatively few districts outside major urban centers have well-established programs, EdSource found through interviews and a survey.

The most common sentiment expressed among nearly a dozen superintendents, principals and other officials interviewed was cautious optimism, with the caveat that finding resources to devote to it is a challenge.

"There is certainly an interest and heightened awareness," said Tamara Clay, who is director of the El Dorado County Special Education Local Plan Area. "And system change can be easier in small rural areas like ours - but it's harder in that our superintendents don't have the capacity."

Too much too soon?

While it is difficult to find anyone - administrators, teachers, students or parents - who disagrees with the core principles of restorative justice, a fair number of critics say it's been oversold as a quick fix. And, in some instances, they say it's contributed to more chaotic school environments.

Los Angeles Unified's efforts have drawn criticism from some teachers' union officials who say the district has launched an aggressive implementation plan without sufficiently taking into account how the timetable is affecting students and teachers at the ground level.

"The LAUSD idea is that in three years' time we'll just train all the teachers and we'll be done," said Daniel Barnhart, who is vice president of secondary schools for United Teachers of Los Angeles. "It is a recipe for resentment and for teachers to not make a change they may want to make because there is no real support."

Belia Saavedra, director of restorative justice in schools for the Long Beach-based California Conference for Equality and Justice (CCEJ), said most teachers she works with embrace restorative justice - but she has encountered pockets of resistance in both Long Beach and Los Angeles schools.

"More than a few teachers will tell you that RJ is the removal of punishment without a replacement for accountability," Saavedra said, referring to concerns that there aren't sufficient consequences. "If RJ is coming to their school they see it as the wild, wild West."

LA Unified's Brandy does not dispute the reports of pushback, but says the concerns fade once teachers and administrators see the district's commitment to the approach.

"Because the district has been very steadfast we are getting more and more buy-in," Brandy said. "In the first year, we received a lot of pushback. In the second year, people started calling me, asking me 'When am I going to get the RJ training?'"

Brandy's assertions notwithstanding, the issues being raised are real and indicative of the pendulum swinging too quickly away from traditional discipline, argues Max Eden, a senior fellow specializing in education policy for the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank based in New York City.

Eden says his research shows that students report feeling less safe when districts issue mandates to reduce suspensions and in their place offer alternatives like restorative justice and PBIS.

"There is more immediate evidence that the reforms are creating a crisis rather than solving one," Eden said, pointing to studies done in New York City, Philadelphia and Virginia. "If it were being approached as a complement to traditional discipline I would be bullish, but given that it's being looked at as a substitute, I'm bearish."

Daniel Losen, who is director of UCLA's Center for Civil Rights Remedies, takes issue with Eden's arguments on a couple of levels.

First, Losen said Eden is cherry-picking indicators to make schools seem more unsafe than they actually are. Secondly, he sees in Eden a failure to acknowledge that there is strong evidence showing that suspensions and other isolating punishments are harmful to students, especially students of color.

"No one wants the reform efforts to yield something worse than before," Losen said. "But we have to reject the status quo. Schools are doing things that are harmful to kids right now, and we need to stop that - their civil rights are being violated."

A winding road to progress

It is because of disagreements like the one between Eden and Losen that Sonia Llamas, Santa Ana Unified's assistant superintendent for school performance and culture, spends a lot of her time documenting her district's success with restorative practices and showing how they help its bottom line.

Five years ago, Santa Ana Unified had nearly 9,800 days of suspensions, Llamas said, which cost the district about $680,000 because state funding is calculated based on average daily enrollment. Since then, thanks to a grant from the federal Department of Education, the district has invested more than $3 million in restorative justice and related programs and seen its suspensions drop by 75 percent.

"People can talk a good talk, but you need strong data to show what's working," Llamas said. "It is really hard to cut something that is showing impact."

That being said, Llamas and other proponents emphasize that transforming a school's climate and culture often happens in fits and starts and requires commitment and patience from schools and communities.

"The ability to do RJ is based on where a school and its community are at and start from there," said David Yusem, Oakland Unified's restorative justice coordinator. "Right now, there are some schools, just like some communities, that are ready for RJ and it can come in really nicely. Then there are other schools that are fractured and it's tough to implement it."

