Restorative Justice and the Possibilities of Radical Healing

• In Event: Humanizing Praxis: Enacting Restorative, Transformative, and Healing Pedagogies

Abstract

Restorative Justice (RJ) is a buzzword in educational research and school districts as an alternative to punitive disciplinary school policies (Zaslow, 2010). Previous scholarship demonstrates that Restorative Justice approaches in schools directly minimize punitive school disciplinary actions, like suspensions and expulsions, and as such decrease youth of color contact with the school-to-prison pipeline (Gonzalez & Cairns, 2011; Payne & Welch, 2015), which disproportionately impacts youth of color, particularly Black and Latino males and students with disabilities (Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010; Skiba & Skiba, 2013). In order for schools to fully transition into Restorative Justice approaches, a cultural shift must occur from punitive, “zero tolerance” modes of discipline toward community building, repairing harm, and healing (Ginwright, 2016; Zehr, 2002). This study thus centralizes the following question through a case study approach: How has one school’s cultural practices shifted through the implementation of a RJ program?

For this paper, we use a radical healing framework which highlights processes that restore well-being for individuals and the larger collective (Ginwright, 2016). Central to this framework is an explicit political goal that describes well-being as the ability of communities to respond to injustice. As such, there is a clear focus on collective identity (i.e. race, class, gender, sexual orientation) and the development of a critical consciousness. Radical healing frames individual and communal health and wellness as directly related to political priorities and decisions, and recognizes the healing power of spiritual activism (Anzúldua, 2002; Keating, 2008), agency, voice, and belonging. Radical healing cultivates meaning and purpose - promoting well-being for the individual and collective.

This study presents an ethnographic case study (Yin, 2014) of one high school community that has been experiencing a cultural shift from zero tolerance to Restorative Justice for the last 5 years. The school serves a predominantly working class, bilingual, Latinx community and is located in a large metropolitan school district in California where community activists pushed the local school board to approve a School Climate Bill of Rights - which mandates that RJ will be implemented in all of the district’s schools by 2020.

For this paper, the authors conducted: (a) six ethnographic interviews with one school administrator and five teachers (Urrieta, 2007), and (b) six ethnographic participant-observations (Erickson, 1986). The observations occurred in various contexts including: classrooms, school culture faculty/staff meetings; and parent group meetings.

Preliminary findings suggest that RJ has shifted the culture of the school through ongoing training opportunities and strategically designed school culture teams - both of which include: teachers, staff, administration, students, parents, families, and community members. Initial findings indicate that the implementation of RJ elicits complex reactions and reflections about humanizing praxis. These include: (a) the connection between collective identity, school culture, hurt, harm, and trauma among the school adults; (b) the importance of developing a collective school culture that includes Indigenous and Latinx cultural practices to cultivate individual and collective well-being; and (c) the complexities of authentically involving students, families, parents, and community members to participate in cultural transformations of the school.

Authors

• Elexia Reyes McGovern, California State University - Dominguez Hills

• JC Lugo, University of California - Los Angeles