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This is a restorative practice strategy that can facilitate group discussion, build community, teach whole-group SEL skills.

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Peace Circles are a restorative practice strategy that offer a powerful alternative to punitive discipline practices. While many circle strategies exist for a wide variety of purposes (e.g. facilitating group discussion, building community, teaching whole-group SEL skills), Peace Circles are uniquely focused on supporting students through resolving conflicts, accepting responsibility, and repairing harm to the community. To implement, a Circle Keeper (i.e. facilitator) invites all impacted individuals (e.g. students, teachers, parents, community members) to participate. Then, the Circle Keeper plans the circle, and facilitates rounds of discussion using Restorative Questions to ensure each impacted party has an opportunity to share perspectives and be heard by the other participants. The circle concludes when the members reach an agreement and construct a contract. Many punitive forms of discipline (e.g. suspension, expulsion, illogical consequences such as detention) push students out of the classroom community. Peace Circles, however, actively invite students to take responsibility, learn from mistakes, and remain in good standing with the community through repairing any harm done.

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Peace Circles are a restorative practice strategy that offer a powerful alternative to punitive discipline practices. While many circle strategies exist for a wide variety of purposes (e.g. facilitating group discussion, building community, teaching whole-group SEL skills), Peace Circles are uniquely focused on supporting students through resolving conflicts, accepting responsibility, and repairing harm to the community.

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Resources and work sheets to assist in identifying ones emotions. Teachers can use emotion charts to assist in intervening in disputes among students. This strategy can be used in morning circles and self-identification of feelings.

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An emotions chart is a paper with emoticons, drawings of faces, or actual pictures of people with different facial expressions that indicate specific feelings (sad, mad, happy, sick, scared, etc.). Students can use the chart to identify what they are feeling at a given moment or how they feel overall on a given day. The charts work well for students who do not communicate verbally, but they are also useful for students who have a hard time verbalizing their emotions. Charts can be downloaded and printed from many online sites, can be purchased or students can make charts themselves.

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A collection of blank emotions charts to support students in communicating their feelings. Students can identify their emotions by drawing pictures or charts can be customized with images from different sources., Grades K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Subjects Behavior & SEL.

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This analysis can be used by teachers and support staff to assist students in identifying triggers that cause feelings of anger. Following, students can explore and determine alternative behaviors that generate positive actions.

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This graphic organizer helps students through the goal-setting process. Also included is a bank of common behavioral goals, obstacles, and strategies to support students setting and meeting their own goals., Grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, Subjects Behavior & SEL.

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Calming Space (Therapeutic Learning Center)

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Calming Space (Therapeutic Learning Center)

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At times, students and adults need a calming space to relax, refocus, regroup, and recenter.

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A calming space is an area where a student can go to relax, refocus and recenter. Sometimes, school situations or the classroom environment itself can create sensory overload or over-stimulation for some students. In addition, students who find themselves reacting or responding negatively to a peer interaction can oftentimes use the calming space to remove themselves from the situation and/or create a pause instead of reacting. The calming space can be as simple as having a rocking or bean bag chair - or could also have room for stretching, or other simple sensory supports. It is important to respect the student's time in the calming space and only engage in conversation or processing of the events after the student has calmed down.

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A calming space is an area where a student can go to relax, refocus and recenter. Sometimes, school situations or the classroom environment itself can create sensory overload or over-stimulation for some students. In addition, students who find themselves reacting or responding negatively to a peer interaction can oftentimes use the calming space to remove themselves from the situation and/or create a pause instead of reacting.

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Restorative questions are designed and meant to communicate with students and/or staff in a non-judgmental way. When using restorative questions, open-ended questions are used to allow for reflection and to navigate through conflict.