"People can talk a good talk, but you need strong data to show what's working," Llamas said. "It is really hard to cut something that is showing impact."

John Jones III recently moved to Oakland from Portland and his son, a 9th-grader at Fremont High, has had trouble adjusting to his new school. Jones, who works for a community group as a restorative justice facilitator, said the school's handling of altercations his son had with a teacher showed the progress Fremont has made as well as how far it still has to go.

"My biggest critique is that I wasn't notified of the situation until months afterwards," Jones said. "Once there is the first inkling of a problem, parents should be brought in...the old proverb is true, it does take a village to raise a child - and it's important that everyone is on the same page."

While they acknowledge their progress has not gone in a straight line, the staff at Fremont High feel they are slowly getting on the same page. The school is on track to cut suspensions in half from last year, said Co-Principal Tom Skjervheim.

"Part of the challenge is we have lots of students who need support in any given day," Skjervheim said. "[But] now that we have a system where RJ can live - it is setting us up for more success."

When asked whether she learns more from being suspended or going through restorative justice when she gets in trouble for fighting, the 9th-grade girl who had sought Chaterji's counsel after the problems in her third-period class rolled her eyes. "It's all a waste of time," she said.

But when pressed further, she gave a clear-headed comparison of the two approaches.

"I could be getting into a fight with someone and get suspended. Then I come back and it could still be a fight," she said. "If I don't get suspended and we talk it out, there is a higher chance of there being no more problems."
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The rise of restorative justice in California schools brings promise, controversy

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The two 9th-grade girls heard the laughing the minute they walked into their third-period class that December morning at Oakland's Fremont High School. And they knew why: a video of one of the girls being slapped by a classmate had gone viral among students on social media.

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Restorative Justice at Oakland's Fremont High

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Restorative Justice at Oakland's Fremont High

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Restorative Justice at Oakland's Fremont High

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Response: How to Practice Restorative Justice in Schools

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Response: How to Practice Restorative Justice in Schools

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--This article helps guide us in how to begin to establish a restorative justice approach in our classrooms.

"First, intentionally create a community that is anchored in shared values."

"Second, make participation in the community a requirement, not an option."

"Third, model and teach your community values."

"Finally, enforce the values and be willing to hold students accountable."

Several educators also share their understanding and experiences with social justice all throughout this article.

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Education Week - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo

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This week's question is:
What is restorative justice (also known as restorative practices) and what does it look like in schools?
Recently, there has been the beginning of a push towards restorative justice, also known as restorative practices, in schools. It's viewed as an alternative to the typical punish/suspend method of discipline that has been historically used, and which have also been found to disproportionately punish students of color.

Today, we'll examine what restorative practices are and what does it look like in schools. Shane Safir, Jen Adkins, Timothy Hilton, Crystal T. Laura, and Mark Katz share their commentaries on the topic. You can listen to a ten-minute conversation I had with Shane, Jen and Timothy on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

