School-based Restorative Practices Implementation

This article, originally published in Fortune.com, explores a range of added challenges related to restorative practices implementation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We need programs and interventions that teach and model skills that will change behavior. Restorative practices are what can transform and guide the prosocial behaviors we want for our children and our communities."

School-based Restorative Practices

Feedback from our trainings helps us strengthen them and gives us valuable insights into the needs of the communities we serve.

One of the most powerful and underused tools in a BIT’s toolbox is the integration of restorative practices. Conflict is almost always a reflection of something more profound, what psychologist Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D., the “father of nonviolent communication,” would call “a tragic expression of unmet needs.” Restorative practices acknowledge this reality and seek to meet it.

With SEL, we can foster emotional safety and mental wellness, and help reduce violence and risky behaviors among students.

Each time we choose to draw near, rather than to send away, we are actively building a new way to be in community together. As we model this way of being in schools, we are shining a light and showing a way for what can be possible in the community as a whole.