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Restorative justice eclipsing zero tolerance in US schools

October 22, 2013 By Anne Leave a Comment

Here’s a model for preventing bullying and a whole lot of other problems: a school that promotes social literacy not zero tolerance. At the Boston area’s Charlestown High School, “where many students come from high-crime neighborhoods, an innovative program employs a surprising method to help keep teens in school and out of trouble with the law: Encouraging them to talk to each other,” reports NBC News. The school uses a restorative-justice-type program called “Diploma Plus” that’s “gaining popularity in classrooms across the country,” according to NBC. Restorative justice, which is used in many different programs around the US and seen as an alternative to zero tolerance and the suspension-and-expulsion practice that a 2011 survey of 1 million students in Texas found to create a “school-to-prison pipeline” (see this). Restorative justice, on the other hand, builds “relationships, trust and community,” NBC cites its proponents as saying. That could be seen as social literacy development, a literacy that has been shown to improve academic performance as well as social efficacy (see this).

Related links

  • The Washington Post noted the decline of zero tolerance in school policy in a thorough trend piece in mid-2011.
  • “Zero tolerance is zero intelligence,” a juvenile judge told the Atlanta Constitution in 2009.
  • “A Connecticut school to its students: We trust you”
  • “All kids deserve the safety & other benefits of social-emotional learning”
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Filed Under: School & Tech, school policy Tagged With: Charlestown High School, school policy, SEL, social literacy, social-emotional learning, zero tolerance

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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