Restorative Justice Examples

My final point is that, instead of helping the situation, restorative justice has actually been proven to make things even worse. Earlier, I stated that if somebody knows that they won’t get in trouble for doing something wrong, they will just continue to do it. There are hundreds of examples all around the United States of where kids took advantage of Restorative Justice and did this exact thing. According to the New York Post, everywhere it’s been tried, this softer approach has backfired. They say that may districts are seeing even more classroom disruptions and violence. Lincoln, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, and Syracuse schools have all discovered that, since implementing the new restorative justice programs, kids have just become more apt to fight, with increasingly violent

Racial disparities in school discipline have garnered recent attention in national reports issued by the U.S. Department of Education and Justice (U.S. Department of Education, 2014; Gregory, Hafen, Ruzek, Mikami, Allen, & Pianta, 2016). Suspension rates Black students are two to three times higher than those from other racial and ethnic groups. Various research has documented that Black students remain overrepresented in school discipline sanctions after accounting for their achievement, socioeconomic status, and teacher- and self-reported behavior (Gregory et al, 2016). There is a difference as to the reasons why White students are sent to the office versus Black students. Black students are sent to the office for subjective reasons such as “disrespect” and “perceived threat”, while White students are more than likely to be referred for more objective reasons including, smoking, vandalism, and leaving school without permission. (Gregory, et al, 2016). African Americans and especially African American boys, are more likely to be disciplined and often receive more out-of-school suspensions and expulsions than white students (Todd Rudd, 2014). Suspending students is taking away time from them being in the classroom. Students who receive suspensions, lose instructional time, fall behind on course work, become discouraged, and ultimately drop out…recent research has shown each suspension a student receives can decrease their odds for high graduation by any

Instead of being kicked out for fighting, stealing, talking back, or other troublesome behavior, schools are using restorative justice. Restorative justice in schools is to listen to each other, write letters of apology, work out solutions with the help of parents and educators, or engage in community service. I believe that way is better than kicking students out of the school system depriving them of education.

The school-to-prison pipeline in the United States is a figure of speech used to describe the increasing patterns of interaction students have with the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems as a consequence of procedures used by many school systems. A specific procedure would be the zero tolerance policies and the use of officers in schools. Currently in today’s American schools many children of color are being unfairly judged and treated by the public school systems zero tolerance policies. Zero tolerance policies have been implemented in schools in the last 20 years that include inserting school resource officers in schools and cracking down on all behavior that any authority figure may deem as a form of bad behavior. The policy is based upon deterring future misbehavior and is central to the philosophy of zero tolerance, and the effect of any punishment on future behavior is what defines effective punishment (Skinner, 1953). Zero tolerance policies causes the school environment to feel more like a prison and ultimately leads to black and Latinos being judged and guided to the prison system. A zero-tolerance policy orders predetermined penalties or punishments for specific wrongdoings.

Over the past decade disciplinary issues in the schools have increased. Children are no longer showing respect to those in authority. This problem has caused students to not only decrease in their academic achievement but also decrease in their real world social development. African Americans are amongst one ethnicity group to experience bias. In the context of school discipline, race and gender stereotypes particularly function to criminalize African American youth and to reinforce cultural beliefs about perceived inherent behavioral deficiencies and African American cultural norms in need of “social correction” (George, 2014). African Americans are placed in the stereotypical norm of having discipline problems in the schools. Especially African American girls. In a 2014 national data report, African American girls accounted for 12% of all suspensions (George, 2014). With that being said, African American girls are suspended at least “six times the rate of white girls and more than any other group of girls and several groups of boys.” (George, 2014) This is a huge problem in our schools that needs to be addressed.

Reynolds illustrates how there are a variety of different ways social justice can be taught, and explains how each teacher has a different way of implementing the same ideas. She provides examples of lessons a child might learn and the biases behind it teaching social justice. Reynolds is concerned with the age range of teaching social justice and when is considered the appropriate time. New teachers are now getting taught how to teach social justice within the class room, and the curriculum is changing to include aspects of social justice. Reynolds states how social justice is a branch off the bigger question of “who gets to decide the best

Often times it’s the student’s needs and the school being unable to meet the student’s needs that lead to the student being disciplined. Kids who are behind academically, and unable to perform at the same level as their peers often act out in frustration or humiliation (Noguera, 2003). Once these students are labelled as difficult, incorrigible, and unteachable they tend to believe these things about themselves and act out more in class which leads to a cycle of discipline that can ultimately lead to permanent expulsion. For some of these students, these continued rule violations lead to run-ins with the police and the criminal justice system. School administrators who are at times frustrated themselves from failed attempts to steer children from a “bad path” don’t realize that in throwing their hands up and giving up on these students, are in a way helping shuttle students from school to the penitentiary (Noguera, 2003).

