Tag Archives: culture of care

Restorative Practices in Response to Bullying Gain a Slight Foothold in Schools

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School has been back in session in the U.S. for awhile now and officials are dealing with bullying issues once again.

There is spotty evidence that some districts are looking beyond Zero Tolerance policies and automatic expulsion or suspension of kids who bully their classmates. In these districts, there is a conscious policy choice to use restorative practices first instead of punitive practices such as expulsion and suspension.

In the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, School District, schools are implementing a comprehensive change program to address bullying, known as the SaferSanerSchools Whole School Change Program, developed by the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP).

Rather than reflexively opt for immediate expulsion or suspension of kids who bully others, these districts are attempting to bring the bullied and the bully together with all their classmates into restorative circles to address the misbehavior as a community. The goal is accountability and community restoration rather than isolation, alienation, suspension, expulsion and stigmatization. It’s a first step toward interrupting the schools-to-prison pipeline.

It’s a risky proposition, and it takes more time than a rigid “throw the bully out” approach. But it holds the real possibility of keeping the bullying offender and the bullying victim together in community, rather than placing one more child in the school-to-prison pipeline. The statistics on expulsion and suspension are clear: each incident of suspension or expulsion increases the child’s chances of ending up in prison.

Programs such as SaferSanerSchools requires participation of the entire school community, from students and teachers to administrators, parents and even cafeteria and janitorial staffs. Successful implementation requires involvement of the entire community, since bullying affects everyone in the school community.

In one dramatic example:

Suspensions, expulsions, fights, bullying and other forms of poor student behavior dropped at Freedom and Liberty high schools during the 2011-12 school year, documents show.
The improved discipline picture is a reversal of 2009-10 and 2010-11 when infractions went up in the Bethlehem Area School District‘s two high schools as part of a district-wide increase of 36 percent.
Compared with the 2010-11 school year, suspensions dropped 20 percent to 978 in 2011-12. The number of students in suspension three times or more went down 43 percent to 493 at the two high schools over the same time frame, according to the Code of Conduct report, which separates offenses into three levels of severity.

Restorative practices and restorative circles allow the victims to be heard, the harms done to them to be recognized. Restorative practices even permit the bully to say why he or she was aggressive in the first place. Using restorative practices, all members of the community share in the process, expressing their experiences of the harms that have been done by the bullying of their fellow community members. All members of the community, all stakeholders, share a part in the communal response.

Ideally, even the parents of the bully and the bullied are present for the restorative circle conference. For restorative practices to have their maximum effect, all parties participate in these restorative circles, or accountability sessions, as the community asserts its values. Ideally, the bully and the bullied are restored to community and neither is stigmatized or ostracized.

For more information about restorative practices, contact:
IIRP Graduate School
531 Main St.
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA
(610) 807-9221

$6,800 lost per school student drop-out – and how Restorative Justice can stop the losses

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Editor’s Note:  It’s a treat to welcome back Jeannette Holtham as a guest blogger.  In making a case for exposing every school student and faculty member to restorative justice practices, she offers a “dollars and sense” rationale.  Jeannette may be reached at youthtransformationcenter@gmail.com.  If you like what she says, please post a comment here or drop her an email.

Colorado advocate of Restorative Justice practices in schools, Jeannette Holtham

Guest blogger Jeannette Holtham testified in support of SB 12-046 for restorative justice practices in Colorado schools.

Here’s a great math and logic problem:

 If a school loses $6,800 for each student that drops out of school, why would that school overuse suspension, expulsion or police ticketing that has contributed to the average 50% dropout rate in major metro cities across America?

I see you’re scratching your head on this one.  Okay, let’s add some examples to the equation just because I know you’re up for the challenge.  [pullquote]When Howard Zehr’s book Changing Lenses fell into Jeannette Holtham’s lap more than a decade ago—literally, from a library bookshelf—she began to read.  “The light just went on,” she says, as she read about this intriguing concept of restorative justice, a way to get offenders to be accountable for behaviors while making sure those they’d harmed got their needs met.[/pullquote]

 

 

An elementary school student accidentally breaks a knickknack on a teacher’s desk resulting in a police ticket for “criminal mischief.”  An 11-year-old swings a bean bag in the classroom and it slips out of his hands and hits the teacher.  The child is arrested for “third degree assault.”  A high school student puts a small cardboard soup container into a microwave to heat and doesn’t notice that it contains a thin foil sheet under the cover.

After it burns out the microwave the student is permanently expelled for “destroying school property.”  How about this one:  four brothers and sisters don’t come to school for six weeks.  The school files truancy charges and tells the students never to come back.  It’s discovered weeks later that the single Mom couldn’t afford shoes for her children.  Unfortunately, these are true stories from Colorado.[pullquote]Before she could take action on what she’d learned, however, she underwent a near-death, life-altering experience during surgery.  With a second chance to live, after twelve weeks of recovery, she went skydiving, a metaphor for her promise to God and the Universe to take more risks to help youth, particularly those dealing with high-risk factors such as suspension, expulsion, and incarceration. [/pullquote]

It doesn’t take a math whiz to see that the bottom line is red.  We taxpayers fund these ineffective punitive responses to wrongdoing (and believe you me, they are more prevalent than any of us would care to imagine).  Thankfully, restorative justice is a worldwide movement reaching critical mass and offers a powerful tool for those educators who are committed to keeping kids in school.  [pullquote]In 2005 Jeannette launched Youth Transformation Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring youth to leave risky behaviors behind and move toward healthier, more fulfilling lifestyles.  In her curriculum called “Boomerang,” teens invent a big dream for their lives and get re-energized about school as a stepping stone in their action plan for life.[/pullquote] There’s even hope for America where we have the highest incarceration rate in the “civilized” world, where 2,300 people who went to prison before the age of 17 are serving life without parole, and where we seem to have no problem paying $68,000 a year to lock up a juvenile but have a big problem paying $6,800 to keep that child in school.

