restorative justice

Creative discipline helps states meet ESSA performance targets

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A middle school in Texas takes an unconventional approach to dealing with theft that might help other schools improve school climate and outcomes for students.

NEA Today spoke with William Sheets, Restorative Practices Coordinator for the Dallas Independent School District, to learn more about restorative practices and hear how the district has moved forward with their implementation.  Sheets says that restorative practices are fundamentally about “being proactive in the classroom, investing time into your students and really listening to them.” Ideally, this serves to improve school culture and better support those students who may be facing challenges.

Under the umbrella of restorative practices, schools seek to avoid suspending students who have broken school rules, unless a major infraction has been committed, and instead will use community-building exercises to restore justice and address any harm caused.

The process relies on “classroom circling” to both build a culture where issues can be truly addressed in this manner and, in some cases, to solve incidents in real time. Classroom circling plays out very similarly to how it sounds: all students in a class gather in a circle to discuss what might have happened and each participant is guaranteed a chance to speak.

NEA Today adds that, “At Medrano Middle School, there are planned circles at least once every six weeks for relationship building, but more will take place when an issue needs to be addressed. In relationship building circles, kids are asked a variety of questions, about favorite music or movies, for example, or what what they’d like to see changed at school.”

The district is piloting restorative practices in six elementary and middle schools, and based on the positive preliminary results, they plan to expand to more schools in the future. In-school suspensions dropped by 70%, and out-of-school suspensions plummeted by 77%.

No teacher in any of the pilot schools is required to adopt the practices in their classroom. However, as teachers witnessed the effectiveness of this relational approach, they have opted to participate. It seems that as educators saw how the process could address the root cause of student misbehavior instead of only providing short-term consequences, they decided it was worth incorporating

Now schools around the nation are looking for practices like this that can improve school climate and drive student outcomes required by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

Dallas is just one district of many across the country who are adopting restorative practices, and this could be a key step to meeting school climate goals laid out in the state’s ESSA plans.

Practices like the ones in Dallas are promising because of the ways that they help students take responsibility for their actions. This is critical, argues Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture founder James Davison Hunter in The Death of Character, because “character implies the moral autonomy of the individual in his or her capacity to freely make ethical decisions.” If you suspend a student for theft, you have punished, but you haven’t called on them to make take responsible action to repair the harm. Hunter explains that “controlled behavior cannot be moral behavior for it removes the element of discretion and judgment.”

Establishing moral autonomy for teachers and students in schools is hard, slow work where suspension is the default action for moral transgression. Duke Law offers schools a framework of alternative strategies that can establish the kind of culture where students take responsibility for their actions in the classroom, and in life.

High school teaches social emotional skills

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Hinsdale High School District 86 in Illinois is showing high-schoolers how to identify and measure their emotions, in hopes that the social and emotional skills can help them balance life and focus in school.  The district recently adopted the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence’s “RULER” approach—an acronym that stands for recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions.

Yale officials held a workshop with Hinsdale South High School staff at the beginning of the school year, and planned social and emotional learning is now required as part of physical education for all freshmen, the Chicago Tribune reports.

A key to the program is a “mood meter” to help students better identify their emotional state.

According to the Tribune:

The upper right quadrant is yellow and describes when someone is energetic and in a good mood. The lower right quadrant is green and with words such as tranquil, content, chill and secure, describes when someone is feeling good, but not very energetic.

The lower left quadrant is blue, representing when someone is disgusted, alienated, disappointed, bored or ashamed. The upper left quadrant is red, with words such as furious, frustrated, shocked, nervous and annoyed, describing someone who is feeling both unpleasant and high energy.

Teachers of all subjects are receiving training, and are incorporating social and emotional skills into other daily lessons, as well.

Math teacher Gina Gagliano, for example, offers extra credit to students who use the mood meter phone app to record their mood at three different times throughout the day for about two months, and analyze patterns.

Both students and teachers were skeptical about the lessons at first, but several students said they learned more about themselves than they expected.  “At first I thought it was kind of dumb,” freshman Lilly O’Donnell told the Tribune. “I thought, ‘I don’t want to talk about my feelings.’ But I learned ways you could deal with your emotions.”

Fellow freshman Nola Colakovic agreed.  “I didn’t think we really needed it,” she said. “I thought I knew how to handle what I was feeling. But as it went on, I learned there were better ways.” Instead of getting sassy when she’s annoyed, Colakovic said she’s learned to take a moment to think before she reacts.  “That actually helped,” she said.

Hinsdale’s focus on social-emotional learning underscores the reality that schools are formative institutions, with a mission that extends far beyond academics.

