New Restorative Practices Coordinator Plans To Build Upon Existing Efforts To Build Positive Culture In Boulder Valley School District

Press release from the Boulder Valley School District:

December 9, 2021

BVSD’s new restorative practices coordinator is not wasting any time. After arriving in Boulder Valley in October, Janelle King immediately hit the road.

She has met with several principals and their teams to hear about the efforts they already have underway at their schools to build culture and specifically to determine what if any restorative practices they already utilize.

“We are calling it an environmental scan,” King said. “The goal is for us to first know what they are doing, so we can create consistency around restorative practices district-wide.”

King’s ‘can do’ spirit is not surprising, given the roles she’s had before.

Previously she had the daunting task of implementing restorative practices across the entire State of Florida for foster parents and group home staff. Then she helped form a non-profit to bring these important skills, including restorative justice, to juveniles in the justice system in Leon County, which includes Tallahassee.

She is excited about the prospect of focusing her efforts within a school system.

“This is a dream job and exactly what I was looking for,” King said. “This is refreshing to me, because I’m coming from being one person for the entire state or entire city. I’m looking forward to it.”

What are restorative practices and can they make a difference?

Even in those incredibly large systems, King saw the incredible impact restorative practices can have. She says, at its core, restorative practices (RP) are a simple way that adults can show students that someone cares for them – on a daily basis.

“Oftentimes what the youth would tell me down in Florida too was that it only took one caring adult in my life to make a difference. That same motto applies to any other youth,” King said. “One caring teacher, one caring lunch person, one caring custodian, one caring principal to show that each person matters.”

Many BVSD schools already employ some of the elements of RP daily. For instance, intentional efforts by school leadership and staff to not only welcome students and parents at the start of the school day, but to identify kids that might need extra support through those interactions can be a restorative practice. Similarly, many BVSD teachers start off class with a daily “check in” or “huddle.”

BVSD is also addressing district-data that reveals disproportionate discipline for our students of color. Restorative justice is a process that can be used as an alternative to discipline for certain situations to reduce the number of suspensions and expulsions while teaching valuable conflict resolution skills, offering the opportunity for accountability of actions, and addressing root causes of behavior. There is tremendous value in restorative justice when it is equitably offered as an option to repair harm and restore relationships.

Restorative Circle Check-In Example

Monday - Check-in: What is one thing that you want to accomplish this week?

Wednesday - Check up: How are you doing with that? What support do you need?

Friday - Check out: Were you able to accomplish it? No, why not? What happened? What are you celebrating in that situation?

“There is a lot of value in sitting in circles, versus the traditional classroom style,” explained King. “Oftentimes if you are in a classroom style, if there is unassigned seating, kids that go to the front are the ones that are actively engaged and always raising their hands and the ones in the back are the ones that are tuned out and are not paying attention. When you sit in circles, it creates a level of equity for everyone. No one is better or worse – or has more power or less power. You can see everyone and there is safety in that.”

King says there are a wide variety of ways that these circles can be used, but in every situation the focus of restorative practices is to provide opportunities for people to fully connect, allowing students to share what they are excited about or areas they may need support.

“It allows the facilitator to get a pulse on the group. People come in with different things going on,” King explained. “Each individual is encouraged to share their emotions, feelings. What needs are not being met for me right now? The goal is to resolve outside concerns, to the extent possible, so that everyone is fully present and grounded in whatever is about to happen.”

Over time, the goal is to build trust within the group and a normal structure for sharing feelings, so that folks can be open and honest. King says people often struggle at first, with conveying their feelings.

“We often say ‘I feel disrespected’ or ‘I feel like you don’t care’. Those are not true feelings,” explained King. “The reason that matters – and we should not use that – is that often when we use those things, the other person wants to fight back or push back against it. ‘What are you talking about? I didn’t disrespect you.’”

“We haven’t been educated or learned to view everything from a needs-based perspective,” continued King. “ When we can learn how to communicate from that level, there is more openness for the other person to hear what is going on with us.”

