RESTORATIVE JUSTICE WORKS IN SCHOOLS, TOO

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KENNEBEC JOURNAL, ME - Two years ago, when students at the Troy A.
Howard Middle School in Belfast misbehaved, they wound up in the
detention room for an hour.
The room usually held about 14 students every Tuesday and Thursday,
overseen by a teacher who shared the after-school duty.

Today the scene at the middle school detention room is entirely
different. The room often is empty because no one has misbehaved. When
it is occupied, students and teacher sit in a circle and talk.

The changes in the detention room, school administrators say, are the
result of a program called restorative justice, which tries to teach
students the consequences of misbehavior. Not only do students openly
discuss their infractions, but they must apologize and make restitution
in some way. "It has been a huge, huge positive," Principal Kimberly
Buckheit said.

Widely used in juvenile criminal justice systems, restorative justice
practices are moving into classrooms across the country. . .

The Regional Education Alternative Learning School, an alternative
school for seventh- through 12th-graders with campuses in Windham and on
Mackworth Island, has used restorative justice techniques for the past
five years, with help from a grant from the Department of Corrections
Juvenile Justice Advisory Group.

Students may choose to attend a community resolution circle led by a
teacher.Each student must tell the other students in the circle what he
or she did.

The other students and any victim who agrees to participate discuss how
the student's misbehavior affected other people at the school.

The student must come up with a way to make restitution through some
sort of community service, such as cleaning a teacher's classroom or --
in the case of a food-throwing incident -- helping the janitors clean
the lunch room. . .

Community circles have been incorporated into classroom instruction as
well, because the techniques give every student a turn to speak,
Buckheit said.

http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/4655061.html

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