Restorative Practices
What are Restorative Practices?
Restorative Practices are based on the principles of restorative justice-relationships, respect, responsibility, repair, reintegration, and radical love. Traditional discipline focus on rules broken and consequences, while restorative practices focus on relationships and repairing harm. Restorative Practices move away from punitive practices and emphasize the importance of positive relationships as central to building community. Rather than just isolating and punishing those responsible for harm, restorative practices provide opportunities to restore relationships when this harm has occurred. In a restorative school community, both students and adults are held accountable for their actions by identifying who has been harmed, what they can take responsibility for, and how they can repair the harm.
Restorative Practices at Garfield STEM Magnet and Community School
Goals for Restorative Practices
Why Restorative Practices?
National, State, and APS statistics show that exclusionary discipline such as suspensions and expulsions are implemented in disproportionate ways. This means students of color, special education students, and boys are suspended at higher rates than their peers. Exclusionary discipline practices have long term consequences. Students who are kicked out of class, suspended, or expelled are more likely to feel disconnected from their school, fail classes, drop out, or become involved in the criminal justice system.
At Garfield STEM Magnet School we are committed to creating a caring and compassionate community where our students, staff, and families feel safe and welcome. Our goal for restorative practices is to help students develop those skills that are so important to their social emotional well being and academic success: empathy, self-awareness, conflict resolution and problem solving skills, and a strong sense of responsibility to one’s community.
| Traditional Discipline | Restorative Discipline |
|---|---|
| Schools and rules are violated. | People and relationships are violated. |
| Justice focuses on establishing guilt. | Justice identifies needs and obligations. |
| Accountability is defined as punishment. | Accountability is defined as understanding the effects of the offense and repairing harm. |
| Justice is directed at the person responsible, but the victim is often ignored. | The responsible person, victim, and school have direct roles in the justice process. |
| Rules and intent outweigh the outcome. | Persons responsible are held accountable for their behavior, repairing any harm they've caused and working toward a positive outcome. |
| No opportunity is offered for the person responsible to express remorse and/or make amends. | Opportunities are offered for the person responsible to express remorse and/or make amends. |
Source: Adapted from SFUSD. Restorative practices whole-school implementation guide (p.19) San Francisco, CA.
