Here are some quotes from the recent The Art of Advocacy show about Restorative Justice.
Restorative justice is really primarily about relationship and developing relationships.
Lynn Lee
If somebody, steals a cell phone, and doesn't feel any remorse for that, they're not appropriate for restorative justice. We're listening for people who will feel bad about what they've done and are willing to do something to fix it.
Lynn Lee
It was about developing relationship with those kids, not calling them out, not making them the center of attention. But developing a relationship with them and being respectful of them and then helping them, like I said, to become leaders in their classroom so we can do restorative circles.
Lynn Lee
It almost sounds counter intuitive that we're going to give respect to kids that are doing something that might be harmful to others.
Charmaine Thaner
Bullies have been bullied or bullies have been harmed. So there is a reason why kids bullying other kids. We're not interested in punishing anybody. We're only interested in teaching, treating everybody respectfully.
Lynn Lee
We are always also looking at the strengths of kids that have committed offenses. What are they good at? Instead of punishing them, we want to take what they're really good at and have them bring that asset to their community, to the person that they committed the offense to.
Lynn Lee
Restorative justice can work both ways. There's no reason we couldn't sit in a circle with a teacher who's harmed a kid and figure out what they could do to repair the harm.
Lynn Lee
Actually my dream would be that teacher education programs in college all have a restorative justice classroom management piece.
Lynn Lee
Implicit bias of teachers of students with disabilities and students of color are integral to the problem of alarming rates of suspensions and expulsions of students.
Charmaine Thaner
One of the Colorado restorative justice laws that was passed, put a $10 fee charge on every person who committed an offense, who went through the judicial system. And that funding goes to restorative justice. So we fund programs around the state, programs that work in the justice system but also programs that run in their schools and in their community.
Lynn Lee
If you are interested in public policy making and as a parent want to get more involved in that, restorative justice would be like an excellent area that you might want to explore. I encourage you to look at this Colorado website about restorative justice, and see if it's something that you would like to replicate and your state too.
Charmaine Thaner
Instead of looking at kids as being the one that needs to be fixed, we can look at students as having needs and as adults we need to figure out how can we change the climate and the culture to embrace kids, especially kids with differences and, and support them versus doing the whole punishment thing.
Charmaine Thaner
Sometimes we feel like we're just a parent, but you have the ability to be a stronger voice. You have the ability to widen your circle, bring other supporters with you and make changes. So kids are supported, happy and learning at school.
Charmaine Thaner