You might also want to explore a collection I've put together: The Best Resources For Learning About Restorative Practices
Response From Shane Safir
Shane Safir ( safirassociates.org) is a leader, coach, and writer who has worked at every level of the school system toward a single goal: equity of opportunity for every student. Her experience spans 20 years in public education and includes founding June Jordan School for Equity in San Francisco, an innovative national model identified by leading scholar Linda Darling-Hammond as having "beaten the odds in supporting the success of low-income students of color." Safir is writing a book for Jossey-Bass called The Listening Leader: Creating the Conditions for School Transformation:
For several years I had the privilege of leading a school deeply committed to restorative justice--June Jordan School for Equity in San Francisco (JJSE). In preparing my response, I talked with JJSE's outstanding current principal, Matt Alexander, with whom I helped to start the school. Matt summarized the key to RJ perfectly: "You can't restore justice to the community when you haven't created a community to begin with." In reality, many schools don't operate as communities; they are transactional institutions where students come to get things-- knowledge and skills, social interaction with peers, a diploma. To practice restorative justice, you have to first build a real community that is worth restoring. Restorative justice (RJ) is a powerful approach to discipline that focuses on repairing harm through inclusive processes that engage all stakeholders. Implemented well, RJ shifts the focus of discipline from punishment to learning and from the individual to the community. However, it is often misperceived and misapplied. Given the national push to reduce suspensions, some leaders may perceive restorative justice as a way to improve their discipline data rather than a holistic approach to behavior. Seeing RJ through this narrow lens leads to two problems. First, we stop suspending students but fail to deal with the root causes of behavior issues, including the absence of strong relationships and emotional safety at school. Second, operating under intense pressure, leaders may start to unconsciously rig their suspension data rather than invest in the deeper work of building a community. If you watched the HBO series "The Wire" about Baltimore's criminal justice system, you may recall the term "juking the stats" to describe how police manipulated their data to conform to the department's mandates. We don't want schools to juke their suspension stats in the name of restorative justice. To implement restorative justice with fidelity, start with these steps. * First, intentionally create a community that is anchored in shared values. June Jordan School for Equity uses the acronym RICH to describe its four core values: Respect, Integrity, Courage, and Humility. This provides a common language for students, parents, and teachers to understand what is expected of all members of the school community. * Second, make participation in the community a requirement, not an option. Lots of things are required in schools: Number 2 pencils, backpacks, binders. Why can't you ask every student to adopt the core values that signify membership in your sacred community? Think of this as benevolent branding: "This is a special place where you want to belong." Requiring students to participate in the community means a couple of things. First, they must do their best to practice its values in word and deed. Second, they commit to engage in restorative processes if they have harmed the community or been harmed by another member. There is a reciprocal principle implied here: We will keep you safe, but in return you have to show up as a full participant. * Third, model and teach your community values. We know that it takes students four to 40 exposures to learn a new vocabulary word. Internalizing your school's values is no different. If you want the values to live beyond a slogan or poster, take time to teach them in interactive ways like role-playing, reading and writing stories about the values in action, and asking students to recall their life experiences related to the values. Leverage your most personalized school structures--advisory, circle time, community-building days--to explicitly teach the values of your beloved community. * Finally, enforce the values and be willing to hold students accountable. There's no cookie cutter approach to restorative justice. You are asking students to make a commitment to stay in relationship with each other and their community. By extension, if they violate or harm that relationship, they need to make amends. Accountability might look like a verbal "talking-to," having to reflect on their choices in a restorative circle, engaging in a restorative conference with the harmed party, or perhaps even being suspended. There must be real, felt consequences along with opportunities to make amends and learn from mistakes. A helpful guiding principle is that consequences should always be educational in nature rather than punitive. Matt offers, "I don't care about the quantity of suspensions, I care about the quality." Remember the bottom line of restorative justice is this: You have to first invest in building an authentic community that is worth restoring.
Response From Jen Adkins

Jen Adkins has been an educator for 17 years. She has taught in private and public school settings and across grade levels including primary and middle school. In the past 12 years at Luther Burbank High School, she has been a 9/10/12 English teacher, has served as the ASB advisor and is currently a Restorative Practices Facilitator co-teaching the Peer Court Program:
At Luther Burbank High School, the faculty, staff and administration have been working diligently to keep students in the classroom; we work ardently to support one another in supporting our students be present. As such, we estimate about one third of our classroom teachers are employing community circles, with some moving forward with harm circles when necessary. Like many of you, we have also used circles in common planning time, department meetings and even faculty meetings. Along with these restorative practices, it has been equally pressing to have peer groups work to keep students with disciplinary issues engaged in school while being held accountable for their actions. For more than two years now, we've been doing just that through our Peer Court. Peer court is funded as an after-school class, but is considered a peer program that enables students in our community to actively accept responsibility for and repair the harm they have caused through their actions. Here is how it works: when a student is sent to the discipline office, and it is deemed safe and appropriate, they are given the choice to attend peer court, where a judge and jury of their peers will hear their case (presented by a student advocate) and reach agreement on an alternative consequence plan (ACP). The consequences in the ACP differ from traditional punitive consequences such as detention and suspension, and favor things like tutoring, hours spent in a leadership class, and/or serving time on the peer court jury. Once the ACP is completed, students are cleared of any wrong-doings. During the court process, student community advocates interview any teachers or students involved to assess the harm caused. The student (or respondent, as we refer to them) also has an advocate who interviews them thoroughly looking for all facts and any pertinent background information. (We have found that often there is more to their story than just the harm they caused). This process allows both the respondent and the person(s) harmed a chance to tell their narrative to an impartial member of the peer court. It also allows the advocates of those harmed to suggest an appropriate ACP. Those in peer court have been trained in: asking questions, interviewing, writing statements, speaking to the judge and jury, fair and appropriate ACP's, coaching the respondent through the process, and checking in with the respondent later. Ultimately, we've seen this process help students understand the wide net their actions cast. This process allows students to accept responsibility and gives students an action plan to move forward productively instead of continuing to repeat the cycle of misbehavior and punitive response from administration. This class and process is also impactful for our peer court students who take ownership of the justice system in our school community.
Response From Timothy Hilton

