Sue-Ann Rosch, founder of the Community School for Social Justice in the South Bronx, explained how a Restorative Justice Model for student discipline helps her students resist their often violent reality to focus on academics—a story she calls “a work in progress.”

At the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture’s Education Leaders Roundtable in March, Rosch discussed the interventions and strategies educators used to address rampant discipline problems and chronic absenteeism in an unforgiving inner-city neighborhood, and the positive impact they’re having on students in and out of the classroom.

“How do you get students to de-escalate or to buy into resolving things peacefully when they’re fighting to survive in their neighborhood?” Rosch questioned. “That’s the norm, and their families are often telling them that that is the right thing to do.”