Secondary School Students Restorative Justice

Internship Project: Restorative Justice for Secondary School Students

Restorative Justice for Secondary School Students

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Restorative Justice for Secondary School Students 3

Needs Assessment. 3

Objectives 4

Project Planning 4

Project Description 5

Project Implementation. 6

First phase implementation 6

Second phase implementation. 7

Project Evaluation. 8

Project Reflection. 8

Sample artefacts 9

References 11

Restorative Justice for Secondary School Students

Needs Assessment

Managing student’s misbehavior is one of the significant challenges our school has faced for a more extended period. The use of a punitive approach, including zero-tolerance policies, has caused much harm to the students’ bodies. For instance, expulsion and suspension policies remove at least 50 students from school every year due to violations of simple rules. Apart from expulsion and suspension, the use of caporal punishment has been witnessed in many instances for the students who have committed simple violations such as failure to submit assignments in time. In general, such a mode of punishment has significantly contributed to massive school dropout and academic failure. Additionally, around 20% of our school population have engaged in physical fights, some traumatized while others have started using drugs to handle the school’s unfriendly environment. (Pavelka, 2013)

Besides, the hash treatments have not conformed to the student’s behavior, instead of worsening their conduct and attitude, thus isolating them from fellow peers. Otherwise, some of the students’ misconducts have been necessitated by the adults’ behavior; therefore, failing to address the issue holistically would soon destroy the sense of community set up in our school. Absurdly, some of the criminalizing and exclusionary discipline practices have adopted racial inequalities within the school. Some of our students have been put on suspension for defiance and disrespect based on cultural disparity. Consequently, in what is seen as a school-to-prison pipeline, most students of color are highly alienated from school through punishment, handed over to law enforcement in school, and later pushed to jail for the same mistakes as their white counterparts. (Payn & Welch 2015)

Therefore, the therapeutic justice approach would look into who has been harmed by the student’s misconduct other than what laws have been broken. Also, the approach would consider the losses the victim has incurred instead of who the offender is. Notably, some of our neighboring schools have adopted the restorative justice approach with significant success. The approach was also used in criminal justice systems where offenders were considered an approach to crime and later developed restorative practices in schools to discipline. (Pavelka, 2013)

Consequently, following an agreement by the school board of management, teachers, parents, and various education stakeholders that the school adopts a restorative justice approach to discipline students to curb the vast school dropouts and mass failure registered recently, I was given the directive to look at how Restorative Justice will be implemented in the school. The restorative practice will bring together the student accused of causing harm, the student’s family, the victim, or the victims during hearing processes. (Hornby, 2014)

Objectives

This project has two broad objectives that include; one, to train various stakeholders, including the teachers, students, and the administration, on the usage and importance of Restorative Justice practices for the school to build a community and advance a healthy relationship among the teachers, students, administrators, and social workers to teach the social-emotional and conflict-resolution skills necessary to minimize conflict.

Secondly, to establish how Restorative Justice Practices and training of students and other school stakeholders would incorporate technology use. This is to enable everyone to attend the session virtually to observe the current Covid-19 safety protocols. Students will therefore participate from home in line with the directive by the Ministry of Education. (Payn & Welch 2015)

Project Planning

Restorative Justice enables the students to navigate some conflicts on their own or in small peer groups. Notably, the idea will encourage students to talk, air grievances, and ask questions in their small peer groups. Therefore, to successfully implement the project, the plan will be done in various steps to bring all the relevant parties on board. (Pavelka,2013)

1. Establishing a common understanding with various stakeholders, including the school principal, is why restorative practices are being implemented.

2. Sourcing for the foundational structures that will support the restorative justice practice training implementation, including professionals.

3. Identifying appropriate, effective, and stable technology to be used for virtual training purposes. (Hornby,2014)

4. Induction training for all the teachers. This will include delegation of responsibility to teachers to reach out to students to prepare them and assess their technology readiness. This will be easier because the students have been holding online classes.

5. Created training plan sessions

6. Organize for a trial session where technology will be tested and a formal introduction to all the stakeholders, including the students. In this session, several activities will be carried out as well. This includes;

· Encouraging students and teachers to active participation once the session began, informing them how to enable their webcam to share their experiences.

· Setting of ground rules during the session. So that as the training begins, everyone would shut down all other programs.

· Test efficiency in using Zoom and train everyone on various tools to ensure all participants have acquainted themselves with zooming. This should also include a connectivity check-up.

