2017 Annual Conference

George McMahon, John Lash, Ashlee Perry

Elementary
Middle
Secondary
Independent
Counselor Educator, Supervisor

Discipline disproportionality is a persistent issue that has devastating long term affects for those students affected. Restorative practices provide an intriguing, evidence-based alternative to typical approaches to discipline, and can be integrated into a school counseling program, enabling school counselors to address disproportionality while staying out of the role of “disciplinarian”. Come learn the basics of restorative practices in schools, and see a multi-tiered model for incorporating restorative practices into your school counseling program.

With increased attention being given to the glaring discipline disparity between students of color and White students, as well as the implications that disparity has on crucial outcomes including graduation, college attendance, and even incarceration, schools are being challenged to re-think their approach to discipline. In fact, there is increasing consensus among researchers and policy makers that traditional approaches to school discipline rarely improve school safety, and may exacerbate issues related to discipline disparity (Anyon et al, 2016).

 

Restorative Practices (also referred to as Restorative Justice and Restorative Process) present an intriguing alternative to typical approaches to discipline. Rather than identifying and punishing an offender, Restorative Practices focus more on the experience of the person who was harmed, asserting that it is important to understand the subjective experience(s) of those that were negatively affected by an event, and encourages other actors to address the needs of those persons.

 

Restorative practices can take many forms, from large restorative circle interventions to smaller, one-on-one conflict resolution negotiations. Recent research has shown that schools adopting Restorative Practices at a school level has led to several encouraging academic and behavioral outcomes, including lower suspension rates and a reduction in the “suspension gap” between Black and White students (Gonzalez, 2015; Lewis, 2009, and Reistenberg, 2013). These studies have often included administrators, policy makers, teachers, and school psychologists. However, in a recent review of the outcomes associated with restorative practices in schools, school counselors were not mentioned (Anyon et al, 2016).

 

The omission of school counselors from restorative practice programs is disappointing, particularly because the core features of many restorative practice programs (e.g., nonviolent communication; perspective-taking and empathy building; emotional management) are core components of social emotional learning, and fit easily within the ASCA Mindsets.

 

Therefore, the purpose of this program will present an innovative model to incorporate essential components of restorative practices within a comprehensive school counseling program as a mulit-tiered system of support (MTSS) intervention. In addition, this model incorporates an ecological approach that considers interventions at student, teacher, administrator, parent, and community systems. The learning objectives for this program are below.

 

Participants will:

• Learn the theoretical foundations of restorative practices,
• Learn about basic components of restorative practices,
• Conceptualize restorative practices across a multi-tier (RtI) pyramid model,
• Learn specific restorative practices to implement with students, teachers, parents, and communities
• Develop strategies to gather feedback and self-assess for level of efficacy while implementing restorative practices.

 

This presentation will include an introduction to the basic philosophical tenets of restorative practice, as well as experiential exercises for participants to actively engage in restorative practice exercise. Presenters will then discuss the multi-tier model for restorative practice implementation, and encourage participants to conceptualize how the model could be used to begin using more restorative practices in their school counseling programs. Finally, presenters will discuss specific strategies to evaluate the efficacy of implementation, and how to use that feedback to improve the program.