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How familiar are you with Restorative Justice Practices (RJP) to support classroom instruction? 

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Limited- Heard of RJP, but unfamiliar with practices

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Somewhat-Occasional use of RJP. (1-2 times monthly)

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Very familiar- Frequently use RJP in the classroom. (weekly or daily)

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Restorative Justice involves how we choose to respond to conflict and seek remedies between victims and offenders

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Relational: At the core of most conflicts is an interpersonal relationship. We strive to build positive, healthy, and long-lasting relationships that are inclusive of others.

Respect: Involves mutual consideration and care of others and a desire to seek better understanding of another's perspective.

Responsibility: When we realize we have made a mistake in our words or actions that caused harm to another individual, we seek to be accountable for our actions.

Resilience: As we encounter challenges in our daily interactions with others and overcome fears and failure, our resolve to confront conflict and find self-improvement builds long term resilience.

Reflective: We understand that we are all a work in progress. Each day offers an opportunity for growth and positive change.

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We're going to watch a brief clip of a dialogue circle being used in a classroom to support social-emotional wellness.

These can be used during class meetings, morning check-ins, and in academic lessons when pre-teaching and modeling Socratic seminar and inquiry based lessons.

A good goal is to have students lead them. Studies show that Peer to Peer relationships and modeling increases student engagement and reduces adverse behaviors in schools.

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Using Dialogue Circles to Support Classroom Management

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Student Listening Circles build community. This Tier 1 Approach works best when it is implemented in all school environments.

It supports all students in emotional wellness, connectiveness, building empathy, and learning strategies to have conversations with others on sensitive topics.

Topics should be relevant to current events or concerns directly impacting students, teachers, & the school culture.

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A practice associated with restorative justice can be used outside of that context to help students find their voice.

Fly View Productions / iStock

Restorative justice (RJ) is often misjudged as a "replacement for discipline," but really, RJ should be about developing community within a school. Restorative practices have been adapted in schools from Indigenous customs built on strong communities so that when harm is done, the community is able to hold the doer of harm accountable in a meaningful way. For these practices to work, schools must build and maintain a solid foundational community.

Student listening circles (SLCs) are a Tier 1 restorative practice. These circles give students the opportunity to bond and share their experiences in the school community and to provide feedback to the school leadership team. At their core, SLCs are about amplifying students' voices.

At our school, students are invited to attend SLCs monthly during their lunch period, making this a voluntary experience. Because students are giving up their lunch period, we typically buy bagels for participants-perhaps this also serves as an added incentive to attend.

The topic of each SLC is decided on by our RJ team, which is made up of students, teachers, and administrators. The team selects a topic that the school needs student voice on and then designs the lesson plan and accompanying slides and prepares all the materials for the lesson collaboratively. After the lesson design, the student members co-plan which parts of the lesson each student will lead and practice delivering the lesson to the RJ team members.

As with any RJ circle, there are essential components that need to be in place.

5 Keys for a Successful SLC

1. All participants are seated in a circle, with no obstructions between them.

2. A circle keeper facilitates the discussion. In our listening circles, these are students who are trained to lead circles. We also have a staff member on the RJ team present to ensure supervision and to support the student circle keepers.

3. A centerpiece must be in place that serves to remind participants that we are a community-at our school we use a blanket with our school's logo on it.

4. Shared agreements ensure that everyone in the space feels comfortable to share freely. We typically place reminders of these norms or values on the centerpiece.

5. A talking piece controls the flow of the conversation. The person with the talking piece should be the only one sharing at that time. The talking piece could be an object that has meaning to the circle keeper. This helps to ensure that students respect the talking piece. Whenever I lead circles, I always use my David Wright as Captain America Funko Pop as my talking piece. Others like to use fidget toys or stress balls as their talking pieces.

Check-in: Students are given a prompt and whip around the circle sharing their responses-we particularly like this sheep scale. Check-ins are a quick way for the circle keepers to gauge the energy in the room.

