Restorative Justice

        In this thoughtful Middle School Journal article, Katherine Evans (Eastern Mennonite University) and Jessica Lester (Washington State University) say that “zero tolerance” discipline policies have failed to make schools safer. They point to a growing body of research suggesting that restorative justice, implemented in some schools in Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, South Africa, Canada, and the U.S., is a better approach. Its purpose is to “hold offenders accountable, repair harm to the victims, and provide support and assistance to offenders to encourage their reintegration into the community.” Restorative justice can be seen as “a response to misbehavior and as a way to facilitate healthy school climates.” Evans and Lester list its seven principles:

        • Principle #1: Meeting needs – An underlying assumption of restorative justice is that humans have three basic requirements: autonomy, order, and relatedness. “When these needs are not met, students may go to great extremes to meet their needs,” say Evans and Lester. The result is misbehavior, conflict, and sometimes violence.

        • Principle #2: Providing accountability and support – “While zero tolerance policies promote accountability, they often do so without compassion,” say Evans and Lester. Restorative justice “promotes accountability within a supportive and compassionate learning community.” If it’s clear that a child’s actions were wrong and resulted in harm, the perpetrator must accept responsibility.

        • Principle #3: Making things right – A bad deed is defined “not as an offense against the institution (i.e., the school) but as an offense against the members of the institution (i.e., the students’ school community).” Restorative justice is different from restitution, which can be seen as another form of punishment. Rather, restorative justice should serve the needs of the victim, “restoring the relationship between the victim and the offender,” say Evans and Lester. “Further, the effectiveness of a restitution plan is contingent on the offender developing and being responsible for the plan, rather than having that plan imposed on them by an authority figure. In this way, the restitution becomes not only a way of repairing harm but also an opportunity to learn.”

        • Principle #4: Viewing conflict as a learning opportunity – Externally imposed sanctions deprive students of the chance to problem-solve, learn, and grow, say Evans and Lester, and “teach students that only those in power are able to make decisions and solve problems… Restorative models of school discipline open conversations between victims and offenders, allowing them a space to share perspectives, listen to one another, and work collaboratively to design solutions that bring about healing and restoration.”

        • Principle #5: Building healthy learning communities – Restorative justice “defines school violence as a breakdown of social relationships and implements specific processes to rebuild those relationships,” say Evans and Lester. “Strengthening school community and enhancing student-student, student-teacher, teacher-teacher, and school-community relationships is viewed as the most effective way to prevent misbehavior and school-based violence.”

        • Principle #6: Restoring relationships – Conflict and violence are a violation of relationships more than a violation of rules, say the authors. Restorative justice “seeks an understanding of what has occurred, the needs of those affected – including students, teachers, parents, and anyone else involved in the conflict – and ways to address the harm that was done.” Restorative justice “works with students and teachers rather than doing things to them or forthem.”

        • Principle #7: Addressing power imbalances – Restorative justice goes beyond students’ behavior and looks at the harm that can be done by institutional practices – for example, long out-of-school suspensions.

        Evans and Lester say that, despite research pointing to the efficacy of restorative justice, schools have been slow to adopt it. Why? It requires a lot of time and resources, its proponents haven’t provided enough conceptual clarity, and the philosophy clashes with existing punitive models of school discipline.

Ideally, restorative justice is has three tiers. The first is schoolwide instruction in social and emotional skills to build school community. The second involves repairing relationships when conflict happens, mostly in small-group conferences or peer mediation. The third tier deals with situations where harm has been done; it involves mediation and victim-offender conferences.

Evans and Lester suggest the following steps for gradually introducing restorative justice in a school:

• Combine top-down leadership with bottom-up energy. “This approach helps to gradually develop a critical mass within a school,” they say.
• Start where you are. There may already be elements of restorative justice within the school and staff members who support the idea.
• Start with voluntary participation. Staff buy-in is important, and the restorative process shouldn’t begin until offenders have admitted guilt and begun to take responsibility for their actions.
• Shift the paradigm from punishment and control. To implement restorative justice, schools need to move from managing students’ behavior to collaboration, mutual respect, accountability, and growth.

 

“Restorative Justice in Education: What We Know So Far” by Katherine Evans and Jessica Lester in Middle School Journal, May 2013 (Vol. 44, #5, p. 57-63), no e-link available; the authors can be reached at kathy.evans@emu.edu and jessica.lester@tricity.wsu.edu.

 

 

Stephen Anderson

Boosting the Reading Achievement of African-American Male Students

        “Too often, instruction designed to improve literacy achievement for black male readers and writers focuses on skill-based learning, ignoring cultural, social, and personal development,” say Summer Wood and Robin Jocius (Vanderbilt University graduate students) in this Reading Teacher article. All too often these students say, “I hate this stupid book!” and “These books are dumb anyway.” Wood and Jocius believe the solution lies in three areas:

        • Culturally relevant texts – “Unfortunately… black male students are often deprived of opportunities to see themselves, their families, and their experiences reflected in texts,” they say. Classroom libraries must have books to which black boys can relate – ideally written and illustrated by African Americans – and these books should be highlighted throughout the school year, not just in February. But not every multicultural book is helpful, say Wood and Jocius: “[E]ngagement will not ‘magically’ occur” just because the characters and authors are culturally aligned. In fact, some books are patronizing in what they assume will interest students. “To guide decisions about the use of texts that may provide mirrors into children’s cultures and experiences, teachers must consider all aspects of a text, including the characters, themes, and illustrations.”

