Make students part of the solution, not the problem

Restorative justice gives students a feeling of fairness and responsibility for appropriate behavior.

Amid the chaos of lunchtime, a lone apple flies across the lunchroom, over tables, through conversations, and slams against the door on the other side of the room. José, the aspiring pitcher, begins to laugh, a satisfied moment of jubilation with two or three friends near him who were in on the scheme. Their laughter quickly fades as the boys realize Ms. Johnson, the principal, has caught them in the act. As she approaches, José turns his back in feigned ignorance. Even though Johnson literally watched as the shiny green apple was released from his hand, José denies throwing it. (The names of students, staff, and The City School are pseudonyms.)

Now 17, José has experienced enough encounters with authority in school and beyond to know that the first response to getting caught must be to deny culpability. Johnson quickly grows frustrated. The confrontation escalates. A few minutes later, José is leaving the principal’s office to begin his five-day suspension.

This scenario, repeated in some form thousands of times every day at schools and in classrooms across the country, was the first incident taken on by the newly formed Student Justice Panel (SJP) at The City School, a small charter school in San Francisco. The SJP was the product of teacher leadership and pressure to move toward a more restorative and responsive approach to student discipline. The initiative had considerable ideological support from several teachers but lacked a clear road map on how to apply this discipline philosophy in the day-to-day life of school.

Core values

The City School (TCS) is a public charter high school serving about 400 students in San Francisco, one of a network of three schools established in 2002 with the mission of “transforming the lives of students, especially those who will be the first in their family to attend college, by preparing them for success in college, in careers, and in life.” City School students reflect the diversity of San Francisco and come from every neighborhood in the city. There are about 20 educators teaching grades 9-12.

Restorative justice shifts the power dynamic to enable students to not just have a voice but to effect change.

The Student Justice Panel (SJP) is a restorative justice model of school discipline, the purpose of which is to uphold the school’s Core Values by working to restore damaged relationships between individuals and the community. The SJP is made up of about 12 student leaders nominated by their teachers and peers and is based on the beliefs that:

TCS believes strongly in maintaining our Core Values of discipline, growth, community, justice, and respect;
Each individual at TCS is responsible for the community as a whole; and
TCS functions best when students take leadership and are given a strong voice.

SJP hearings consist of an adult facilitator, the community members involved in the violation of the Core Values, and at least four SJP representatives. Parents/family members may also be present, depending on need. Petitioners and respondents can also request to have additional student advocates present. Everyone at the hearing, including the respondent, will propose and discuss consequences aimed at restoration, and the SJP will decide on a course of action.

The shift toward restorative justice at TCS was largely a bottom-up movement. Although administrators were nominally supportive of the push, they were not the engine behind the change. The fuel for the changes came from a few teacher leaders, including myself, and eventually from students. This continues to be a challenging dynamic at the school, where there never seems to be enough time or resources to do work like restorative justice. Furthermore, the relationships and individualized attention needed to properly integrate a restorative discipline model often clash with the “sacrifice some for the good of the whole” doctrine that drives many school discipline policies. But this is a discussion for a different article.

The City School is by no means a place that relied heavily on punishment and removing “bad students” to maintain its school culture. Every adult in the building genuinely wants to do what is best for the young people they serve. However, like many schools with similar missions and goals related to
equity, social justice, and college readiness, TCS faced a critical disconnect between what we wanted and what was actually happening as a result of school discipline policies and practices. We wanted to be true to our Core Values:

Community — We work hard and take responsibility for the success of all members of our community.

Respect — We seek to see the best in each other and treat one another with dignity.

Justice — We are empowered agents of change for social justice and equity.

We wanted to help students transform mistakes and bad choices into learning experiences. We wanted to create a school culture in which students learned to discipline themselves and each other so that referrals, suspensions, and expulsions would become the exception instead of the rule. But watching José walk out of the building reminded me that we were far from reaching these goals. We had so much work to do.

After the apple is thrown

When members of the Student Justice Panel learn José has been suspended for five days for what students considered an innocuous act of playfulness, their justice meters go into “oh, hell, no” mode. After school that day, four SJP members rush into my classroom, with filled with urgency and outrage.

“They can’t suspend him for five days for throwing an apple,” one shouts.

After several minutes of questioning and analyzing the incident and the response to it, I agree that the SJP has a responsibility to raise its voice and respond to the apple incident.

I tell the SJP students that the first step in supporting José is communicating their perspective to principal Johnson. She is reasonable, and I believe she also wants to do right by students. “Let’s go down there right now,” shouts Nicole. “I don’t care if she is busy; she needs to do something about this.”

I remind Nicole that Ms. Johnson is not our enemy and that if we approach her as though she is, we won’t get anywhere. “Don’t forget Ms. Johnson was actually very supportive of the SJP. We don’t want to lose that support by coming at her disrespectfully,” I offer my opinion to the group.

“I want to take her to the Student Justice Panel,” Nicole exclaims. “Why does she think she can do this?”

“Requesting that Ms. Johnson come before the SPJ is actually an option,” I reply. “But for now let’s focus on the situation with José and how we are going to get Ms. Johnson to listen to us.”

Deondre steps in. Typically a quiet and reflective student who keeps his thoughts to himself, Deondre is a leader who students trust to be honest and just. “We need a proposal that makes it clear why we think this is unfair. If we just rush into her office yelling at her, she will never hear us,” he said. “And José did throw an apple across the cafeteria. Let’s not front like he didn’t do anything wrong.”