While Karp does include some statistics and research findings in the seventh chapter it is minimal and still deals primarily with how participants felt about the process. The Little Book of Restorative Justice for Colleges and Universities would benefit from information like: suspensions/expulsions for conduct violations at universities with restorative systems as opposed to ‘traditional’ systems; the amount of money sent on traditional dispensary committees compared with restorative processes; the amount of money lost by expelling or suspending students under traditional approaches compared to the money saved when that student is able to be reiterated through restorative programs. This type of evidence would make restorative justice a more attractive system for college and university boards and presidents concerned with the finical side of institutions of higher

As a teacher, I have observed several types of conflict involving students, teachers, parents, and staff. In many situations, the result have not been positive and relationships damaged due to the inability to handle conflicts in a more positive and restorative way, which is something that DTR and Restorative Justice greatly offer. By working on the issue with the goal to make things as right as possible, relationship, trust, order, integrity, dignity, accountability, and hope are restored, and the parts involved grow and learn with the experience.

I engage in these conservations on a weekly basis with my students. I have noticed an improvement in their behavior. Sadly, so many of my students have experienced a no excuse policy of discipline in their lives. When they have acted out in classroom they often thrown out of class. It is from these experiences they developed feelings of anger and resentment toward school. These feelings lead them to act violently towards teachers and other students. As a result, they become turned off from learning and develop a fixed

Everyday students of color are denied their right to a full education due to schools’ harsh disciplinary actions, such as out of school suspension and expulsions. Schools have a responsibility to keep students safe and provide a disciplined learning environment. There is no argument against this, however the methods utilized to provide a safe climate defy this common sense. More specifically, zero tolerance policies, which require students to be punished consistently and severely in a punitive nature. Zero tolerance policies arose in school systems during the 1990s when the justice system was “getting tough” on crime as a tactic to control drug abuse. According the Public Agenda removing students from school is supposed to create a better

Most often, school is not seen as an enjoyable place to be to begin with, and when that school environment is paired with difficulty learning, bullying, and lack of integration due to a disability, it becomes a toxic environment. Teachers have the ability to make school an enjoyable place to be. For high school students, graduating needs to be an exciting goal. When students with disabilities are expected to have a low paying job and low success whether they graduate or not, many students find that there is little ambition to graduate. Teachers have the responsibility of teaching their students that this is not the case, and that graduating is a great and powerful accomplishment. Testing that holds teachers responsible for their students test scores also has effects promoting the school-to-prison pipeline. When test scores are below acceptability, students occasionally get “pushed out”. Teachers can do something about this by advocating to their students that they are not a test score, and being supportive of their students regardless of scoring. An important aspect is that teachers use a positive behavioral approach to discipline (Coggshall, J. G., Osher, D. & Colombi, G., 2013). Through looking at the zero tolerance policy, it is evident that punishment only strengthens the pipeline. According to recent studies, most teachers are supportive of removing students with behavioral disorders from classrooms,

The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children by Gloria Ladson-Billings was a great resource in thinking about how I would work toward influencing my staff, and the school community as a whole, to engage in discussions about equity. Most notably, she advises us to “acknowledge the race and culture of your students and try to weave it into your teachings” and to “foster a sense of community”. I am lucky to work in a school that was founded and lead by a woman of color for the last 6 years, so equity conversations are not as awkward as they may be in some other schools. In light of recent travesties of justice that have occurred in the US over the past year, these conversations have the potential to become more high-stakes

The criminal justice system views any crime as a crime committed against the state and places much emphasis on retribution and paying back to the community, through time, fines or community work. Historically punishment has been a very public affair, which was once a key aspect of the punishment process, through the use of the stocks, dunking chair, pillory, and hangman’s noose, although in today’s society punishment has become a lot more private (Newburn, 2007). However it has been argued that although the debt against the state has been paid, the victim of the crime has been left with no legal input to seek adequate retribution from the offender, leaving the victim perhaps feeling unsatisfied with the criminal justice process.

Over the last eight weeks, we have visited and deeply discussed many topics that surround social justice in the classroom. These topics have ranged from social justice in the world to how to create a socially just classroom and everything in between. In class, there has been a few times where it has been uncomfortable because the topics can bring out many opinions in the room. Many people in the room shared their opinions, including me, which brought up many other discussions. In this essay, I will be discussing our navigations through the social justice issues that classrooms face by talking about the key points of our class throughout the last eight weeks.