Restorative justice (RJ) exists to provide a safe, respectful circle dialog where offenders come face to face with those they’ve harmed in order to take responsibility for their behaviors and repair the harm to the greatest extent possible.  Victims get to be heard, and together they come up with meaningful, relevant consequences for the offender, and they sign an agreement that is closely monitored by a facilitator to its conclusion.  It works because it gives a school student a chance to return to the learning community with honor having done the right thing.  It’s reducing discipline by as much as 60% even in high-risk, dangerous schools.  Sadly, there are still many schools that have never heard of restorative justice which puts forth the challenge to all of us to alert our schools and educators to the worldwide grassroots movement of restorative justice now reaching critical mass.[pullquote] Her book could just as easily have been titled How to Put Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Back into School Budgets.[/pullquote]  This practical, no-nonsense guide gets right to the heart of how to keep school students  in the classroom and stop the school-to-prison pipeline.

[amazon_enhanced asin="0982270615" /] Taking Restorative Justice to Schools: A Doorway to Discipline is the first practical, comprehensive “how to” guide for schools that want to launch a restorative justice component to their current discipline systems—a great teacher gift and now available online for $19.95 at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

‘Zero Tolerance’ of bullies? Hungary’s schools offer another response to conflict mediation

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As school boards, state and local governments draft legislation to respond to increased reports of bullying, the term “zero tolerance” often comes up. When New Jersey recently implemented its sweeping “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights,” the “zero tolerance” formula appeared in several news reports.

I posed a question to a restorative justice discussion group on LinkedIn.com, asking if a zero tolerance approach is the wisest choice for conflict management. Not surprisingly, the RJ practitioners and volunteers who responded were unanimous: No, it is not the wisest approach.

One member, writing from London, England, pointed me to a video — Intertwined –produced by a school-based conflict management program in Hungary. When he added that the video includes English subtitles, I gave it a click, and I include the link here and embed the video below.  The fairly fast-paced video includes a lively music track.

Readers who are familiar with restorative practices will immediately see those practices acted out in the various scenarios by the students and faculty. Instead of isolating, stigmatizing and expelling troublesome students, the program emphasizes creating an inclusive climate through peer support and engagement. Conflicts aren’t ignored or dismissed, but they are not reflexively handled through heavy-handed discipline or ostracism.

Special thanks to Martin Wright of the Lambeth Mediation Service, and contributor to the website RJ Online.

Intertwined – community conflict resolution in school from Balazs Benedek on Vimeo.

Parents of Troubled Teens — Start Your Search Here

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Parents of troubled teens, and their teachers and counselors, live with the likelihood that their rapidly maturing children might soon face the court system.  Suddenly the child who seemed so full of promise might face the very real prospect of facing a juvenile court referral.  From that point, the probability of having a child in the justice system is a nagging threat.  The fear is always lurking that their “golden child”, their beloved son or daughter,  might soon face expulsion for bullying, or become a defendant in a bullying case.  Some, who fear that the taunts of their children’s classmates may be true, and that their child might really be gay, lesbian, or transgendered, worry that their kids might be bullied and suffer lifelong scars, or even death.

[amazon_enhanced asin="0979841127" /]In 21st Century America, the threat of violence is always a possibility.  Even middle-class, peaceful families know that they are not immune.  Not only in America, but in Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand…in any so-called developed nation around the world, parents walk a thin line between responding to classroom discipline and facing an escalation in the system’s treatment of their child.

At fairnessworks.p1r8.net, we are looking for ways of bringing concerned parents into constructive contact — early in the process, before “juvie” or jail  — with methods of intervention and conflict resolution which can save the future of their troubled teens.  The goal of this blog is to link parents like these with well-established methods of responding to youth crises, such as Restorative Justice and peacemaking circles.  Creating a Culture of Care in the schools is a possible solution, with practitioners who know how to implement these programs.  Hope for restoration is not a false hope, and the possibility of linking to alternatives to punitive and retributive justice is a viable option.

We include a wealth of links to alternative methods at fairnessworks.  Look at the categories and tags in the column at right, click on them, read and follow up on them, if you are the parent (or concerned adult) in the life of a troubled teenager.  Post your comments here and reach out for help.  If you have read this far, you are a “seat-of-the-pants peacemaker,” and you are NOT alone.  You are the person we want to reach at fairnessworks.p1r8.net.

As the editor and publisher of this blog, I am not the counselor you might need.  But I will do my best to link you to the help you are seeking.  Remember, you are not alone.
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