Deondre’s reasoning calms them and sends them into planning mode. They huddle around a desk and start to build their plan. I step back and listen, offering a few suggestions, but really just letting them work it out. After about 10 minutes, they’re excited about their next step, but they still don’t fully trust that the Student Justice Panel process is real or that Ms. Johnson will listen to them.

This is a common dynamic in schools: Adults have all the power, and students must be obedient and respectful — even when they are right (and righteous) in the face of injustice. This is the dynamic that leads to so many students blowing up over incidents that begin small. After many years of schooling, students have learned that the teacher’s word is taken as truth, and their perspective won’t matter. Being told to move seats or getting a detention for repeatedly talking can often lead to screaming at a teacher, storming out and slamming a door, or throwing a fit because that is their only source of power. They have seen models of struggle — from “The Maury Show” to the contentious political climate — that value temper tantrums and threats of violence to win one’s point. And they employ these competently when they find themselves powerless in classroom situations.

The first step is communicating concerns and student perspectives to the principal.

What makes the SJP so transformative is the shift in the dynamics of power it represents. Many schools have structures that are intended to encourage students to have a voice. But SJP actually has the authority to affect and even change school discipline decisions and policies. At The City School, any community member can bring another member of the community before the SJP for violating any of the school’s Core Values; this includes students who have called teachers before the SJP. This can be extremely useful when a teacher is trying to reason with a student who is about to explode because of a perceived unfairness. The teacher can remind the student that she is not powerless in that situation but that her power does not lie in yelling and demonstrating anger. Her power lies in her peers, who will be the ultimate arbiters of justice in the Student Justice Panel.

The apple incident will be the test to see if the SJP is real. Is the school really willing to give students a voice in some discipline decisions? To be honest, as a teacher and lead organizer of the SJP, I’m not completely certain myself if the school leadership is willing to give up that kind of power. But we will give it a try.

The meeting

Two of the SJP representatives, who were elected weeks before by peers in their advisory classes, go to Ms. Johnson’s office to make an appointment to discuss the incident and their feelings about José’s suspension. Ms. Johnson is game. The next day, Ms. Johnson meets with the four SJP members who initially raised the issue, myself, and the assistant principal of school culture.

Equally surprised, nervous, and excited, the four students gather in my room after school to discuss how to approach the meeting and what to ask for. They decide the fundamental issue is not that José is being punished for his actions but that the punishment does not fit his “crime.” During the conversation, they realize that José has the main responsibility in restoring the situation. They agree that throwing the apple was wrong and that he needs to have consequences. But a five-day suspension won’t accomplish anything except to push him further behind in his schoolwork and make him even angrier about coming to school. Furthermore, using José as an example is unreasonable. The SJP group decides to ask Ms. Johnson to allow José to return to school the next day, having served one day of his suspension, on three conditions. José:

Writes a letter of apology to the janitor (who would have had to clean up his apple mess if José had not been caught);
Stays after lunch to clean up the cafeteria for a week; and
Writes a reflection about which Core Values he violated and what it means to be responsible for his actions at school.

It takes less than a half hour to discuss the issue and come up with these consequences. The students walk away feeling good about their proposal.

The meeting

At the meeting the next day, Deondre, Nicole, and two other Student Justice Panel students present the proposal to Ms. Johnson, making it clear why they believe their proposed actions are not only more just but actually hold José to higher expectations than simply suspending him. Ms. Johnson accepts the proposal. I can see the expressions on the faces of the four students change as they listen to Ms. Johnson’s words. The Student Justice Panel is for real.

José agrees to the conditions and returns to school the next day — anything to avoid the five-day suspension. But, after a few days back, he fails to follow through on one of his commitments: staying after lunch to clean up the cafeteria.

This is a pivotal moment for the nascent SJP. Students had considered what would happen if a student didn’t follow through with their restorative consequences and decided that this would trigger a return to their punitive consequences.

However, before the situation with José got to this point, students on the SJP — on their own with no adult prompting — spoke with José and convinced him that it was critical for him to keep his end of the agreement, both for his benefit and for the sake of the SJP process. In the following days, José followed through on the rest of his restorative consequences.

This demonstrates one of the powerful unforeseen benefits of the Student Justice Panel: Students take leadership and hold each other accountable for discipline. Sure, in this situation, José wanted to avoid more days of suspension. And schools must have discipline policies with punitive consequences to ensure accountability. Students could comply with school policies to avoid being punished for their actions, or students could comply with school policies because their peers hold them to high expectations. When the high expectations approach is at play, students are investing in building and maintaining a positive and respectful school community because they believe they have the voice and the authority to do so.

In reflection

Several years and many “apple incidents” have passed since the Student Justice Panel began. In some ways, the panel has been incredibly successful. But the growth of the SJP and restorative discipline has met many challenges, and we are still struggling to implement these practices on an institutional level. Only a few of these challenges emerge from a lack of ideological support for the philosophy and practices. Often the challenges come in the form of resources. If we only consider time and school resources, sending José home for five days and forgetting about him until he returns is much easier than investing in the work required to transform his actions and his thinking, which is the goal of restorative discipline.

But given the connection between school discipline, dropouts, and the school-to-prison pipeline, the implications are critical. We owe it to José. We need to care deeply enough about his education and his humanity to invest in developing restorative discipline models that thrive in our schools and not simply operating systems that punish students when they make poor choices, like throwing apples when the principal is watching.