P.K. YONGE DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH SCHOOL

P.K. YONGE &
RESTORATIVE PRACTICES

M: How did you guys get to know this concept and introduce it into P.K. Yonge?

P: One of the things that we're always striving for at PK is for equity for our students to have equal opportunities for success both during school and after they leave PK. And so one of the things that we noticed is that our referrals, our discipline referrals were not very equitable. There are groups of students who are being referred more frequently than other groups of students. And the kind of discipline that we were doing, which was lunch detention, out-of-school suspension, and school suspension weren't really effective. Like if we suspended a kid for three days, they were home for three days. But really it didn't change behavior, didn't do anything to repair the relationship to prevent something from happening again. So I just didn't feel like we were doing what we wanted to do. We wanted something different, a different way.

So we started kind of looking around and restorative practices are what continuously came up. You just look and you start reading about behavior. That's why when the Phoenix center were offering their stuff, we thought, well, let's just go see if this is really what we're talking about. We weren't really sure if this was it. But then when we went and we realized, Oh yeah, this is what we're wanting to do.

And their philosophy around behavior is very well aligned with our philosophy. So the whole idea is that you're a family and that sometimes in a family relationships get damaged, and you have to restore those relationships in order to function as a strong family. And so we changed the title of our deans to behavior coach because we're operating under the premise that everybody makes mistakes. Just like if you're in a sport, you're on a team, you're going to make a mistake, your coach is going to pull you to the side, coach you up, and get you back in the game and you're not kicked off the team because you make a mistake. We liked that philosophy a lot.

M: In the past, before you guys had this partnership with River Phoenix center, what are some approaches you used to deal with conflicts or misbehaviors?

P: It was punishment. So a kid does something wrong, you give a consequence. And those were like in-school suspension, removal from the classroom out-of-school suspension. You might not come to school for three or four days, depending on the crime. We weren't really working on repairing any relationships. Instead, you would just kind of give the consequence, and then it'll be done. And as we have started with the restorative practices, there's this whole component of restoring the relationship between whoever it was involved. So many times it's two students with each other or a student and a teacher or sometimes even a teacher and a teacher.

M: And you realized those traditional approaches were not working really well?

P: Yeah. I mean they weren't getting us to what we wanted, which was having the student stop doing those behaviors and creating a culture of acceptance and collaboration. It was kind of like it created that divide between the student and the teacher even more when there wasn't an opportunity to come and talk with each other and repair the relationship.

M: What are some positive outcomes you have noticed from implementing this restorative practices compared with those approaches?

P: Number one thing is we're getting less referrals from a data standpoint, so teachers are not writing kids up as often. So when a teacher needs support with a kid in terms of their behavior, meaning that they need administration or the Dean or the behavior coach to talk to the kid or they think the kid should receive a consequence, they usually write a referral. This is what used to happen with our referrals: A teacher would do a referral and then we would figure out—is the kid in detention or timeout? For how many days or how many hours? Referral numbers have gone down significantly. We're hoping that that's because they are understanding and feeling more comfortable with keeping students in their classroom. So when it actually gets to a time when the kid does need to be referred, it's for really significant things. And then with those significant things, we can use a restorative practices approach and bring the kid back into the fold faster. 

I think number two, from a qualitative stance, we're dealing with the situations differently. So we have different approaches to consequences. We're not just going in-school detention or out-of-school detention. Many times we are getting creative with the consequences because sometimes you still need a consequence. We're having more natural consequences. So like if you were somebody who made a big old mess at lunch, then part of your consequences is going to help clean up after lunch. That makes sense. Or if we're having some of the older students come in and teach lessons to the younger students about things because it's helping them have to think through 'if I had to talk to a younger kid about this, what would I do? How would I do that?’

I think the other thing is the conversations that we're able to have when we bring kids back after they receive a consequence. We are doing a new thing called re-entry meeting. So sometimes students do have to have out-of-school suspension where they need to just be home for a few days. Before we were doing restorative practices, the kid would just come back to school and that would be it. Now we hold a re-entry meeting where we sit with your parent and us and have this protocol that we've built out to talk through—what did you do? What has happened since then? How are we going to bring you back into the family? Are there certain people that you need to talk to or need us to talk to?

So the idea is we want to keep kids in the classroom as much as we can. Kicking them out of the classroom hurts them academically and doesn't restore the relationship. But we're trying really to take a more proactive problem solving approach now—what is the problem underneath that's causing the student to do that—and really address that.

