I work at a school and to move up the pay scale I take more classes or workshops. If I am going to spend my time in classes I want it to benefit me in some way. I spent two days reviewing how to protect students in the classroom. Most of the first day was review. Reminded again to learn student names. I am learning from Lumosity how I can do that. Second day, today, they talked about procedures in place for reporting abuse and other criminal acts by students against other students or teachers. I heard of restorative justice but didn't have a clear understanding of what all was involved. Today they explained it so I understood and we practiced it comparing it to the old standard of crime/punishment.
Basically, the student that offends others identifies who was offended and what needs to be done to resolve and heal the offense. That is what I got out of it. For instance if a student disrupts an entire class one of the choices may be an apology to the class instead of a trip to the principals office. Mediation is part of the process in situations between two people. Or bigger offenses may involve parents or others that were involved. Part of what I like about it is the offender is required to take ownership and responsibility for their behavior. I found a couple of links that I plan to go back and explore more fully.
Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice
Edutopia has multiple links to examples of schools using the process.
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/restorative-justice-resources-matt-davis
What I really like about this format of conflict resolution is when a student graduates from high school they can take the ideas with them to college or family life. I am very enthusiastic about trying this out in the classroom next year.
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