Timothy Hilton currently teaches high school Social Studies in South Central Los Angeles, and has taught in the area for the past 7 years. Timothy has experience teaching every level of social studies ranging from Advanced Placement to English Language Development. In addition to teaching in inner city Los Angeles, Timothy is currently a doctoral student at Claremont Graduate University in the field of Educational Policy, Evaluation, and Reform:
Restorative justice is an alternate method of disciplining students that seeks to balance the process between being too permissive and being too punitive. The goal of restorative justice is to work with students (the victims and the accused) to come to a solution rather than simply handing down punishment. Restorative justice seeks to fix the problem, impose fair punishment, foster understanding, and adjust student behavior. In school, restorative justice look more like cooperative discussions, and less like the traditional handing down of punishment we have known. Restorative justice in practice will include all involved parties discussing the incident in question. The victim will be given the opportunity to share their feelings, as will the accused. Restorative practices must provide equal time to each party as the primary goal is not punishment, but restoration. One way that restorative justice looks different from our more archaic forms of punishment is in the role of the teacher/administrator. Restorative practices use teachers/administrators as facilitators as opposed to the judge and jury. The facilitators' job is to ask opened ended questions in an effort to foster reflection, not lecture students on behavior. Questions like; what can you do to fix this? How would you feel if the same thing happened to you? And how did your behavior impact your fellow students? The restorative justice discussion is by no means an alternative to punishment. Students who break the rules should be punished. That being said, when restorative justice is carried out correctly, students will be more likely to accept the punishment without harboring any resentment as they were a part of the process and understand what they did. Furthermore, because the discussion was carried out with the facilitator involved, punishments tend to be more reasonable as they were not made in the heat of the moment.
Response From Crystal T. Laura

Crystal T. Laura is an assistant professor of Educational Leadership at Chicago State University and author of Being Bad: My Baby Brother and the School-to-Prison Pipeline:
Restorative justice is a response to wrongdoing that privileges healing and rebuilding the lives impacted by it, not punishment nor retribution. Popularized in the 1970s--a brief window when many Americans were more open to rehabilitating people who commit criminal acts--restorative justice is now being employed in some schools as an alternative way to deal with student misbehavior and conflicts. By now, most educators know that traditional, exclusionary approaches to student discipline do not improve classroom climate or culture. In fact, exclusionary discipline--such as out-of-school suspension, which is used at extraordinary rates and disproportionately along lines of race, gender, and ability status--has been strongly linked to student disengagement, drop out, and entanglement with the school-to-prison pipeline. Widespread concern about these and other serious consequences has nudged consideration of inclusive, restorative measures. There are many models of restorative justice and no clear consensus about the best practices in developing, implementing, or measuring the outcomes of a restorative justice school program. What unifies restorative justice programs is the twofold goal of building strong relationships among students, staff, teachers, administrators, and parents while creating safe, productive learning environments for all. However, some of the most common programs include peacemaking circles and/or mediation conferences that bring harmed parties together to talk about issues with the help of a skilled facilitator, and/or youth-centered juries composed of students trained to hear cases of low-level student misconduct. For more information on exclusionary discipline, readers should check out the Civil Rights Project (). Resources on restorative justice can be found through Project NIA.
Response From Mark Katz

