thrilled to have him return to her class-
room…ever.
With the shift in mindset, culture and
legislation, comes a new set of challenges.
Administrators have been directed to sus-
pend less overall, and to implement Other
Means of Correction before suspending at
all. In an effort to comply, administrators
find themselves in a sort of quandary: Sus-
pending students less means students who
would have gotten a five-day suspension now
receive two days.
The good news is that suspension rates
have dropped; the bad news is that no behav-
ioral changes or amends have been made. So
now, from the teachers’ perspective, the stu-
dents come back to their classrooms sooner,
and the administrators are sometimes seen
as “soft” on discipline.
As is often the case, the education system’s
response to legislation and the Education
Code can bring unintended consequences
without a clearly delineated plan that cre-
ates a systemwide structure to support it.
The issue in this case is straightforward. If
we suspend less, what do we, as districts and
sites, do instead of a home suspension? That’s
where the Alternative to Suspension (ATS)
Model comes in.
Created as an alternative to at-home
suspension, the Alternative to Suspension
Model, designed for K-12 aged students,
becomes a viable option. Established based
on Restorative Practice Principles, the ATS
Classroom, first and foremost, is a place
where students receive their educational ser-
vices during what would have been a home
suspension. ATS seeks to help students
through a Restorative Curriculum specifi-
cally designed to assist students in:
• owning and recognizing behavior;
• creating and implementing replacement
strategies;
• making amends with those harmed di-
rectly and indirectly; and
• successfully reintegrating back into their
classroom and school settings.
Ironically, these four elements are truly
what educators, parents and the community
at large hope for when a student is home sus-
pended. However, in large part, these out-
comes are not typically the reality of what
actually happens when we home suspend.
#LeadershipMatters
Let’s look at these four essential elements of
Restorative Practice individually.
When we home suspend, we hope that
students will do some soul searching in an
effort to own and recognize their behavior –
in essence that they will understand the error
of their ways. The reality, in most cases, stu-
dents spend their time at home angry at the
adult who suspended them in the first place.
Secondly, when we home suspend, we
hope that students will return to school
knowing and able to do something different
than the behavior that got them in trouble;
that is, we hope they have a workable re-
placement strategy or behavior to implement
when faced with a similar situation in the
future. This too is an unrealistic expectation.
If the student had a replacement strategy he
could successfully use, he pr obably would
have used it and wouldn’t have been home
suspended in the first place. Instead, the stu-
dent spends his time figuring out how not to
get caught the next time.
Next, we hope students will be able to
make amends – at least with the person
harmed by their behavior. If you’ve ever re-
ceived an apology from a student, you know
this is a rarity indeed. When a student offers
an apology at all, it is often no more than a
backhanded utterance, “sorry…” delivered
with head hung low, and eyes firmly planted
on the ground.
Students (and many adults) do not know
how to craft or deliver a heartfelt apology,
and largely we find that while students are
home, their focus is on hoping that everyone
forgot what happened in the first place.
Last, we hope that students will be able to
successfully get back in class at the conclu-
sion of the home suspension. And here is the
reality: After a home suspension, students
arrive back at school behind academically,
and have not attended to any of the previ-
ously mentioned tasks. They have been at
home waiting to return to school. They have
not attended to the fractured relationship.
Let us be clear, however. It’s not that stu-
dents don’t want to properly attend to the sit-
uation that created the concern; it is simply
that they don’t know how. Thankfully, we
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