7. Begin weekly virtual training sessions. During the training, we shall observe the following measures; icebreakers at the beginning of every training session to connect them. The presentation will be clear, short, and precise to enable students to follow with ease. I will also group around 5 participants in breakout rooms to formulate the ideas taught and their creative application and maximize engagements—finally, creating polls in between the sessions to gauge their understanding of the topic. (Hornby,2014)

Project Description

I talked with the school principal about the reason behind the change to restorative justice practices. I made sure that he clearly expressed the same to students’ teachers and other administrative officers, including social workers. Moreover, a team of educators was identified and assigned each of them with a specific role, considering the project training and implementation would be very intensive. The behavior team was also set up to hold regular meetings to streamline communications with the whole staff. The behavior team was responsible for structuring the professional development and using staff input to accelerate buy-in. (Froniuset.al. 2019)

The behavior team comprised of the followings: An administrator, RP Coordinator, representative social worker, school psychologist, social-emotional representative, an expert in students’ disabilities, case manager, nurse, security manager, deans, special education representative, teacher paraprofessional, and any other staff with a strong influential relationship with the learners. (Pavelka, 2013)

Additionally, on technology, most students had their computers at home, Probably because they were already engaged in online learning. Otherwise, teachers were instructed to assess the students’ preparedness technology-wise. As a result, teachers reported four students that were not having working computers. To respond to them, the school released four computers from the computer lab to help them out. Some students also expressed hesitation to use technology; however, their teachers successfully adapted to the technology. (Froniuset. al. 2019)

Subsequently, there was a need for a stable internet connection throughout the sessions. In response, I approached the school and the ministry officials who lobbied to provide free data services by the ministry to aid their online learning. However, the school spent US $10,000 catering for a technology team that moved around to ensure all the students are connected and trained on using zoom and its tools. (Froniuset. al. 2019) The amount paid included their salary, allowances, and logistics.

On the other hand, all the teachers were taken through intensive induction sessions in preparedness to train and implement the school’s restorative justice practices. This was considering that teachers have been the main drivers of punitive punishments in the school; hence they needed a mindset change and mental preparations. (Karp, 2001)

Consequently, we created a training plan that was sandwiched between regular learning sessions. The plan established a training duration of three months with two training sessions per week to allow students to engage in other academic learning. After that, I organized for a trial session to test the use of technology and formally inform the students of the project and why it was necessary for them to participate. Also, participants were encouraged to active participation during the training session. The technology team also took the opportunity to show the participants how to use the webcam to share their experiences. Equally, the ground rules were set to reduce disruptions during training sessions. Finally, we tested the use of zoom and connectivity effectiveness. (Payn & Welch 2015)

Finally, the weekly training sessions were initiated, and we observed specific guidelines such as the use of icebreakers at the beginning of every session to create connections between the students. Moreover, clear presentation slides and a wide board were used to make sure students grasped the content with ease. Furthermore, students were put in groups of five participants per group during the breakout rooms to formulate the ideas taught and their creative application and maximize engagements. Lastly, I created polls between the sessions to gauge the students’ understanding of the topic. (Froniuset. al. 2019)

Project Implementation.

The project’s implementation takes time and will be done in different phases to shift the mindset from punitive to restorative. The school will begin with one practice and incorporate others as the culture changes.

First phase implementation

The first phase will determine the tone for the culture shift by proving to teachers and students that restorative justice practice works and that the approach is finally the best for the school. The school will therefore assess their readiness and willingness before embarking on implementation. This will be done by carrying out interviews with students, focus groups, and teachers. Subsequently, a benchmark with one of the schools that successfully implemented the project is highly recommended. (Pavelka, 2013)

In this first phase, the school principal communicates to the whole staff that the restorative justice practice is the school’s policy and must be adhered to. Furthermore, the principal has to be very precise in implementing restorative practices daily without any form of fear. Finally, as the institutional head, the principal will have to believe and have confidence in the restorative justice practice’s ability to solve various performance and indiscipline challenges within the school. (Karp, 2001)

Equally, educators will be needed to engage and support the project approach actively. Consequently, there will be intensive professional development, including restorative dialogue that will be availed to all educators in the school. The professional development will go throughout the year coupled with frequent coaching sessions and observations. The professional body will be mandated to evaluate struggles met during the implementation processes. What strategies are teachers struggling to implement and which students are being referred to most, and why? (Payn & Welch 2015)

Besides, due to this approach’s intensive nature, the school will engage a full-time restorative practice coordinator (RP) to facilitate school-wide implementation. After a full-time RP coordinator’s employment, the implementation will begin immediately irrespective of challenges and resistance.