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Peace Circles
Peace Circles are a restorative practice strategy that offer a powerful alternative to punitive discipline practices. While many circle strategies exist for a wide variety of purposes (e.g. facilitating group discussion, building community, teaching whole-group SEL skills), Peace Circles are uniquely focused on supporting students through resolving conflicts, accepting responsibility, and repairing harm to the community. To implement, a Circle Keeper (i.e. facilitator) invites all impacted individuals (e.g. students, teachers, parents, community members) to participate. Then, the Circle Keeper plans the circle, and facilitates rounds of discussion using Restorative Questions to ensure each impacted party has an opportunity to share perspectives and be heard by the other participants. The circle concludes when the members reach an agreement and construct a contract. Many punitive forms of discipline (e.g. suspension, expulsion, illogical consequences such as detention) push students out of the classroom community. Peace Circles, however, actively invite students to take responsibility, learn from mistakes, and remain in good standing with the community through repairing any harm done.

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Peace Circles Peace Circles are a restorative practice strategy that offer a powerful alternative to punitive discipline practices. While many circle strategies exist for a wide variety of purposes (e.g. facilitating group discussion, building community, teaching whole-group SEL skills), Peace Circles are uniquely focused on supporting students through resolving conflicts, accepting responsibility, and repairing harm to the community.

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This activity can be used in groups, advisories and classrooms to teach students how to discuss and resolve a problem.

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Academic Connections - Conflict Resolution

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Academic Connections - Conflict Resolution

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Strategies and interventions that can be applied to teach social skills.

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RethinkEd has many resources and lessons that assist with relationship building, respect, decision making, and conflict resolution.

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This activity allows individuals the opportunity to reflect, explain, understand and negotiate and situation or issue.

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Tips for parents to help communicate and teach students how to resolve conflict with positive communication.

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Community Circles can be used to provide a safe space for all members. Circles can be used to build community and allow students to have a share and authentic voice. Teacher acts facilitator and provides a set of agreed upon norms that are to be used and followed by the group.

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A Community Circle is a safe discussion space in which students and the teacher sit in a circle so that all members' faces are visible to one another. What distinguishes a Community Circle from a group discussion is that Community Circles are explicitly used as an opportunity for students to build community. In a Community Circle, the teacher participates as an equal member of the classroom, facilitating discussion rather than directing it. To give space for students to share their authentic voice, teachers can have students submit topics or have students lead the discussion. Community Circles increase motivation and engagement, empowering students by giving them an opportunity to express differing thoughts and opinions in a safe, non-judgmental space.
Essential Components to Community Circle:

Circle: All students face each other without barriers between them

Talking Piece: Object held by speaker (e.g. feather, rock, sea shell, etc.) that gets passed around the circle

Facilitator: Student or teacher

Student-Centered: From setting the agreements (rules) to leading the discussion, all aspects of Community Circle are student-led

Routine: A set list of steps for the group to follow during the Community Circle

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Instructions for how to select and establish norms through a student-centered approach for Community Circles. Includes suggested group agreements appropriate for upper-grade students as well as a customizable resource to support student-generated ideas., Grades 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, Subjects Behavior & SEL.

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Restorative Practices at home

Restorative practices focus on having positive relationships. When we make a mistake, they ask us to take responsibility for our behavior and make amends. At the heart of restorative practices is the belief that we are all in this together. At home, this can include taking responsibility for keeping spaces clean or for the choices we make, having positive relationships with family and friends, and being respectful of those around us. Restorative practices support children in learning how to create healthy relationships and how to resolve conflicts.

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Restorative practices focus on having positive relationships. When we make a mistake, they ask us to take responsibility for our behavior and make amends. At the heart of restorative practices is the belief that we are all in this together.

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Bringing the lessons of restorative justice home

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Bringing the lessons of restorative justice home

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Parent Today, Capital Region BOCES Communications Service, Albany, NY

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Ask most children what will happen if they break the rules, and you're likely to get an answer along the lines of, "I'll get in trouble." But for educators like Pete Mody, the question is, "Will that really help?"

Mody, who is the principal at South Glens Falls High School, is one of many educators throughout the region who has been involved in bringing restorative justice programs to local schools.

Restorative justice is a process by which participants are asked to consider their actions and take steps to resolve issues.

"The idea is, if you make a mess, you clean it up," Mody explained.

