Critical Points on Implementing Restorative Practices (or anything)
I’ve been thinking a lot about Jamila Dugan's article Don’t Give Up On Restorative Practice from the November issue of ASCD’s Educational Leadership. I have shared a few of the excerpts below that I have been dwelling on. In addition, Dugan discusses the “reformist lens” when it comes to solving problems in schools. As school leaders, we take on these huge reform initiatives like Restorative Practices and only make “surface-level changes” and then wonder why there is little to no change. This also leads to the “we tried that and it didn’t work” mentality when the fact is that the change was never implemented with the idea of making changes to the systemic issues impacting students, but instead, it was made with the idea that we need to fix the students.
The spirit of restorative practices recognizes cultures as a living entity that everyone plays a role in creating…the overall goal of restorative practice goes further: to use proactive schoolwide strategies to create a sense of community, build healthy relationships, and develop everyone’s conflict resolution skills and sense of belonging and agency.
A key tenet in addressing disruptive behavior is treating each community member with a belief in their worthiness and dignity and strengthening relationships between community participants.”
“Yet one reason change isn’t happening may be that many institutions are only trying restorative actions connected to “fixing” perceived problems like behavior, not the spectrum of approaches to build community and transform relationships.”
…”the goal is often to interrupt the trend of students of color being suspended disproportionately, rather than ask truly systemic questions.”
“How can we create an ecosystem that fosters love, care, healing, and accountability in our schools and districts?”
“Everyone has to have a seat at the table. To fully embrace a restorative approach and be culturally responsive, we must commit to dismantling what is broken and collaboratively envisioning a holistic restoration.”
‘When people aren’t mindful of how their perspectives shape their behavior, it’s easy to replicate existing structures, so approaching the shift through a reformist lens may lead educators to skip the envisioning process of what this new reality could look like.”
“It took a long time to create the often-harmful systems that exist. We owe it to students and families pushed to the margins to invest the time necessary for a meaningful shift away from harm.”