Guidelines for the circle: Students are reminded of the shared agreements and are asked if they have any additional norms to add before affirming their agreement to follow these guidelines.

Opening ceremony: This icebreaker gets students acquainted, which is necessary since the participants in each SLC can change from month to month.

Collaborative activities: This is the core of the lesson. These activities are centered around a specific topic that the school wants to hear student voice or feedback on. We have done activities around students' general experience at the school, extracurricular activities, highlighting cultural diversity, and managing stress.

Closing ceremony: This final activity can be used for participants to reflect on the experience or conduct an exit ticket while enjoying their bagels with their peers.

Our RJ team developed a lesson plan template to use when designing SLCs. Each circle follows the same flow:

To see how this all comes together, check out this lesson plan and slides for our SLC on self-advocacy.

An example of Gathering feedback Through an SLC

The topic for our final SLC of the year was "cell phone use in school." This came on the heels of our school deciding to implement Yondr pouches, which prohibit cell phone while phones are inside them, for the upcoming school year. During the circle, participants were given a sneak peek into the school's reasoning for implementing the new policy. Members of the school's administration were present to answer questions. Students were advised that their feedback, concerns, and questions would help to shape the policy that would be presented at an upcoming student town hall.

For the opening, participants calculated their daily screen time and shared the percentage of the day they were on the phones instead of living in the moment. Participants were then invited to place their phones under their seats for the remainder of the circle.

Providing Time for Reflection

Participants engaged in an individual self-reflection activity that we called "Toe the Line." Students stood on opposite sides of a line in the middle of the room (which side didn't matter). A series of prompts, such as "I missed out on a part of class because I was on my phone" or "I have had a conversation with someone where they were more focused on their phones than the actual conversation," were presented. Students physically moved their body to the other side of the line if they had experienced the scenario presented. The physical movement of the activity provided a kinesthetic moment for students to see and feel their individual reflections on each prompt.

Participants were then presented with data and research to explain the school's decision to implement this policy and asked to share their thoughts on the data presented or any questions or concerns they had-of which there were many. All responses were recorded and shared with the school administration so that they could reflect and consider when designing the policy. Students closed out the circle by whipping around the room, sharing what the last 40 minutes were like without touching their phones.

Since we implemented SLCs in our school, students have reported feeling more involved in the school's decision-making and feel that they have a place to advocate for new initiatives they'd like to see brought to the school.

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Using Student Listening Circles to Promote Self-Advocacy in Middle and High School

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A practice associated with restorative justice can be used outside of that context to help students find their voice.

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Lesson Plan Template for Restorative Justice 

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Lesson Plan Template for Restorative Justice 

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This Template will help to plan activities to support and encourage facilitation of Restorative Justice across multiple subject areas and classrooms.

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Restorative Justice Lesson Plan Template

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Comparing Victims, Offenders & Communities of Care

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Restorative Justice involves incorporating strategies for healing between the victim, offender, & community.

In this case, the Community would be the school or classroom.

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This image illustrates least restrictive to most restrictive environments for implementing Restorative Justice practices in classrooms.  

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Best practices is to utilize strategies that affirm and validate students feelings and provide opportunities for peers to lead restorative conversations that lead to healing and greater trusting relationships.

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A recent Study asked 16,000 U.S High School Black & Non-Black Teachers to predict future outcomes of their 10th grade students.

"When asked about any specific Black Student, White teachers were 30% less likely to predict those students would earn a college degree."

Social Scientists believe that Implicit Biases begin forming in the human brain around age 3.

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Whether or not a teacher "believes in" her students and expects them to succeed has been shown to affect how well that student does in school, particularly among disadvantaged students. But educators should be aware that those expectations can be influenced by their own implicit racial biases.

In a recent study that looked at interviews involving 16,000 U.S. teachers, Black and non-Black teachers were asked to predict their 10th-graders' future educational attainment. Would she graduate from high school? How about college? When asked about any specific Black student, White teachers were about 30 percent less likely than Black teachers to predict he or she would someday earn a college degree. For White students, the teachers' predictions, or expectations, were about the same.