Rather than just punishing the offender, restorative justice focuses on righting wrongs - which can take a lot of different forms.

At South Glens Falls, Mody says, two students who get into a scuffle in the hallway might be encouraged to talk it over, resulting in an apology. For more serious transgressions, the process might involve family members, coaches, teachers or others who were affected by the student's actions.

At its core, the process aims to repair relationships and get to the core of why a problem happened in the first place.

"Often what I've said is, if punishment really worked for every kid, we wouldn't see the same kids doing the same thing over and over again," pointed out Timothy Dawkins, assistant superintendent for curriculum & instruction at South Glens Falls.

Both Dawkins and Mody can attest to the power of restorative justice in the classroom.

"It gives an opportunity for a student to see the whole scope of their actions, and repair all that damage," Mody said. "Almost always, when it's done, that student has stronger relationships with almost everyone who was involved."

But the tactics of restorative justice can be just as powerful outside of school. Here are a few strategies parents can use to introduce some of the concepts of restorative justice at home:

Hold regular family meetings

In schools, restorative justice can't begin until teachers and administrators get to know their students and begin to earn their trust. At home, Dawkins suggests having regular family "meetings" so that parents and children can check in with each other and be proactive about identifying problems or issues before they get out of control.

"If you do that work ahead of time to understand each other, it's easier to tackle these things when they come along," Dawkins pointed out.

Tell a different story

Particularly at a young age, children often struggle to understand their own actions. A child who knows he shouldn't have hit his sister may conclude that he is a bad person - or, he may rationalize his actions by concluding that his sister deserved to be hit.

Restorative justice, Mody said, gives children (and parents) a third option: recognizing that one single choice or behavior doesn't have to define who a child truly is.

"Sometimes you're just devastated that a child would make that choice, and you're focused on the negative," Mody said. "Restorative justice gives that child a mechanism to do something positive with it - to fix it and look back and say to themselves, 'I was willing to put in the time to make that right, and that's who I really am.'"

Hit the pause button

Restorative justice is a thoughtful process, not a snap judgment or a decision made in the heat of the moment - and to make that possible, Dawkins said, both parents and children may need a cooling-off period.

"Parents might need to say, 'I'm going to send you to your room and then we're going to talk this over,'" Dawkins explained. "You can take stock and be more measured in your response, instead of just reacting emotionally to your child's behavior."

Ask the right questions

When both parent and child are ready to talk, each person should have the chance to say their piece. Mody suggests the following five questions as a good starting point for the restorative process:

What happened?

What were you thinking/feeling at the time?

What have you thought about since it happened?

Who has been affected?

What do you think needs to be done to make it right?

It might not be necessary to ask all of these questions every time. "The essence of it is finding out what it was like for each person, and finding out what they need," Mody said.

If there's a conflict between two children, for example, one child might want an apology or a hug; another might want to make an agreement about what they will do going forward.

"You're creating a social contract," Mody said. "The complexity of the language might change, depending on the child's age, but the core idea is going to be the same."

For Dawkins, Mody and others who have embraced restorative justice, the benefits are palpable and long-lasting - not just for the individual students who participate, but, Dawkins hopes, for society as a whole.

"We want to think about creating socially aware, socially responsible human beings," Dawkins said. "And a big part of that is how we deal with conflict."

The lessons of restorative justice, Mody argues, can help young people take responsibility for their own actions.

"If I suspend a student, that student can shrug it off and say, 'The school's being a jerk,'" Mody said. "He doesn't have to confront what he's done. Conversation, discussion and repair are a more permanent, lasting and effective solution to whatever problem that young person may be having."

To learn more about restorative justice, visit restorativejustice.org.
Emily Popek is a public information specialist for Capital Region BOCES. She lives in Otsego County with her husband and their daughter.
Tags: behavior, change, child development, parenting, restorative justice

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Bringing the lessons of restorative justice home

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Ask most children what will happen if they break the rules, and you're likely to get an answer along the lines of, "I'll get in trouble." But for educators like Pete Mody, the question is, "Will that really help?"