Using restorative practices in conflict

King first learned about restorative practices and its more formal brother restorative justice, while attending a program on conflict resolution in Switzerland, while she was still in college.

“The last 40 hours of the program was fully dedicated to studying the historical roots, value, and principles of restorative justice and that is when I first learned about the process,” King said. “That is when I learned that I was very interested in this. It just makes sense to me.”

Instead of continuing the path to become a moderator in conflict zones, she decided to apply her learning back in the United States.

While the atmosphere is very different from Kosovo or Afghanistan, ultimately the same lessons apply. In a school environment there aren’t typically warring factions, but most certainly there is a likelihood of squabbles between students or even conflict between an educator and a pupil.

“Conflict and harm are going to happen because we are humans and that is inevitable,” King said. “If you have connection and trust with your students, they are more likely to respond when you have to address conflict and harm when they happen.”

One of her favorite quotes is from Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, the creator of Nonviolent Communication, who said, “All conflict is a tragic expression of unmet needs.”

The goal is to build a warm and welcoming culture within the classroom that is built to handle the occasional disagreement. In some cases, however, the situation is more serious and can call for a more formal process – restorative justice.

At New Vista High School, where they have been using restorative justice in a student-run program, as an alternative to the typical disciplinary system, for about 20 years all of the parties involved are brought together – including students, teachers and even members of the community.

“[Restorative justice] sits the person who caused harm and the person who was harmed in the same circle together, so the person who was harmed can express to the person who caused the harm what happened and why they feel hurt and what they need to be able to grow from this process. It allows the person who caused the harm to have a better way to express what they were thinking – or maybe not thinking – and make sure they have some agreement items so that everyone can grow, learn and come away from the process of gaining something,” explained New Vista High School Senior Samuel Tomatz.

WATCH: New Vista High School students share their experience with Restorative Justice

“I have seen how the harm has been repaired through this process. I’ve seen the person who has caused the harm become a better person. I have seen the person who was harmed be able to move forward with their life, completely satisfied. I’ve seen the administration and the community fully support this program and the people involved,” added New Vista Senior Sarah Tutt. “I have seen how this has made the community as a whole a better place, whereas if traditional measures were used nobody else would be involved in the process other than the person who caused the harm and the administrators. Whereas in this process, everybody grows and becomes a better person.”

What King loves about this system is that students are thinking about the impact they had on others, instead of what happens in the traditional disciplinary system where kids typically focus on the impacts that are happening to them. Not to mention that for those who are already estranged from school, punishments like suspension don’t really feel like punishments at all. This voluntary process holds students accountable in a very different way than traditional discipline because they sit in a circle with the person or people they impacted and hear directly from them how their behavior impacted others and then, as a group, come up with agreements to repair that harm and restore the relationships.

“It doesn’t get to the root cause of the behavior. As a country, we are really good at handing out punishment, without really getting to the root cause of what is causing that behavior,” King said. “Ultimately, the outcome is that the student is usually more angry or they think, ‘I don’t have to go to school - great!’”

It is important to mention that restorative justice can’t be used in every situation.

“It can only happen if the person that did the harm is taking at least some level of responsibility for what they did and of course who they harmed or people they harmed want to meet with them,” King said. “It’s also voluntary for the person who did the harm and the person who received the harm. No one is required to attend and the agreements that are decided upon at the end are all agreed upon by everyone at the restorative justice conference.”

The use of restorative justice is growing. It is used by both of the district attorney’s offices that serve Boulder Valley and the University of Colorado.

Restorative practices are not just another ‘program’ for educators to implement

As King is making her rounds, she is very much in tune with where schools and teachers are at this moment.

“Teachers are already overwhelmed,” King said. “We are not aiming to add another program to their plates. It is just a framework, a way of being and connecting with others. By investing more time in relationships now, they can lessen time spent on conflict later on. And based on conversations with administrators so far, most teachers already have this mindset so using restorative circles and restorative justice more formally and consistently just logically makes sense.”

This press release was produced by the Boulder Valley School District. The views expressed here are the author’s own.