Mark Katz, PhD, has served as the Director of Learning Development Services, an educational, psychological, and neuropsychological center in San Diego, California for the past 33 years. He is a clinical and consulting psychologist and conducts local, regional, and national trainings for schools, healthcare organizations, and community groups working to improve educational and mental health systems of care. He also writes and serves as a contributing editor for Attention Magazine and has worked with colleagues from around the country on the Stop Bullying Now! campaign, a federally sponsored multi-year media campaign designed to increase public awareness of bullying and other forms of school violence. Dr. Katz is the author of On Playing a Poor Hand Well: Insights from the Lives of Those Who Have Overcome Childhood Risks and Adversities and Children Who Fail at School But Succeed at Life: Lessons From Lives Well-Lived (forthcoming in March 2016 from W. W. Norton):
Restorative practices represent a significant paradigm shift from traditional school disciplinary practices, where students who engage in increasingly disruptive behaviors receive increasingly harsh punishments. Restorative practices require instead that students focus on the harm their misbehavior caused others, and what they can do to repair that harm and restore and strengthen relationships that may have been affected in the process. With restorative practices, there's a shared responsibility among students and teachers to hold each other accountable for maintaining high behavioral expectations, and for creating a culture of trust, safety, and mutual respect. Effectively implementing restorative practices requires a school-wide commitment to a very different way of relating to one another. Those engaged in wrongdoing, for example, will be asked to respond to several restorative questions: What happened? What were you thinking about at the time? What have you thought about since? Who has been affected by what you have done? In what way? What do you think you need to do to make things right? Those who are harmed respond to restorative questions as well: What did you think when you realized what happened? What impact has this had on you and others? What has been the hardest thing for you? What do you think needs to happen to make things right? Questions are typically posed during teacher-led group meetings referred to as circles, which also include other classmates and/or others in the school community. Circles occur continuously, not only in response to wrongdoing, but also as a way for students and staff to get to know each other better and to function more effectively as a group. Circles build a sense of community. All voices are heard, all share in making important decisions, and all share in the opportunities for developing greater trust, respect, empathy, and mutual understanding (Mirsky, 2014). Circles represent one of many restorative practices, which range from informal to formal. An increasing number of schools across the U.S. are embracing restorative practices as a guiding philosophy for creating a safe, respectful, and inclusive school culture and for increasing levels of trust among and between students, teachers, and others in the school community (Katz, 2015). Many were initially attracted to these practices by studies showing their effectiveness in preventing and reducing suspensions and expulsions, which are known to occur more frequently among students of color and students with learning and behavior challenges. Not all students who misbehave at school change their behavior when punished. Some actually start to misbehave more. Rather than feel remorse for how they behaved, they may instead feel unfairly treated, humiliated, or disconnected from their better-behaved peers. Punishing them for misbehavior doesn't teach them a lesson. In some instances, in fact, it leads to an escalation in misbehavior, culminating in suspension or expulsion. As an alternative to increasingly punitive disciplinary practices, restorative practices can provide these students with far more opportunities to recognize the hurts they have caused, as well far more opportunities to right their wrongs. To learn more about restorative practices, visit the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) website at: http://www.iirp.edu/. Katz, M. (2015, June). Restorative practices. Attention Magazine, 4-5. Mirsky, L. (2014, Summer). The power of the circle. Educational Leadership: 51-55. Responses From Readers

@Larryferlazzo @EdWeekTeacher what I see is chaos at the intermediate lvl...2 young to own actions, 2 old to want to pls!
-- Elisa Martinez (@elisa_mrtnz) February 4, 2016

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Response: How to Practice Restorative Justice in Schools

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This week's question is: What is restorative justice (also known as restorative practices) and what does it look like in schools? Recently, there has been the beginning of a push towards restorative justice, also known as restorative practices, in schools.