"We cannot determine whether the black teachers are too optimistic, the non-black teachers are too pessimistic, or some combination of the two," wrote one of the study's authors, American University's Seth Gershenson, in an an August blog post. But, he noted, it is worrisome nonetheless, "as systematic biases in teachers' expectations for student success might contribute to persistent socio-demographic gaps in educational achievement and attainment."

The study also found that the racial mismatch of expectations was stronger for boys, and that the most optimistic group about Black male students was Black female teachers (even more so than Black male teachers.)

"These results are not meant to, nor should they, demonize or implicate teachers," wrote Gershenson. "Biases in expectations are generally unintentional and are an artifact of how humans categorize complex information." Hopefully, the authors suggest, the study's findings will lead to helpful discussions.

Although the U.S. public school system now has more non-White students than White students, White teachers still account for 84 percent of the teaching force.
What is Implicit Bias and Can it Be Fixed?
Implicit biases are defined by the Kirwin Institute as attitudes or stereotypes that are activated unconsciously and involuntarily. They are not the same as biases that a person might try to hide because they're unpopular or socially incorrect. Social scientists believe that implicit biases are learned as young as age 3, and may be fueled by stereotypes perpetrated in the media, or beliefs passed along by parents, peers, and other community members.

"Our belief here is that we all have implicit biases," said Maureen Costello, director of Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center working toward equity in schools. And it's not just teachers, she points out. Recent studies, prompted by police shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere, have looked at implicit biases among law enforcement officers and found that both White and Black officers often have implicit biases about Black community members.

The consequences for Black communities policed by biased officers has been tragic, but it can be equally consequential in schools, points out Becki Cohn-Vargas, the co-author of Identity Safe Classrooms: Places to Belong and Learn. "This is not about blaming or pointing fingers," she said, but it clear that the decisions made by teachers also do affect children's life trajectories. Unequal discipline, for example, may fuel the school-to-prison pipeline that has disproportionately affected students of color.

But what's important to know about implicit biases is that, once people are made aware of them, those biases can be successfully addressed. "We can mitigate them. We can interrupt them. You can train your mind to catch yourself," said Costello. "It's like breaking a habit, but the first thing you have to do is become aware of the habit."

Awareness is the first, foundational step. (To take an Implicit Assessment Test (IAT) online, visit Teaching Tolerance's Test Yourself webpage.) The second step, suggests Costello, is developing a sense of reflectiveness. Ask yourself, "Is the way I'm approaching this student affecting outcomes?" And consider the data available in your classroom: Who do you call on, and how often? (Do you need to switch to a randomized technique, like pulling popsicle sticks?) How do you seat students, or group them? Are you treating everybody the same when it comes to homework, or are you giving a break to the kid you think has a bad home life or little chance of getting to college?

Researchers also suggest it's helpful to "refute" and "counter" the negative stereotypes that fuel biases, said Cohn-Vargas. That means recognizing these stereotypes really aren't true, and opposing them with ideas that are: for example, it's not true that all Black boys are loud and disruptive; it is true that students who talk a lot often are enthusiastic.

Cohn-Vargas suggests it's also important for educators to recognize their students as people who are individuals.

Much of this kind of work is done by culturally competent NEA members, trained by NEA trainers, through NEA's National Diversity Training Program. Additional resources to help NEA members work with students who may not look like them are available online, including NEA's Diversity Toolkit and Teaching Tolerance's "Culture in the Classroom" project.

"I'm actually encouraged by some of the things happening in positive psychology," said Costello. "If you end every day by journaling or writing down three things that were great in your class, and give yourself a little time for mindfulness and meditation, you can help retrain your mind to see the positive rather than the negative."
Photo: Associated Press

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When Implicit Bias Shapes Teacher Expectations | NEA

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"It's like breaking a habit, but the first thing you have to do is become aware of the habit," says expert.

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Project Implicit Bias provides a self-administered test on a series of subjects to identify implicit biases.