Second phase implementation.

To successfully implement restorative practices, it will be vital to assign every staff member a role with the principal leading in the implementation plan. Therefore, each member will have their roles defined as below; (Karp, 2001)

The principal will; Make sure the staff understands the approach and why it is being implemented, evaluates the RP coordinator, meets the behavior team weekly to observe implementation progress, and maintains the expectation of all the staff members.

The behavior team will; conduct weekly meetings to check punitive and restorative discipline data and resolve any worrying trends like; which students are most referred to, what are the primary causes? What support is needed? Any rising behaviors identified throughout the school? What root could causes be? What plans can address the rising behaviors? (Gregory et al. 2020)

Consequently, in response to any behavior change concerns, the RP coordinator will: support teachers and students in the classroom through coaching, observation, debriefing with both the students and teachers, checking individual student’s behavior by monitoring throughout the school, lead mediation for conflicts between teacher-student or student-student conflict, organize data to inform the behavior team of any negative trends in the school environment and to continuously inform the educators and administrators on the incidences within the school as may be advised by the behavior team. (Payn & Welch 2015)

As a result, to improve the school environment and limit future behavioral issues, the RP coordinator will: associate with students to build a relationship with them and teachers, prepare data to inform the staff members of any positive trends, the foster relationship between student and educators, promote the sense of a community through the use of peace circles, inform the community any restorative work undergoing within the building, and to create a platform where teachers and students will express concerns about the process. (Karp,2001)

To promote a better knowledge of Restorative Justice within the school, the RP coordinator will; provide professional development practices to the staff, frequently observe staff and provide non-evaluative feedback, train students techniques to solving conflicts, and finally teach both the students and teachers on how to engage in constructive restorative conversations. On the other hand, for the school-wide implementation, every staff member will have to commit to treatment within and out of the classroom. The staff will also be expected to remain tolerant and be willing to learn new strategies. (Pavelka,2013)

Finally, throughout the implementation processes, every staff member: will stay updated on behavior team meetings, will have to use restorative dialogue throughout while in school as well as students, involved in mediation with students and other members of the staff, will uphold growth mindset and always view students and teacher’s behavior as amenable to change and will work to create relationships through restorative practices.

Project Evaluation.

To evaluate if the two broad objectives of this project have been achieved, I will carry out random interaction with the students through technology to evaluate their effectiveness and ease towards technology usage. Accordingly, students will be given a survey form to indicate any challenge they are experiencing as far as technology is concerned.

On the other side, I will also seek to evaluate if the students understood and embraced the importance of using restorative justice practices successfully. Therefore, I will create an avenue to receive anonymous feedback from all the major players involved, such as the teachers, students, and administrators. Moreover, I will organize personal site-seeing observations to witness how teachers and students react to conflicts. Another parameter will be a continuous review of the behavioral team’s weekly reports and the RP coordinator on the implementation progress to ascertain obstacles met, if at all any. (Froniuset. al. 2019) Equally, I will carry out a survey to assess both the students’ and the teachers’ perspectives on the use of therapeutic justice practice versus punitive punishment and how they feel if at all the new approach has helped or not. (Pavelka,2013)

Finally, an essential parameter will be to analyze the school’s data on punitive punishment and performance rate cases. A significant decrease in the number of punitive punishments will inform the project’s success, significant academic performance improvement, and reduced school dropouts. (Karp,2001)

Project Reflection.

The project has very intensive processes that one has to commit to realizing success. However, it is a new approach that can be very fruitful towards students’ development socially, academically, and mentally. (Cama, 2019) The therapeutic approach enhances the principle of being human in a dynamic way. However, the implementation has many obstacles and is Labour intensive. For the successful implementation of the approach, there is a need for full-time dedicated staff. Besides, the result obtained was very encouraging because, after the evaluation, it was expressed that the project had already registered a 95% success rate. (Pavelka,2013) Lastly, I have realized that humans can learn and unlearn. The mindset shift from the old punitive way of punishing students to restorative justice practice was pleasing. However hard the process was, both the students and teachers embraced the new idea as part of their life practice. The study focused on the introduction of restorative justice practices to disciplinary approaches in school. The findings have shown that students, educators, administration, and other stakeholders registered a success, thus availing promise to schools who may need an alternative disciplinary process. (Payn & Welch 2015)