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Bringing Restorative Practices to Your School

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Bringing Restorative Practices to Your School

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Changing the mindset of punitive to restorative practices. This article provides lesson learned by taking a restorative approach.

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Six lessons learned from replacing punitive discipline with a community-oriented, restorative approach.

© iStock.com/Steve Debenport

Schools across the country are being urged to adopt restorative approaches as an alternative to suspensions, which may disproportionately affect students of color.

But restorative practices do more than supplant punitive approaches to discipline. They can dramatically improve the school climate and strengthen the social and emotional skills of young people and adults. Instead of using punishments and rewards to influence the way students behave, restorative approaches address the underlying reasons for students' hurtful behavior and nurture their intrinsic desire to treat others with care and respect.

Making the transition to restorative approaches isn't easy. Here are six lessons we've learned as we've introduced these practices in New York City public schools.

1. Restorative approaches are all about building community and strengthening relationships. Restorative approaches are based on the idea that when we feel part of a supportive community, we respect others in that community and become accountable to it. Schools can foster this sense of community through daily or weekly circles, in advisory, or in any class -- provided teachers get the support needed to facilitate the practices. Circles help participants better understand each other, engendering a sense of empathy and connection. Adults can build the effort by modeling collaborative, respectful behavior themselves. Adults can also have their own circles, creating a safe place where they too can connect and explore challenges.

2. Circles are powerful, if you respect the process. Circles borrow traditions from indigenous peoples: You sit in a circle around an object that has meaning for the group. You pass a talking piece, and everyone must wait till the talking piece comes to them before speaking -- including the facilitator. In circle, everyone is both a participant and a keeper; no one is in charge and no one is an observer. As students get comfortable with the circle process, they can become co-keepers. Respecting all these practices takes discipline, but it is key to the circle's power. Circle gives everyone a rare chance to share what they are feeling and experiencing. Over time, circle becomes a safe space where everyone feels that they are heard and that they belong. That's a precious thing in a school -- or anywhere.

3. Circles can be strengthened by a curriculum that sequentially builds skills. The circle naturally asks participants to use social and emotional skills that they may not have fully developed, including active listening, handling strong emotions, and respecting differences. A sequenced curriculum can guide circle keepers in gradually building these skills.

4. When problems do occur, you have an array of restorative responses to choose from. Circle provides a foundation that can both prevent problems and help handle them when they arise. You can also use a mediation process or group problem-solving session to address problems. If a serious harm happens, a restorative intervention may be in order: The person causing the harm meets with others, often including the person harmed. They reflect on the harm and agree on how it can be remedied. The person who caused harm has a chance to truly understand the impact of their actions, to be heard and understood themselves, to repair the harm, and to be welcomed back (restored) to the community. That can have a far more positive and lasting effect on a person than punishment or exile. The process can provide insights for everyone else as well.

5. Everyone needs to be part of the gradual shift. Using restorative processes takes skill. It's best if a regular member of the school staff can serve as the restorative practices specialist/coordinator. But everyone in the school needs to embrace the approach. This is challenging, since treating harm as a teachable moment (not an occasion for punishment) runs counter to many ingrained habits and societal messages. For these reasons, moving to restorative practices requires a thoughtful, staged transition.

6. It takes a dedicated principal and school-wide planning. The shift to restorative approaches takes time and commitment. Ideally, the principal convenes a collaborative team (including students) to rethink and reconstruct the school's discipline policy and create a phased implementation plan that includes support for staff.

Many people are struck by the power of restorative practices. As the principal of a Bronx school that instituted them says, "We noticed that we hadn't had a single fight -- physical or verbal -- in 12 weeks. It's because we've been building trust. We've created a climate of civility and respect." That kind of atmosphere is good for everyone, students and teachers alike.

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Bringing Restorative Practices to Your School

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Six lessons learned from replacing punitive discipline with a community-oriented, restorative approach. © iStock.com/Steve Debenport Schools across the country are being urged to adopt restorative approaches as an alternative to suspensions, which may disproportionately affect students of color. But restorative practices do more than supplant punitive approaches to discipline.