The first step is awareness. Take this test to identify your own implicit biases and identify strategies to improve your teaching practices to reflect practices of restorative justice and equity among all students.

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Focusing on Relationships: Restorative Practices in schools

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Focusing on Relationships: Restorative Practices in schools

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NEA Diversity Toolkit: Racial & Restorative Justice in Schools

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NEA Diversity Toolkit: Racial & Restorative Justice in Schools

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This website has several amazing tools and resources to promote conversations around the topic of race, restorative justice, equity, cultural competency, & diversity in schools.

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The NEA was founded on the belief that every student deserves a great public education. But in too many communities, years of systemic racism and unconscious bias have limited opportunities for many students and contributed to a growing education gap.

In response, NEA's Center for Social Justice has created a professional development program designed to help educators identify and correct explicit and implicit discrimination in their classrooms. Student-centered, research-based, and educator-driven, our trainings and resources are helping educators across the country adjust their practice to better serve students from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, promoting racial and social justice in their communities.

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Every student deserves a safe, welcoming, affirming learning environment. We provide the tools for educators to make it happen.

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Restorative Practices reinforcing community & social norms

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Restorative Practices reinforcing community & social norms

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This article provides information on how to improve the culture of schools and reflective practices for students to use "I" statements.

Creates Autonomy

Builds practices for increased responsibility

Embeds Accountability

Reinforces Care and Concern over

Discipline and Shame.

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A few Mondays ago, a Denver third-grader named Luca sat down in a circle with his classmates and started a conversation like this: "If you were an animal for a day, based on your mood and feelings today, what animal would it be?"

It was the best conversation, say classmates Ellie and Lina. "I said I'd be a monkey because I was feeling silly," says Ellie. "And I said I'd be a panda!" says Lina. "Because I was feeling lazy and hungry, and pandas are lazy and they eat all the time!"

Funny! But the point of the circle conversations, also known as "peace circles," which take place every Monday morning in every classroom at the K-8 Dora Moore School in Denver, isn't giggles. It's to build community and to foster the kind of student-to-student and educator-to-student relationships that lead to supportive classrooms.

"When you go to school here, you get to know each other," says fifth-grader Trinity. "At my old school, we never got to know each other - or to understand each other."

Classroom circles are just one of the restorative practices that Dora Moore's educators have adopted over recent years. Many of their students also practice their conflict-resolution skills in "peace walks," and get regular, positive feedback through daily, one-on-one check-ins with dedicated, full-time restorative practices specialists on their campuses.

Often, this all takes place under the eyes of visiting educators who want to see and hear what happens in public schools where educators care more about creating a community built upon kindness, not consequences.

Dora Moore's schoolwide enthusiasm and experience with restorative practices has made it one of three model schools in Denver, which, thanks to a three-year, $663,000 NEA Great Public Schools grant to the Restorative Justice Partnership (RJP), have welcomed hundreds of visiting educators from Minnesota to Mississippi.

In addition to NEA, the partnership includes the national Advancement Project and a local advocacy group called Padres y Jóvenes Unidos that in 2008 won a historic commitment from Denver Public Schools to eliminate racial disparities in discipline and focus on keeping kids in schools, plus the Colorado Education Association, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, the University of Denver, and Denver Public Schools.

"These are organizations that haven't always seen eye to eye," notes RJP project manager Lindsay Lee. "But they are in agreement on this issue."

As well as coordinating the school visits, RJP also has put together an online library of educator guides and resources, including webinars on restorative language and culture, how to align trauma-sensitive practices, and more.

Says Maryland high school teacher Erika Chavarria, who last year visited Denver's North High School, another RJP model school: "The main thing that struck me, the thing that sums it all up, is the level of trust and respect in the building. It was very clear that students were trusted and respected [by educators], and it was very clear that-because the students received that level of trust and respect and love-they gave it in return."

