Makini Niliwaambieni: Restorative Justice is an approach to building community and responding to harm with roots in indigenous traditions. Schools across the country are applying these strategies to manage classrooms and create inclusive, socially connected, and supportive learning environments. Yazid Jackson: D.C. is facing a lot of transition in a multitude of ways that really impact our community. We're facing retention. We're facing the evaluation system of teachers. We're facing gentrification. We're facing poverty. We're facing violence. Niliwaambieni: Restorative Practices can be used to address many needs in a school. Proactive practices include community building, academic instruction, and social-emotional skill building. Nicole Gill: As a teacher, I try my best to think of Restorative Justice as a way of communicating better with my students, so every Monday, we had a morning circle, so whether it was just a check-in for about 5 to 10 minutes, we use it as a proactive circle. Abby Sondak: The idea is that they're creating a community within their classrooms that everybody feels accountable to, and so when things do go wrong, they come back to the circle, and they're able to discuss it in a way that helps repair any damage that has been done to keep things like that from happening again. Shavonne Gibson: We are teaching children to advocate for themselves and the communities in which they will eventually serve and lead. By allowing voice to the conversation, we're teaching young people that your feelings are genuine and important. Kayla: Well, before I did the program, I didn't really feel comfortable talking in front of a lot of people and tell them-- like, expressing how I felt about stuff, but when I did when I started the program, like, it's easier to be open and, you know, explain how I feel about a certain topic and stuff. Niliwaambieni: Responsive Practices bring together those involved in a significant incident of harm to understand what happened, agree on how to repair harm, and rebuild trust. Gibson: Schools are really rethinking, "What does discipline mean, and when does it need to be utilized and for what purpose?" We realized that a student who is outside of the school is not learning, and if we continue to exclude students from their learning environment due to discipline, we continue to put the students often who need us most further and further behind. Restorative Justice has been used as an alternative to exclusionary practices by really thinking about how to restore the harm that was caused to the community. Sitting at home never restores the harm. It never allows you to sit across the table from your peer and talk about what led you to the actions that you did. What we've learned is that in schools that are implementing Restorative practices with fidelity, it's often not the students who need changing. It's actually the adults in the building. Charlotte Butler Strickland: This work really required me to be reflective about the things that I say, things that I do, and how I interact with kids and adults. McGill: A lot of times with Restorative Justice, someone is offended, and there's offenders, but a lot of times, things are misconstrued because of miscommunication. Natasha Williams: And it opened the conversation and dialogue for students to begin to talk to one another and resolve conflict effectively. Nadia: You just see what's going on, but you don't know what's actually going on in a person's life or, like, what they're going through, so it was like, "Be open and hear people out." Strickland: Part of the Restorative Practices training is learning what your biases are so that you aren't using your bias as a way to punish, as a way to exile and not be inclusive. Jackson: In one of the schools that we work with, you know, a Caucasian student, you know, stated to a student of color they didn't belong at that school because of misconduct and violation of rules, and what we were able to do was to have a conversation with the staff about what was our feelings about, you know, hearing that and what work needed to be done. Gentrification is an issue in D.C., and what does that look like? What's the impact on the community? Janice Carroll: If you have no prior knowledge of dealing with someone in a certain culture, you come with your own preconceived ideas, same thing with children with learning differences. Again, you can come with your own ideas behind ADHD, for example, you know-- "That child doesn't know how to be still." Niliwaambieni: Restorative Practices ensure that students who experience trauma receive vital support to address harm and make necessary connections to academic and social services. Kia Matthews: The trauma cycles from generation to generation, but what we see in the classroom-- anger, depression, and with kids, especially this age, the depression looks like anger. Carroll: We have children who are helping parents with babysitting. We have children who are seeing abuse at home. We have children who have drug abuse going on at home. Williams: The use of R.J. practices can be used to help students who have experienced trauma to be able to talk about that, to be able to share their experiences, I think for a lot of students, the beginning of an emotional release and emotional healing. Matthews: It helps with that key element of bringing humanity back into the schools, assisting with the belongingness that kids are struggling with at this stage of life. How Restorative Justice helps with that is just acknowledging that, sure, you made an infraction. You made a mistake. We all make them. You're not that mistake. You're not that infraction. Nadia: If you did something, it's probably something that's, like, at home or somewhere else, and it's not even the school. It's just, that's how they reacted because, like, some people keep stuff in, some people don't talk, some people, like, vent, so different people handle their issues different. Jackson: We have to bring humanity back to education, and I think that's one thing that's really missing. We're looking at students like a number, which is replicated in our justice system. I think when we're able to do that, I think we'll actually see the positives. Like, it is painful in the beginning because you have to do some stuff that you're uncomfortable with. Gibson: What is a challenge to Restorative implementation is not only mindset, but time. It is much easier to send a student home by writing a letter and attaching it to the child's file for a suspension, and I think that school leaders have to position themselves as to what is the greater investment of time. Is the greater investment to do the quick fix that continues not to work, or is the greater investment to spend the time up front, setting the conditions for long-term success that actually will sustain you into the future? Niliwaambieni: Restorative Practices reduce suspensions, expulsions, and loss of instruction time that have a disproportionate impact on minority students. Restorative Practices also increase teacher retention, create a positive school climate, and improve student satisfaction and safety. Strickland: When I first got here, this was the most challenging middle school in DCPS, had the highest suspension rate of every other middle school in the city. We are now, I would say, at the top where the schools in the other part of town who don't have discipline issues, we rank up there with them as it relates to school climate and culture.