The discussion on restorative justice in schools gave me a lot of hope. My own high school years were tumultuous to say the least and I was eventually expelled in my junior year for, get this, absenteeism. I went to four high schools. Two here in Maine, one in Florida, and one outside of Boston in Chelsea, Massachusetts. I was surprised to hear that restorative justice was being used in Florida. That's the where the high school I got kicked out of was. Florida seems (or seemed, this was 1993 after all) to have a heavy disciplinary hand. If I wasn't in school, I wasn't allowed to get my driver's license until I turned 18, which made it difficult to work. And how does getting kicked out of school for not attending make any sense? To me as a 16 year old, it kind of seemed like a get out of jail free card. Don't worry, the story ended well. I went back to school in Massachusetts and graduated in 1995 after a year out of school and on my own. I even went to college for a bit and I'm here no, though approaching middle age, a semester away from my BSW and just a few weeks away from finding out if I'll be accepted into grad school next year. I was not on the "school to prison pipeline", thankfully. Because of my personal experience, I wanted to find more information about restorative justice in the Florida school system.
After some considerable digging, I came up short. Apparently, back in 2010, Escambia County School District received a considerable grant from the Florida Bar Foundation to develop an Alternatives to Zero Tolerance Program. Unfortunately and despite parent testimonials about the programs efficacy, the school board cancelled the program in October of 2010. There is no mention of it or other Restorative Justice programs on the school system's website today.
I dug a bit more though and found that the Miami-Dade school district is working with organizations like Power U Center for Social Change, People Acting for Community Together, and the NAACP to create an alternative to the zero tolerance measures.
Together, these organizations and the school district have worked together to integrate some of Power U's "Dignity in Schools Model Code of Conduct". Miami-Dade is committed to reducing suspensions, partnering with community-based organizations to support positive student behavior, and using restorative justice to repair harm and build community.
So I remain hopeful and also realize that change is hard. Just as Geoffrey Canada discussed in his TED talk, people fear change or more likely fear the failure that may come along with trying something different.
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(Please forgive my lack of APA format. I don't have Hacker with me today and surprisingly, I do not have the format memorized yet.)
I went to Old Orchard Beach High School and my senior year I passed all of my classes but almost did not graduate because of missing too much school. I too find this rediculous I didnt miss that much school but they had a certain number of absents they would alow and I had one too many. Fortunaly they gave me a pass on one of the absents and let me graduate. This should not be an issue when thinking about kids graduating. I was a average students, I never got in trouble in school, and yet they might not have let me graduate for missing one too many days of school. I think schools need to look at students as individuals instead of saying if you miss this many days of school you have to go to school for another year.
ReplyDeleteSonya, interesting perspective from the Florida school system. I wonder how the school policies and state actions are looked at today and if driving, means to being employed is a struggle due to absentees. I like the empowerment principle of restorative justice and it's a shame disempowerment in implied through suspension or expulsion.
ReplyDeleteHi Sonya,
ReplyDeleteI liked your post (but no APA?!?!). Restorative justice seems like a great and intuitive process to use with students who don't care about going to school. As you said, an expulsion isn't a punishment to a student who doesn't want to go to school. But humans are afraid of failure, and restorative justice is much more complex than the zero-tolerance policy. Cut-and-dry rules may make success seem more easily attainable because they are easy to implement. While these rules may not always lead to good outcomes, they do not involve the drawn-out processes inherent in restorative justice.
There was a great story on This American Life a few weeks ago about inner-city schools and the contrast between strict, zero-tolerance policies and flexible, participatory driven discipline. Here is the link if you want to listen:
Dan
Here is the link: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/538/is-this-working
DeleteThanks Dan! I'm way behind on my TAL listening. Hey, I know how much you love APA, wanna do my references for me? :-)
Delete