Taking on the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Adopting restorative practices doesn't mean no more suspensions, ever. Even at Dora Moore, North, or the third RJP school, Skinner Middle School, students still get suspended for serious offenses. But suspensions have decreased, as the petty disrespect that escalates into red-faced standoffs, or the squabbles that explode into violence, often are avoided or headed off by restorative practices.

More traditional punishments don't work to change the root cause of misbehavior, or to keep students on a path to college and careers. "When I got here, the culture was to suspend and 'kick 'em out of my room,'" says Dora Moore principal Karen Barker, who arrived five years ago. But what do kids learn from that, she asked.

And who exactly is kicked out? "Zero tolerance" policies- suspensions, expulsions, and the more recent trend to police referrals or arrests-often are nourished by implicit biases and institutionalized racism, and aimed unevenly at black, Latino male, and American Indian students, as well as students with disabilities.

For example, while black students accounted for 15 percent of students in 2016, they accounted for 31 percent of school-related arrest and referrals to law enforcement, according to federal data. This forced march by students of color-from classrooms into courtrooms-is what's known as the "school-to-prison pipeline," and NEA members have committed to dismantling it.

At the RP schools, suspensions are a last resort. And, as they have decreased, an Advancement Project report has found that "indicators of achievement" have increased.

Inside an RJP School

When visitors come to Dora Moore, the first thing they see is the "tone-setting" that takes place in all classrooms, says Lee. In fourth- and fifth-grade teacher Sandra Lins' classroom, this looks like Lins pulling a chair to the front of her classroom, sitting down to face her students, and saying, "Let's get ready for the day." It sounds like the quiet huffs of deep, calm breathing and the faint strains of classical music.

Last year, Dora Moore's restorative practices coordinator, Morgan Isaacs, drew footprints and conversation prompts onto butcher paper that she rolled up and toted around school. This was the first "peace walk." Since then, her template has been printed on dozens of vinyl tarps and distributed to classrooms, the playground, and the cafeteria.

The way it works is both parties in conflict-either two students, typically K-3, or an adult and student-step onto the mat and engage in a guided conversation. It always begins with an "I feel" statement, and ends with an agreed-upon plan to avoid future conflict.

Says fifth-grader Bradley: "I've noticed a lot of people have the same feelings as me."

Meanwhile, at North, visitors observe students entering school, walking past a Black Music Matters poster through the front office, where staff smile and greet every student, asking about their weekends, or after-school activities, or well-being. "They do that intentionally," says Chavarria. "Right off the bat, you can see the level of love."

She also observed trust: Every North student can leave campus for lunch, and has a longer-than-typical time for lunch. They also have free blocks of time that they can use as they see fit-maybe to visit North's college center, or hole up in the art room with some therapeutic clay.

At North, students also have hands-on involvement in school discipline, doing peer-mediation and low-level restorative conferencing. They even sit on employee interview committees and if they feel like a job candidate wouldn't be a good fit on their campus, they say so.

Sound too idyllic to be real? Both Dora Moore and North, as well as Skinner, have been engaged in restorative practices for several years. The changes to their school's culture have not come overnight, and they require whole-school staff commitment-plus training, re-training, and funding for dedicated restorative practice coordinators. Building real relationships with students has to be top priority.

But it can be done, they say.

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How Restorative Practices Work for Students and Educators | NEA

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Take a look at what happens in public schools where educators care more about creating a community built upon kindness, not consequences.

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This slide shows ways Restorative Justice is implemented in the law and how real life situations can achieve justice through restoring and repairing relationships and build community rather than punishment, blame, and shame.

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The impact of Restorative Justice can be enormous for victims of crime, offenders, and the wider community. Read through the case studies below to discover just a few examples of how Restorative Justice can help people and communities heal.

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Case Studies - Restorative Solutions | Restorative Solutions

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We're so proud of the Restorative Justice and Restorative Practice projects we facilitate. Take a look at our case studies to see the impact of our work.

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Similar to Bookit. Take material from the classroom and turn it into a game.

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Gimkit is a game show for the classroom that requires knowledge, collaboration, and strategy to win. Get started for free!