Practicing Restorative Justice: Preparing Aspiring Educators to Transform Schools Using Anti-Racist Strategies

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium explores how restorative justice can serve as a countermeasure to racism in education by combining historical critique with practical tools for aspiring educators. Drawing from a 2023 collaborative book project, contributors examine the legacy of educational colonization, policing, and the school-to-prison pipeline while advancing healing-centered, justice-oriented practices. Amid a national climate that seeks to suppress truthful teaching and racial equity, this session emphasizes the importance of research into practice frameworks that equip new educators with historical knowledge, relational pedagogies, and organizing strategies. Through this dialogue, we confront the past and present harms of education while envisioning liberatory classrooms where students and teachers can thrive beyond the constraints of systemic injustice.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Educators for Social Justice

Chair

• Erika Strauss Chavarria, Columbia Community Care

Papers

• Practicing Restorative Justice as an Anti-Racist Educator - Erika Strauss Chavarria, Columbia Community Care

• Fostering Healthy Racial Identity in the Early Years: Making Black Lives Matter in ECEC - Denisha Jones, Defending the Early Years

• Community-Based Instruction as a Pathway to Belonging, Voice, and Citizenship for Students with IDD - Winter Marshall-Allen, The Homer Organization for More Equitable Relations

• Anti-Racism for White Educators - Disrupting White Supremacy in Ourselves and our Systems. - Terry Jess, Juanita High School

Session Organizer

• Denisha Jones, Defending the Early Years

Discussant

• David O. Stovall, University of Illinois at Chicago