Restorative Practices in Buffalo: Building and Rebuilding Community

Restorative practices/restorative justice (RP or RJ) is an alternative approach to our current punitive system of addressing conflict and crime. It is an age-old practice with origins in many indigenous cultures and has become increasingly popular in schools, communities and court systems in recent years. Here in Buffalo, individuals began advocating for restorative justice nearly two decades ago. Since then, many organizations, community groups, and schools have been using the practice to resolve disputes and build relationships

Restorative Practices Training Manual

This manual is designed to support the process of training school personnel in the San Bernardino City Unified School District to implement Restorative Practices into the schools in their district. What is outlined below are the following: The need that the introduction of restorative practices is designed to respond to The key ideas and assumptions that underlie restorative practices The training and consultation process that aims to implement these ideas in the school district An explanation of the specific practices that training will be offered in A summary of what current research data says about the value of these approaches A bibliography of readings that interested and key personnel can follow up and read more about.https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/books/1002/thumbnail.jp

Restorative practice and behaviour management in schools: discipline meets care.

The history of restorative practices in New Zealand schools is directly related to projects such as the Suspension Reduction Initiative (SRI) and the more recent Student Engagement Initiative (SEI); thus the origins of restorative practices in schools are linked with behaviour management and school discipline. During the same period, teachers' work has become more complex: They are working with an increasingly diverse range of students, which in turn requires epistemologically diverse teaching and relationship-building approaches to ensure maximum participation for all. Teachers are looking for new and better ways to interact with students in their classrooms, and those responsible for disciplinary systems are looking to restorative practice for new ways to resolve the increasing range and number of difficulties between teachers and students, students and other students, and between the school and parents. Restorative practices (RP) are currently seen as a way of achieving all this, so they carry a huge burden of hope. Relationship skills are a key competency in the new curriculum, and the philosophy of restoration offers both a basis for understanding and a process for putting this agenda into practice. In effect, it means educating for citizenship in a diverse world, including teaching the skills of conflict resolution. If we accept this philosophy, the curriculum for teacher education will require significant changes in what students are taught about behaviour and classroom management

The Restorative Workplace: An Organizational Learning Approach to Discrimination

On the fiftieth anniversary of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, many employers continue to search for ways to implement the law’s antidiscrimination and equal opportunity mandates into the workplace. The current litigation-based approach to employment discrimination under Title VII and similar laws focuses on weeding out “bad apples” who are explicitly prejudiced. This “victim-villain” paradigm may fail to correct the complex, nuanced causes of workplace discrimination, or exacerbate the problem. This article explores an alternative approach—restorative practices—that may integrate the policy goals of antidiscrimination laws into the practical realities of managing an organization. Restorative practices engage everyone in the organization with a sense of ownership in and commitment to the mission of building an inclusive, egalitarian workplace. Merging research from the fields of employment law, organizational management, and cognitive psychology, this article analyzes how restorative practices can facilitate an organizational learning approach to workplace discrimination. Proactively, restorative dialogue helps to build social capital, reduce explicit and implicit biases, and cultivate a shared commitment to egalitarian norms. Reactively, restorative practices can manage defensive routines often triggered by discrimination complaints and provide a process that can transform conflict into greater understanding and change. A restorative approach makes it more likely that the individuals involved—and the larger organization—can repair the harms caused by discrimination, correct systemic issues underlying the problem, and learn to prevent inequities in the future

Restorative Practices in Schools: Far-Reaching Implications

In 1999, the New Zealand Ministry of Education contracted a team from the University of Waikato to develop a process for conferencing in schools. The brief was to utilise restorative justice principles to develop a conferencing process for use in schools. The purpose was to test whether such an approach to wrongdoing could reduce the exponential increase of suspensions, particularly of Maori boys, who were, and still are, disproportionately represented in reported numbers of suspensions, stand-downs and exclusions

Spoken Stories, Spoken Word: An Insurgent Practice for Restorative Education

This paper uses the terminology of whiteness, settler colonialism, culturally responsive pedagogy, and restorative education to interrogate the usage of spoken word in schools. I argue that spoken word can function as a form of resistance to white colonialist practices and as an advocate of emotional learning and critical education. This paper focuses on representation, student empowerment, and identity exploration in the context of education institutions. It crosses borders between education and authenticity, between classrooms and real life, and between teachers and students. I aim to ground this essay in the American Studies discipline as it discusses systems of power in the United States and seeks to disrupt dominant narratives through spoken word as an alternative education strategy for dismantling white supremacy and validating marginalized identities. This work is only a small part of the larger conversation on restorative justice in education

Victim Impact Classes and Evidence-Based Practices, Iowa Department of Corrections, August 31, 2007

With the adoption of evidence-based practices as the standard by which offender interventions are evaluated for effectiveness in the Iowa Department of Corrections, the Victim Advisory Council deemed it critical to form an ad hoc committee to evaluate the Victim Impact Class (VIC)intervention used in institutions and community-based corrections across the state to determine its efficacy and adherence to that new standard

Master\u27s Project: Restoration and Relationship in the Public School System

This project explores the complexities associated with a public school’s adoption and engagement with restorative justice. Over the course of this project, I have focused on Circle Process, examining ways to be in authentic, accountable, and reciprocal relationship with Indigenous communities where Circle Process originates