        • Collaboration – It’s not enough for teachers to exhort students to try harder, say Wood and Jocius. They need to foster an ethos of mutual support in which students feel safe about acknowledging reading difficulties and encourage each other to develop critical reading and thinking skills together. “Because black male students are often marginalized in classrooms,” they argue, “a collaborative approach not only directly engages these students in literacy instruction, but also allows them to share their accomplishments and struggles with their peers in a comfortable and nonthreatening space… This sense of safety does not come automatically, especially for young readers who may be disengaged or struggling. Instead, this sense of community must be promoted and modeled by the teacher.” When one student finds a book too difficult, “buddy reading” may be the solution.

        • Critical conversations – These “are not merely book discussions in which plot, theme, and facts are being reiterated by group members,” say Wood and Jocius. “Rather, these are discussions in which students take positions and critique what is being said, who is saying it, how characters are positioned, whose voices are being heard, and how they may personally fit into the text… Critical conversations give students the opportunity to challenge and inform one another’s ideologies.”

        But aren’t these three practices effective for all students? Aren’t they just good teaching? Wood and Jocius agree and quote Gloria Ladson-Billings’s reaction to the same question back in 1995: “My response is to affirm that, indeed, I am describing good teaching, and to question why so little of it seems to be occurring in the classrooms populated by African American students.”

In a sidebar to this article, Wood and Jocius recommend the following websites as resources:

• Coretta Scott King Book Award Winners:

http://www.ala.org/emiert/coretta-scott-king-book-awards-all-recipients-1970-present

• Brown Sugar and Spice Educational Books and Services: www.brownssbooks.com

• Scholastic Multicultural Books:

www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/how-choose-best-multicultural-books

 

“Combating ‘I Hate This Stupid Book!’ Black Males and Critical Literacy” by Summer Wood and Robin Jocius in The Reading Teacher, May 2013 (Vol. 66, #8, p. 661-669),

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/trtr.1177/abstract; the authors can be reached atsummer.wood@vanderbilt.edu and robin.jocius@vanderbilt.edu.

 

 

Stephen Anderson

Keys to Learning Science Vocabulary

        In this Middle School Journal article, Rebecca Shore, Jenna Ray, and Paula Goolkasian (University of North Carolina/Charlotte) report the results of an experiment on science vocabulary learning with three 7th-grade teachers in a large urban school. The researchers worked with teachers to systematically compare three memory strategies for learning these words: pathogen, vaccine, antibody, immunity, antibiotic, immune system, and antigen:

-       The first group of students used the standard approach – copying seven new words and definitions from the textbook’s glossary;

-       The second group of students talked to a classmate about the meaning of the words;

-       The third group of students drew colorful pictures of the words.

Students were quizzed on their knowledge of the words immediately afterward and again two days later.

        The results? “As expected,” say Shore, Ray, and Goolkasian, “we learned that different learning strategies can make a difference in word retention, particularly with struggling readers.” The second and third groups did significantly better than the first.

But there was an unexpected finding. Looking over more than 800 quizzes, Shore, Ray, and Goolkasian noticed that the majority of students from all three groups of students didn’t correctly define antibody, antigen, and antibiotic – all beginning with the same prefix anti. The researchers thought the same prefix would have helped students remember the meanings and distinguish among them, but the opposite was true. Clearly students’ attempts to retrieve the meaning of these words was hampered by confusion caused by the prefix.

Looking back at the textbook chapter from which these words were taken, the authors noticed that students were also introduced to two other clusters of easily-confused words: stalagmite and stalactite, and meiosis and mitosis. This made them think that study techniques might not be the most important factor in student success. Instead, they conjecture that teachers should use a morphological approach, emphasizing the meaning of different word parts.

Shore, Ray, and Goolkasian note that “similarities in new learning can cause negative transfer in memory and actually interfere with learning. After new learning takes place, the brain usually needs about a day to consolidate that learning. So, if a student was to practice a second similar skill before a first skill is consolidated in memory, the second skill can interfere with mastery of the first skill, and the child may not be able to perform either skill very well.” This suggests that when introducing a new cognitive task (or motor skill), teachers should draw attention to the similarities and differences and space out their presentations.

 

“Too Close for (Brain) Comfort: Improving Science Vocabulary Learning in the Middle Grades” by Rebecca Shore, Jenna Ray, and Paula Goolkasian in Middle School Journal, May 2013 (Vol. 44, #5, p. 16-21), no e-link available; the authors can be reached at rshore6@uncc.edu,jray51@uncc.edu, and pagoolka@uncc.edu.

 

Stephen Anderson