News & Announcements
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At the beginning of the summer Ted Wachtel described Nils Christie's plenary at the European Forum for Restorative Justice in Helsinki, Finland. Christie "talked about the shootings of children that occurred last summer on an island in Norway at a labor party camp and the bombing in Oslo. And he talked about how Norway seems to have become increasingly restorative. The response of the public, instead of for vengeance was one of acknowledgement of harm, of caring for the people whose children were victims and for those who managed to survive."
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Teacher Robert Roth at a picnic celebrating the high school's gain in test scores. Photo by Winni Wintermeyer at Mother Jones[At last summer's IIRP Summer Symposium: Turning the Tide (August 2011), I heard a lot about the problems of No Child Left Behind and how schools might be creating positive environments and making tangible changes but still be deemed failing by the standards of current law which relies upon the results of standardized testing alone.
Here's a lengthy piece from Mother Jones about one school in San Francisco that seems to fit into this category. It has a high population of Latino students, who don't necessarily fare well on standardized tests. And yet the school clearly has a caring principal and enthusiastic teachers. Maria, the main student profiled in the piece, flourishes there.
Nowhere in the article is the phrase restorative practices mentioned, but clearly the people in the school have done something to foster a warm atmosphere with positive relationships. This quote stuck out at me:
"I have seen about 20 rounds of classroom reform in my teaching career," Roth [a teacher in the school] told me recently. "You know what I haven't seen? Serious dialogue with teachers, students, and parents. They can identify successful teaching, but they are rarely a part of the discussion."
Those kinds of discussions and inclusiveness of all the stakeholders fit neatly in the basic restorative premise of doing things "with" people, rather "to" them or "for" them.
The full 4-page piece can be found here: "Everything You've Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong" by Kristina Rizga.
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With so many states, cities and school districts reevaluating discipline codes, Dignity in Schools, a U.S.-wide coalition of youth, parents, educators, grassroots and advocacy groups, which aims to end the school "pushout" crisis and foster positive approaches to school climate and discipline, has published a "Model Code on Education and Dignity." At the same Dignity in Schools is joined by 50 other groups calling for a national moratorium on the use of out-of-school suspensions for students.
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I found this very impressive video on YouTube the other day through the Restorative Justice Colorado web site. Officer Greg Ruprecht of the Longmont Police speaks very movingly about the power and potential of restorative justice. He tells the story of the first conference he ran and then discusses how RJ works to prevent repeat offending by teaching people the impact of their actions and giving them an opportunity to take responsibility for their deeds.
Enjoy when you've got 8 minutes to spend!
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Photo by Phillip Capper - Flickr Creative CommonsHere's bit of good news by Anne-Marie Emerson from the Wanganui Chronicle. Inspired by the city of Hull, UK, this small city in New Zealand moves toward becoming "restorative" itself. Wanganui is hosting a conference on the subject on September 10 and 11 entitled "Whanganui: Towards a Restorative City." Estelle Macdonald of Hull Centre for Restorative Practice, an IIRP international affiliate, presents the keynote. Paul Nixon, a pioneer in family group conferencing, and Marg Thorsborne, who ran the first ever school-based conference in 1994, will also speak.
According to the story, David Alexander, one of the conferences organizers:
...said the aim of the conference was to help Wanganui people learn more about being a restorative city.
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Lady Justice from Flick Creative CommonsIn this recent post from the West Berkshire (UK) Council, officials report a nearly 50% reduction in the number of youth entering the youth justice system year over year. The article reads:
A fall of 48.7% is shown between January and December 2011 (compared with same period for 2010). The decline for the rest of England averages 19.3%. The team is a multi-agency partnership between Thames Valley Police, National Probation service, the Berkshire Health Care Foundation Trust and West Berkshire Council.
The Team attributes two major factors to this impressive figure. Firstly, in 2001 the partnership established an Early Intervention Team to work with young people between the ages of 8 and 15 years focussing on preventing them offending in the first place, or to intervene at an early stage to halt further offending. This supported other services developed across the West Berkshire area to support vulnerable children, which have made them less likely to offend.
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Here is the second in a series of pieces about IIRP’s 15th International Conference, Building a Worldwide Learning Network, that took place August 1-3, 2012. I’ll be writing about some of the great sessions I attended, beginning with one titled “Restore with a Smile: The Provocative Approach” presented by Jan and Laurien Ruigrok from the Netherlands.
As you might be able to tell from the title of this workshop, Jan’s approach was unconventional. When I arrived at the session, everyone was seated in rows of chairs, but once it began the chairs went to the side and the room was turned into a play space. Jan said that Rule #1 of the provocative approach is: “Get yourself into the laughing state.” So when someone came in the room a little bit late, Jan asked us all to jump in the air with our hands held high in imitation of the well-known Masai jumping greeting. We were laughing by that point.
Jan also showed us his version of the social discipline window, which he’d modified slightly (see figure). He put it in terms of status and self-esteem. If both “I” and “you” believe ourselves low in status, that puts us in a “depressed relationship.” If “I” put myself above “you” then it’s an aggressive relationship. If “I” put myself below “you” that puts me in a state of despair. But if both of us have a positive view of ourselves, that puts us in the position of growth. That’s the box we normally call the “with” or restorative box.
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An addendum to Friday's post "Followup: Philadelphia revises conduct code."
From the Notebook's "SRC adopts revised student code of conduct by Dale Mezzacappa, which places more emphasis on the adoption of restorative practices by the Philadelphia School District:
Students and organizers from the Campaign for Nonviolent Schools said that they felt the new code was a good first step but said it could still be improved – especially by putting more emphasis on “restorative practices” rather than punishment.
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An August 7, 2012 piece, "Researchers Sound Alarm Over Black Student Suspensions," at EdWeek by Nirvi Shah and Lesli A. Maxwell begins:
Nearly one in six African-American students was suspended from school during the 2009-10 academic year, more than three times the rate of their white peers, a new analysis of federal education data has found.
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via Flickr Creative Commons User: It's Our City[Today Kristen Graham in the Philadelphia Inquirer writes that the Student Reform Commission approved major revisions to the student conduct code: "The new policy is the most extensive set of revisions to the student rules in years." The policy "gives principals more latitude in meting out discipline and means that students cannot be suspended for infractions such as using profane language or failing to follow a dress code."
Incoming Superintendent William J. Hite, Jr. is quoted in the article as saying, "We can't suspend our way to higher student achievement. We can't arrest or suspend our way to safer schools."
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