When a student assaults a teacher, can restorative justice work?

On Board Online • July 23, 2018

By Paul Heiser
Senior Research Analyst

The State Education Department has been encouraging school districts to embrace restorative justice, an approach to resolving student misbehavior in a way that minimizes the number of students suspended or otherwise removed from the school setting.

For instance, suppose a student hits or steals from another student. Faculty might settle the matter by facilitating a conversation between the offender and the victim or making the student part of a "restorative circle" group. Instead of being suspended, the student stays in school.

But what if the victim is a teacher? In the 2015-16 school year, 5.8 percent of the nation's 3.8 million teachers were physically attacked by a student. Almost 10 percent were threatened with injury, according to federal education data.

In such cases - and others - teachers are apt to want the principal to take steps to remove the student from school, according to Tom Cavanagh, a professor of ethnic studies at Colorado State University and an expert in restorative justice.

"The elephant in the room in many schools when it comes to student discipline is the constant tension between teachers and the front office," said Cavanagh, who has been hired by the State Education Department to conduct a "train the trainer" session for 50 New York State educators this month. NYSSBA helped organize the training.

Cavanaugh described a typical exchange: "The teacher tells the principal, 'I send students to you to discipline, and you send them right back to my classroom.' The administration says, 'You don't have a choice.'"

There are a number of strategies that schools can use that bridge the gap between teacher safety and alternatives to the traditional disciplinary actions of suspension and expulsion, Cavanaugh said. He pointed to work being done at the Randolph Academy Union Free School District in Cattaraugus County.

Randolph Academy is a special act school district that serves students who have complex mental health and emotional needs. It has about 100 students, half of whom live in residential units on campus. Students come from all across the state and are full-time residents. About half the students live in surrounding school districts and are bused in as day students.

At Randolph Academy, "restorative conferences" are used "to repair the harm caused by the student's actions," according to Cynthia Johnson, the district's director of curriculum and acting principal.

The restorative conference - also called a "community building circle" - is a type of restorative justice practice whose purpose is to teach empathy and self-reflection, create a sense of belonging through sharing stories and active listening, and building and strengthening relationships. The practice is voluntary and has to be agreed upon by all participants. A conflict resolution circle includes both the wrongdoer and those who have been harmed (e.g. student and staff; student and student) and is held when someone has caused harm by their actions.

Johnson explained to On Board that participants sit in a circle in a room without the aid of furniture. A "circle keeper" who is trained in restorative justice is in charge of the circle and acts as a facilitator. A "talking piece," which is some type of object chosen by the student, is used so that only the person holding the object at any given time may talk. Members of the circle discuss such questions as, "What impact has this incident had on you and others? What needs to happen to make things right?"

Can such an approach work when a student assaults an adult? Johnson described such a case. She said there was an incident this past school year in which a 16-year-old female student made threatening comments while walking up and down the school corridor. She was placed in a special education classroom, where she continued to make threatening comments. The situation escalated to the point that the student physically assaulted a staff member by pulling her hair, ripping her glasses off her face, and pushing her. The student was restrained by another staffer and placed in a therapeutic crisis intervention hold by several other staffers until she was calmer. The staffer and student had no further contact for the next several days to give them a break from the emotions of the situation.

A conflict resolution circle was then held in the student's residence unit. This involved the student, the staffer who was harmed, a counselor and another staff member who were advocates for the student, and a residence hall staffer discussing what happened and what steps could be taken to repair the relationship between the student and staffer. The 16-year-old girl told the group she did not remember pulling the staffer's hair, but recounted that she felt upset that morning and when staff attempted to calm her down, she felt threatened based on past experiences. The student ended up taking responsibility for her behavior and apologizing, and the relationship between her and the staffer was repaired.

According to Johnson, the resolution had a campus-wide impact. Even staff members who were not involved were much less anxious about having the same student in their classrooms.

Johnson said the conflict resolution circle doesn't always result in a positive resolution. There was another situation that was similar to the first; it involved a physical assault on a staff member, whose hair was pulled and who was bitten and scratched, prompting a call to law enforcement. A similar type of conflict resolution circle was organized, but the student was not willing to accept responsibility for his actions and was in denial, so the relationship between the student and staffer could not be repaired. A traditional disciplinary action, i.e., an out of school suspension, was taken.

A third episode at Randolph Academy, though, provides an example of the potential of restorative justice practices. It involved a staff member who was punched in the face and received a black eye from a student with which she had a very good relationship. Having to look at the staffer's black eye during the talking circle allowed the 14-year old female student to see the consequences of her actions. School officials question whether that would not have have occurred if a traditional disciplinary action of suspension had been used.

"The point of the restorative practice is to repair the harm that has been done," said Johnson. "The means of rectifying the problem - whether a verbal apology or service time - depend on the situation and what circle participants believe is necessary to repair the harm."

Cavanagh said the strength of such a restorative justice approach is that students must take responsibility for their behavior. In a restorative justice conversation, the student is placed in a position to listen to the story of the person who has been harmed, which increases the chances of restoring that relationship.

"A real point of emphasis is that you don't put students back in the classroom without having a meeting between the teacher and student and the relationship is repaired," Cavanagh told On Board. "This is usually not the first occasion of a student acting out, but rather an accumulation of incidents that have arisen from not tending to the situation earlier."

Cavanagh emphasized that teachers should not refer students out of the classroom unless there is an immediate threat of physical harm. He also said most schools need about a year after introduction of restorative justice practices before the process starts to work well.