Fix School Discipline Toolkit for Educators | Page 43

constraints. If we had said five days of training were
needed first, it could have taken two years just to
get the professional development days, money, and
substitutes to reach all of the teachers. We had to
have practices and strategies that would work in the
context of 50 minute periods or less, and training
strategies that could more quickly empower school
personnel to implement them.
We now start with a leadership team from the
school site. We have the administrators who handle
discipline/suspensions, a leader from schoolsite security, which is key, and several key faculty
members willing to take on the key roles related
to implementation. We don’t bring in the students
and parents at the beginning, because we need
school leadership to be deeply trained to champion
this throughout the school community. Prior to the
training, we look at the school’s data, have them go
over it and understand it clearly. We set goals and
priorities regarding what they want to see change.
Then, we go into the Restorative Practices 101
training and our focus is on improving student’s
educational outcomes, improving conditions for
learning, connecting community members and
students and engaging them.
We focus on community building in a very pro-active
way. We bring students, faculty and others into circle
practice in as many arenas as possible – in teaching,
planning, meetings, celebrating, grief and healing, etc.
The practice itself connects, engages and develops
respectful and trusted relationships that empower
the school community to handle its problems and
wrongs.
While the community building circles are happening,
we are also providing a second tier of training over
two days that is about the specific practices and skills,
such as conflict resolution, that you use to address
specific unwanted student behaviors and replace the
current practices related to discipline.
Then, the final tier of training and support is about
how we use Restorative Practices to address violence
or the most egregious offenses.
The trainings are spread out over time for the leadership
teams and in between the trainings, leaders are actually
practicing and spreading the practices and receiving
support through on-site coaching and feedback from
the practitioners in my group.

What are some of the obstacles and barriers to
implementation? How do you ensure that t