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Teaching Restorative Practices with Classroom Circle

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Teaching Restorative Practices with Classroom Circle

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Providing alternative/flexible seating supports students need for movement or body sensation. Alternative seating also allows creating habits for particular activities and for staying focused.

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Sensory Supports
Sensory Supports are physical activities that can be calming or arousing in order to support students in getting to a "just right" state for being in school, safe and learning-ready. The Theory of Sensory Integration describes how the nervous system reacts to sensation, gets information from it, integrates the information from different senses and uses it to make an appropriate response for a particular situation. Often, if there is a problem in part of this process, a student can: be over or under reactive to noise or touch, have poor attention, be irritable, be over-reactive, be lethargic or have difficulty developing skills. Some students need sheltering from sensory experiences that they perceive as excessively distressing or distracting (noise, light, touch, etc). Others need sensory experiences that help the nervous system organize itself to decrease negative reactions and allow the student to participate more fully and productively at school.

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Sensory Supports Sensory Supports are physical activities that can be calming or arousing in order to support students in getting to a "just right" state for being in school, safe and learning-ready. The Theory of Sensory Integration describes how the nervous system reacts to sensation, gets information from it, integrates the information from different senses and uses it to make an appropriate response for a particular situation.

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Restorative Practices in Schools Have Power to Transform Communities | Liz Knapp | TEDxMcMinnville

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Restorative Practices in Schools Have Power to Transform Communities | Liz Knapp | TEDxMcMinnville

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Restorative Practices in Schools Have Power to Transform Communities | Liz Knapp | TEDxMcMinnville

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NC4RJ Circle format and planning guide.docx

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This strategy can be used for many purposes such as increasing engagement, creating student leaders, to gain attention, transitioning, and for building community within your classroom.

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Call and Response is when students verbally respond in unison with an identical statement to a "call" (e.g., a statement or question). This strategy can be used to activate and prime students' brains for a learning activity as well as commit new learnings into long-term memory. Every call/response pairing has a specific purpose. For example, in order to promote persistence, a teacher might state prior to beginning a difficult academic task, "Doing your best..." and students would respond, "Means never stop trying!" Using each call/response pairing regularly throughout the school year strengthens students' capacities for learning new content and increases the speed at which they are able to recall knowledge and skills. Using Call and Response creates an energetic culture that positively engages the entire classroom.
Essential Components of Call and Response:

Each "call" is unique and different from the others

"Call" elicits a specific, explicitly taught response from the students

Phrases are age-appropriate and easy to remember

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Call and Response is when students verbally respond in unison with an identical statement to a "call" (e.g., a statement or question). This strategy can be used to activate and prime students' brains for a learning activity as well as commit new learnings into long-term memory. Every call/response pairing has a specific purpose.

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What is Restorative Practices? Why Restorative Practices? Restorative Practices Principals.

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Restorative Circles Training Jeff Brown 4 30 2011

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Restorative Justice at home activity.

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Below are some of the questions that might trigger an effective conversation among students.

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This strategy can be utilized to reinforce compliance when paired with cueing and reinforcers. Once the reinforcement and cueing system is established, hand-over-hand prompting can be used to begin the task for the student until they complete the task with less resistance. It is important to fade prompting at appropriate times and provide praise for completing activities even when prompting is provided.

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Graduated Guidance is an instructional technique in which the teacher provides manual prompts to complete a sequence of actions and then fades the prompts by changing their intensity and type. Initial support consists of hand-over-hand guidance, which decreases as the student completes tasks successfully, fading to prompts at the wrist, arm, elbow, and shoulder. Graduated supports can include shadowing the student's hand without contact, verbal prompting, and gesturing or modeling from a distance. Adjust prompts as necessary until student is able to complete a task without prompting.

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A month-long, progress monitoring tool to track the level of prompting for one specific target skill (e.g. matching object). Can be customized for different types of data-tracking (e.g. plus/minus, correct/incorrect). A completed example is provided., Grades K, 1, 2, Subjects Behavior & SEL.