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And I think another big thing that's changed is we're trying to involve families every time because we realize that it has to be a partnership for all of us working together for students to be successful. That's been really interesting to see. Sometimes that's good and sometimes it makes it hard, but it's not bad. It's hard to have more people at the table with more emotions and potentially more conflicts. Sometimes the family, as they should, they want to protect their child, so those conversations can be difficult if they feel like their child hasn't done anything wrong but in fact he or she has. And so we have to talk through that and try to get everybody on the same page understanding that we're all here for the kid and nobody is out to harm anybody. But the kid has done something wrong, so we have to as a team decide what we're going to do.

M: The suspension and expulsion are still happening, but in a different way?

P: Not as frequently and only for things that are very, very serious or something that's happened over and over and over again.

M: Do you have a general picture of how often you are using restorative practices?

P: I hope we're using the restorative language and the restorative stance every day. I would say we probably have one or two restorative conferences a week. And what we're trying to do now is to have the teachers be more conscious of their language all the time because it really is a mindset and a culture. We’re trying to grow that culture and change the culture to more of a restorative culture than a punishment culture. When you think about restorative practices, language is a big part of it. We can control our language, but we're not. And what the research shows is that the stronger the relationships that you have in the classroom, the less often you're going to be dealing with misbehavior because the family atmosphere is there. You don't want to disrupt the family and protect the relationship. And so part of the work that we're doing with teachers is helping them think about setting up that community within their classrooms.

M: So over the past two years you've been implementing restorative practices, are there specific conflict circumstances that you highly suggest doing restorative conferences for?

P: So to me, the ones that have been the most effective are between a teacher and a student. When a student and a teacher aren't getting along well, a lot of times it's because they're not understanding each other's perspectives. We've had several student-teacher restorative conversations that have completely transformed that relationship. We had a student who was always late to class and the teacher felt like the student was just like not taking her class seriously. And we found out in the conversation that that kid was having to drop off his mom and three sisters at different places before he got to school every morning. She had no idea that he was having to do that as the oldest child in the family. In fact, he was doing the best he could, but he had a lot of responsibilities as a 17-year-old kid, you know? So that totally changed the teacher's paradigm about why he was late, and she felt empathy and compassion for him rather than anger at him. It's been really fascinating.

We've had a lot about kid-to-kid conversations as well. So I keep a notebook of all the different conferences that we've had. There is one where a student was doing something at lunch that was bothering the other student, and it ended up escalating into the student saying some really mean things about the other student. So for this one, we actually brought in the two kids, the two moms because they were elementary age kids, the elementary counselor, and me. There are just so many different scenarios. 

M: Any cases that didn't work out really well as you anticipated?

P: I think we've had a few that didn’t work. That's because I think they would probably need more of a follow up. You can't just do one conference, and then magically the issue is taken care of. Maybe sometimes we need to think of them more as a sequence of conferences, like Ben talked about two months of follow up after a conference. 

M: Are you continuing receiving trainings from the River Phoenix Center?

P: So we're trying to get more and more people on the faculty trained so that we can grow the work to be school wide. Because right now it's pretty much this small core group of us who are doing the most of it. We decided deliberately to not start with everybody, having a big faculty meeting and saying this is what you're going to do. We started it small, and eventually we want to equip our students. My goal is for students to be leading these conversations so that if two of their peers have a conflict, they can be a mediator for their peers.

M: So far have you come across any difficulties or challenges of implementing restorative practices?

P: Time. I think it takes a lot of time which we are short of all the time. I still think some teachers may perceive it (restorative practices) as a way for kids to get off to get by with things because they're not getting a harsh consequence. So they may see the fact that their referrals have gone down as a negative thing. So perceptions of the work I think is hard. If a kid doesn't get that punishment, then it's bad. If they just get a conversation or coaching or a circle, it's not harsh enough. That's why we're training the teachers and having Ben talk to them—they haven't been taught the research behind restorative practices, the impacts.

M: So the trend will be fully implementing restorative principles in your school setting?

P: Correct. To really just make this campus wide, we're looking to continue this for several years working with RPCP.

M: How have students reacted on this form of conflict resolution approach?

P: So far they really are positive about it. They feel heard and more supported than they had in the past. One of the things that we've done is we interview people who've participated in the conversations. What did it feel like before the conversation? What did it feel like during the conversation? How did you feel after the conversation and then how was this experience different from your disciplinary experiences in the past? And it's really been interesting to hear them say things like, 'This is the first time I felt like you actually cared about me or you actually listened to me. My opinion and my perspective mattered.' Whereas before it was just the grownups making the decisions and controlling it. What we have found out is that both parties or all the parties have to be willing to have the conversation. If one person is wanting to, and the other one is not, it's not going to work.