“They are more than the behaviors we see.”
If there is a quote that defines how Sto-Rox students can succeed with the Just Discipline Project, it is that one. The restorative practices program housed at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center on Race and Social Problems is now in place at Sto-Rox Upper Elementary School. The program will include an in-house practitioner, Jennie Smith, who will train teachers, support students, and lead restorative work.
Restorative Practices is a science that works on improving and repairing relationships. In this case, it means reducing punitive discipline, racial disparities in discipline and achievement, and improving students’ lives inside and outside of the classroom.
“Our foundation is community building,” said Shawn Thomas, Program Director of the Just Discipline Project. “You cannot restore anything without a sense of community amongst teachers, as well as with students. We help teachers and students connect with each other better so that there’s less conflict in the first place.”
They are more than the behaviors we see.”
- Shawn Thomas, Program Director
Building a sense of community is the first of three tiers of the program. The second tier is strategically responding to conflicts that arise.
“We’ll have the teachers and kids engage in restorative circles, and heal a situation,” said Thomas, a Beaver Falls native. The final tier focuses on individualized support.
“We do a lot of one-on-one mentoring with students who are most susceptible to suspensions,'' he explained. “We’ve noticed that the students that get suspended the most often have underlying issues going on. And without those being addressed, we see high recidivism rates with suspensions which then goes toward juvenile truancy.”
The next stop after that is often prison, in what is known as the “school-to-prison pipeline.” The Just Discipline Project hopes to help students avoid it. It’s also how the program came to be.
In 2015, Dr. Jay Huguley, the project’s Principal Investigator, researched discipline in schools, including how out-of-school suspensions disproportionately affected Black children. His research showed that kind of discipline pushed those children into the criminal justice system. In 2017, the Just Discipline Project was developed. It entered its first school, Woodland Hills Intermediate, after Mr. Thomas and Dr. Huguley visited and studied similar programs in schools in Houston, Texas and Oakland, California.
“We came back and modified some of their components, and created a model specifically for the Western Pennsylvania area,” explained Thomas. “We saw some really good results after years one and two, and it got some attention.”
Since then, the Just Discipline Project has expanded its programming to serve more than 7,000 students in Western Pennsylvania schools.
Shawn Thomas, Program Director of the Just Discipline Project, in the classroom. File Photograph Courtesy: University of Pittsburgh.
Here in Sto-Rox, the Upper Elementary students will be served by Smith, a former teacher. She’s there to help students feel supported and work through their feelings, however they may surface. She can also be a critical resource for teachers.
“I understand there is a lot on teachers’ plates at times,” Smith said. “A lot of teachers really want to implement this. I’m very excited that I’m able to provide that resource, because sometimes it’s very difficult to provide this and do all of the other things.”
“I’m just really excited to see how much of a change we’ll provide.”
- Jennie Smith, Restorative Practice Coordinator
Smith also stressed she can help parents and guardians in addition to their children. Whether she is putting together healing circles or listening to students in the lunchroom, she wants everyone in the Upper Elementary to feel comfortable.
“Creating that welcoming and open environment, where they’re able to freely share and feel that they are heard and supported, is being proactive against anything else happening down the road,” said Smith.
The project puts an emphasis on students - not only ending punitive punishments they experience in schools - but helping them grow as well. It’s a process, Thomas points out, that includes student leadership.
“We go through a process with select students and train them in a restorative approach. It gets to a point where the students are more capable of doing their restorative practices then the adults.”
That means parents can expect their children to become agents of change.
“In our data, most students feel that there is a low sense of belonging in their schools,” said Thomas. “So our student leadership group, they attack that, and they become so much a part of the community that they bring the students and the teachers together.”
It’s a fitting goal for a project that aims to help as many Sto-Rox students as possible.
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Just Discipline Project has the potential to reshape multiple classes of Sto-Rox students. The program will be at Sto-Rox Upper Elementary School for the next two years, with the potential for a third. It’s all thanks to a partnership between the Just Discipline Project and Allegheny Intermediate Unit, through a grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD).
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