Our world has become smaller with the advent of technology and our cultures are constantly shifting because of this. Despite our worlds becoming smaller, the gap between students and teachers feels like they are widening, especially when it comes to the ways that we restore harm and support our communities to prevent harm.
Most disciplinary practices and matrices are: created to react to harm instead of preventing harm, are led by the adults or those in a position of power instead of led by the community as a whole, and eventually create greater distance between community members instead of supporting them with ways to come together. This is the way that our school communities have been built, on punitive practices that model what happens in our greater society. In order to change this dynamic, we can start where we have locus of control, our schools, in order to create a ripple of change beyond.
The Foundational Tenets of CRRP
To navigate the tenets of CRRP, there are some foundations that should be put into place. These tenets are important to have in the entire school but educators are encouraged to start where they can whether it be in small groups, classrooms, and cohorts.
- Cultural Lens Proficiency → Educators have done the work to examine their cultural norms and racial lens.
- Classroom Environment → Collaborate with students to create a safe and supportive classroom environment where students feel included, respected, and valued.
- Identity Safety and Belonging → Collaborate with students to identify the ways that students feel included, respected, and valued in the classroom. Deepen this work by fostering connections with the families and members of the community surrounding the school.
- Culturally Responsive Pedagogy → Utilize culturally responsive practices within the curriculum, instructional choices, and intervention supports.
- Conditions for Equity → With educators as facilitators, we can remove the hierarchy that is held in the traditional classroom environment.The teacher facilitates and participates in the restorative practices utilizing asset-based approaches to support students through the restorative process.
- Restorative Practices → Restorative Practices can be broken down into two parts:
- Building Relationships: This is the main part of restorative practices and should be about 75% - 80% of the focus of time for building and cultivating relationships in a proactive and intentional way.
- Restoration of Harm: This should be done about 25% - 20% of the time and is in reaction to harm that occurs within the classroom/ school community.
Benefits of CRRP
School discipline, chronic absenteeism, and test scores are just a few of the common data points that educators and administrators constantly review and reflect on how to improve in our education system. Depending on the community that the school serves and the demographic population of the students, this data may be at alarming levels and require district and non-profit support to shift in a more positive direction. Culturally Responsive Restorative Practices have been utilized to support in all three of these areas showing a decrease in school suspensions and expulsion, a decrease in chronic absenteeism, and an increase in student test scores. The impact of this has been that educators feel more empowered to support their students because they are not interrupted by disciplinary issues. Through the cultural connections and relationships they have invested into, their focus is on academic success, continued relationship building, and empowering their students. Students as a result feel safe, seen, and supported as they connect with their peers and teachers. Because of a feeling of safety, more students are coming to school which is decreasing chronic absenteeism. Inevitably, with the teachers more confident and less interruptions, students feeling safe and coming to school, there are increases in test scores and academic success. This is cause to celebrate and embrace these practices.
Source: Education Week Reporting
Incorporating CRRP
Because CCRP has 6 main tenets, it can feel easy to get overwhelmed. However, many school communities are already doing a lot of the things that are a part of the foundations of CRRP, like incorporating families and community members, creating safe and productive learning environments, and thinking of ways to build community amongst students and their educators. Therefore, educators can build on what they already have incorporated into their work by examining their own cultural lens proficiency through workshops, books, and professional development training. To understand how students feel in the school and classroom environments, utilize surveys (for formal data) and conversation (for informal data) and speak with other members of the school community. This data can be used to create action plans for change in the area of identity, safety, and belonging. Look at instructional practices and curricular choices and reflect as to whether or not the school is utilizing culturally responsive pedagogy. If it is not, collaborate with members of the school community to determine ways to incorporate this in a way that is safe for both students and educators.* Continue to build on the conditions for equity and be sure to use an asset-based approach to restoring harm and building community. Finally, use restorative practices to build connection in the community most of the time as a proactive approach through community circles and SEL (social emotional learning) activities. Use restorative practices to repair harm in the community as a reactionary approach only after the community has been built with the support of administrators in small groups with the members of the community who are in need of harm reduction and repair.
*We acknowledge that Culturally Responsive Pedagogy is not embraced or even legal in some states and school communities. For this we offer educators to use their discretion on how to introduce this practice to their colleagues if they are interested in incorporating it into their schools.
For more information about how LAIRP can support your school please visit our website at lairp.org and contact us for more information.
References
Archibold, Estelle E. (2016) "Accessing Freedom: Culturally Responsive Restorative Justice Practice in Schools," Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice: Vol. 8 : Iss. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/jppp/vol8/iss1/6
Fayles, C. (2019) “Culturally Responsive Restorative Practices: Preliminary Data From Participating Schools, 2018–2019”, Department of Research and Evaluation, Austin Independent School District. Available at: https://www.austinisd.org/sites/default/files/dre-surveys/1_eir_crrp_preliminary_final.pdf
Fayles, C. (2021) “Education Innovation and Research Grant: Culturally Responsive Restorative Practices Preliminary Data from Participating Schools, 2019–2020”, Department of Research and Evaluation, Austin Independent School District. Available at: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED629916.pdf
Ward, A. (2020). “Culturally Responsive Restorative Practices: Measuring Systemic Change”, Cultural Proficiency & Inclusiveness Restorative Practices Austin Independent School District. Available at: https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/2021/03/AlternativeIIOct22_330PMWard_508.pdf
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