Are restorative practices to blame for the shooting of a Virginia teacher?
The problem of discipline in schools—or lack thereof—culminated last month when a 6 year-old student shot his teacher in Newport News, Virginia. Afterwards, teachers complained that the school and the district had created a culture of leniency and permissiveness in an effort to be more ”restorative,” allowing disruptive and sometimes-violent students to stay in the classroom without consequences. And for many teachers in American schools, this story feels all too familiar.
Since the pandemic began, there has been a rise in anti-social behavior—or, at the very least, “weird behavior.” In new York City (and other large cities), for instance, various violent crimes are on the rise after falling for over a decade. (Although it should be noted that the data and reporting on violent crime are disputed.)
I think it is illustrative to also look at the rise of anti-social behavior in classrooms. For the past two years, since schools largely returned to in-person learning, teachers have reported significant behavior problems, from generally disruptive behavior to actual violence to verbal abuse directed at staff. The rise of anti-social behavior inside and outside of the classroom have similar roots: a vast mental health crisis; nihilism and malaise in the face of a society that seems indifferent to human suffering; work that feels increasingly meaningless; and a chasm of socioeconomic inequality brought to light by the lockdown.
What is also interesting to me, though, is the ways in which society’s responses to both have run similar courses. In the wake of the George Floyd murder of 2020, police came under additional scrutiny for their heavy-handed approaches to address crime. At the same time, the rhetoric of anti-racism permeated through schools, and well-intentioned policymakers, administrators, and teachers became reluctant to use punishments to address behaviors clearly rooted in trauma stemming from the pandemic—and because of the long history of disparities in punishment among students of different races.
In neither instance, though, did our schools or our society develop the structures needed to move beyond punishment. In order to address behaviors in schools, we need massive investment in social workers and school psychologists and training for teachers in restorative practices. As Tinisha Parker, the executive director of student services in Georgia’s Gwinnett County, has said, “Restorative practices is not something you can do if you’re not trained.” Likewise, we need a massive investment in the same resources—along with anti-poverty measures—to address the root causes of crime in our cities and towns.
Instead, we have gotten permissiveness. Teachers, for instance, are told to “have a conversation” with students or to “build a relationship” with students. This, predictability, does not actually help students fix their behavior or help them grow or take ownership of their behavior. Real restorative practices help students problem-solve and address the root of the problems.
And, predictably, teachers, parents, and students are all exhausted from what feels like administrators’ and policymakers’ lack of willingness to confront bad behavior. And, even more predictably, this has led to a reversal in policy, with many schools reverting back to punitive systems. Gwinnett County, for instance, paused its restorative practices policy in December after only a few months.
The ways in which we address crime and student behavior frequently mirror each other. For example, under Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg in New York, New York cracked down hard on crime and perceived crime through policies like “broken windows” and “stop-and-frisk”—the idea being that visible evidence of crime creates more crime. At the same time, New York City’s schools—led by the proliferation of charter schools like Success Academy—adopted “no excuses” discipline codes.
Rather than using the pandemic as an opportunity to restructure our schools and to move society away from punishments toward restoration, we are simply repeating our past mistakes. Being restorative does not mean being permissive—but schools must be willing to put in the resources to move away from punitive culture or else risk creating dangerous, toxic environments for students and teachers.
