Category Archives: Elementary Classroom Circles

Attention schools: 3 reasons for “primary” Circles, before “secondary” or “tertiary”.

The PBIS or public health models work perfectly with Restorative Justice Circles. I am not sure of another process that can be used at each of the Tiers.  Restorative Justice Circles work on each and every level with only slight modifications to the

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Filed under Circle Keeping, Circle Process, Circle Stages, Elementary Classroom Circles, Practitioner Skills, Restorative Justice in Schools

UW Extension and Restorative Justice have SO much in common!

I recently attended a summit on the social-emotional well-being of children and families in Pierce & St. Croix Counties.  These are the same counties that SCVRJP has been serving since 2001. I certainly appreciated hearing the term, the focus and intention

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Filed under Circle Process, Circle Stages, Community, Elementary Classroom Circles, Practitioner Skills, Relationships, SCVRJP, Talking Piece

Trained teachers offer what Restorative Justice Circles “bridge”.

  I appreciate Sharon Bowman, she has a resource-filled website, great articles and books.  If you follow her on LinkedIn, great powerpoints shared.  Friend and mentor, pictured here, helped me learn how to work and train teachers.  In turn I

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Filed under Circle Keeping, Circle Process, Elementary Classroom Circles, Full Circle Experiences, Kris Miner, Practitioner Skills, Responses from participants, Restorative Justice, Restorative Justice in Schools, SCVRJP, Teaching RJ

Labels hurt. Restorativeness includes kindness to those that bully.

I stay away from the word “bully”.  I put in “bully behavior”.  Labels hurt people.  It’s hard to be called a name, its hard to be you, when a strong label has been applied.  My path to my views was

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Filed under Elementary Classroom Circles, offenders, Practitioner Skills, Relationships, Research

Restorative Justice in Schools, further reading resources!

The newest item published for school based restorative justice: http://www.acschoolhealth.org/Docs/Restorative-Justice-Paper.pdf I would also recommend: Taking Restorative Justice to Schools; A Doorway to Discipline by Jeanette Holthum Restoring Safe School Communities a whole school approach to bullying, violence and alienation by

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Filed under Circle Keeping, Circle Process, College Circles, Community, Elementary Classroom Circles, personal growth, Practitioner Skills, Research, Restorative Justice, Restorative Justice in Schools, RJ Resources, Teaching RJ, Tip of the Week

Community Circles before Conflict Resolution Circles and always the Restorative Justice Circle process stages.

This post contains some recommendations for those of you using Circle process in a school or classroom setting.  You will want to develop the students awareness of the process.  By using Circles to “build” community you prevent harm.  The more

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Filed under Circle Keeping, Circle Process, Circle Stages, Community, Conferencing, Elementary Classroom Circles, Restorative Justice in Schools, Tip of the Week

Common sense circle caution, using restorative justice process with youth.

My favorite way to do restorative justice is with Circle process.  I have developed a clear structured style of using 4 stages.  If you aren’t familiar with that, you could read all the entires in the category: circle stages.  The

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Filed under Circle Keeping, Circle Process, Circle Stages, Elementary Classroom Circles, Practitioner Skills, Responses from participants, Restorative Justice, Restorative Justice in Schools, Talking Piece, Teaching RJ, Tip of the Week

5 crucial Restorative concepts for schools and trainers.

School-based Restorative Justice – Restorative Practices – Restorative Measures . . . In my opinion, they all funnel down to practices in school designed to influence the general culture (everyone in a community) and provide individual interventions (case specific). When

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Filed under Belonging, Circle Process, Community, Elementary Classroom Circles, Kris Miner, offenders, Peace, Practitioner Skills, Relationships, Responses from participants, Restorative Justice, Teaching RJ, Tip of the Week

Restorative Justice Circles, congruent with evidence-based trauma support treatments.

The training title: Understanding and Treating Traumatized Youth: An Integrated, Evidence-Based Approach  The training was provided by Cross Country Education (www.CrossCountryEducation.com). We learned that trauma treatment has 3 phases (originated by Judith Herman).  The first phase is Safety & Stabilization. 

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Filed under Circle Process, Circle Stages, Counter-point, Elementary Classroom Circles, Kris Miner, offenders, Practitioner Skills, Research, Restorative Justice, Restorative Justice in Schools, storytelling, Talking Piece, Tip of the Week

A “do not miss” training opportunity! Restorative Justice addressing bully behavior.

My friend Nancy has been hosting week-long sessions in school-based Restorative Justice/Restorative Measures.  I have helped her out the last few years.  The finale of the week is the Circle Networking Day, she fwd’d me this information today: The Circle

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Filed under Circle Process, Circle Stages, Community, Conferencing, Elementary Classroom Circles, Peace, Practitioner Skills, Relationships, Research, Restorative Justice in Schools, RJ Resources, Victims