James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson, with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, write in The Content of Their Character:

Human beings, after all, are not merely cerebral, but sentient; not merely rational, but feeling—and beyond the intellectual and emotional, they are social and normative beings, too.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues helps teachers and students with those questions through building compassion for others. By connecting emotions, choices, and actions, the Jubilee Centre materials push students beyond skills and toward the virtue of compassion.

Panel features students who evaded school-to-prison pipeline

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Michigan students are speaking out about school discipline policies that tainted their view of education, and how adults in the system helped steer them away from the “school-to-prison” pipeline.

In February, Michigan State Rep. Adam Zemke, from Ann Arbor, hosted a town hall meeting at Forsythe Middle School that featured a “School To Prison Pipeline” student panel with several students who turned their lives around after disciplinary problems in middle school, MLive reports.

Jakobie Pillar, a 17-year-old junior at Ypsilanti’s alternative high school, discussed how regular suspensions for fighting in middle school convinced him school wasn’t his thing, and he resolved to follow after his older brothers who never finished high school—one of whom is now incarcerated.

Pioneer High School senior Marquaun Kane, also 17, shared a similar story, about moving to Ann Arbor from Ypsilanti after repeated suspensions for fighting. His brother, who also faced disciplinary issues, stayed behind in Ypsilanti schools and eventually dropped out after an expulsion in 7th grade to join a gang.

“For Kane and Pillar, the school-to-prison pipeline is more than an abstract concept about the link between getting suspended or expelled from school and the likelihood of engaging in criminal activity,” MLive reports. “It’s a reality their brothers faced, and a path they followed too until someone gave them the motivation and support to find a different way.”

The panel discussion also featured two other students—Pioneer senior Henry Taylor and Lincoln High School Senior Max McNally—as well as Anell Eccleston, an advocate with the Student Advocacy Center.

Pillar met Eccleston as an 8th-grader in Ypsilanti’s alternative middle school program, and she convinced him to join a social justice group she facilitates called Youth Action Michigan. The experience showed him how to share his experiences in a constructive way, and to take ownership over his own learning, he said.

Eccleston and the students on the panel also discussed the state’s new “rethink school discipline” laws, and how a shift away from “zero tolerance” toward “restorative practices” could keep more kids engaged in school.

The new laws encourage schools to focus on repairing harm caused by students through discussions and alternative methods like community service, and to take “circumstantial factors,” including age, discipline history, and disabilities, into account when determining punishments. The idea is to keep students at school, rather than resort to automatic suspensions or expulsions for certain offenses, though mandatory punishments for guns at school and other serious crimes remain in place.

Kane, who now works as a certified restorative justice practitioner at the Dispute Resolution Center, pointed to evidence that students who disengage from school after repeated suspensions or expulsion are far more likely to engage in criminal activity.

“If we’re suspending students and we’re sending them back home, which is likely the origin of their angst and where all this conflict happens, are they really doing better? Are they faring better at all?” he questioned. “You’re taking them from an area where you have all these individuals with all these degrees and all these resources —counseling, mentoringship, educational services—compared to what we have at home.”

Eccleston believes “the solution is simple but it’s very difficult.”

“It’s all about relationships,” she said. “If a teacher sees a student who is struggling and they’re able to build a relationship with that student, that can alleviate a lot of that stress.”

Eccleston’s insight into what’s working in Ypsilanti resonates with the research findings from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, which fielded the School Cultures and Student Formation Project.

According to the findings, published in The Content of Their Character:

What these case studies also consistently show is the importance of the informal articulation of a moral culture through the example of teachers and other adults in the school community. The moral example of teachers unquestionably complemented the formal instruction students received, but arguably, it was far more poignant to, and influential upon, the students themselves.

And while Eccleston points out that this work can be “very difficult,” particularly with students who have a history of bad behavior, the new restorative approach in Michigan and other states is likely a key to diverting youngsters from a path to prison.

Pillar, Kane, and their fellow panelists are now engaged in their communities, helping others to understand how exclusionary discipline can set young people—like their siblings—on the path to prison, and how learning to take responsibility for their choices and learning can benefit the whole community.

Duke Law is among a host of institutions that offer resources to educators looking for alternatives to suspension that can help students take responsibility for their actions.

Safety and security chief changes culture in Chicago schools

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Chicago Public Schools Chief Safety and Security Officer Jadine Chou is steering the district toward a different style of student discipline—one built on a dynamic of positive adult interventions.

CPS is home to many schools in neighborhoods rife with poverty, crime, and gang violence, and Chou is tackling that influence across the district every day, though not in the ways some might expect.

“If we know that a climate is rough at a school, it does no good to bury our heads in the sand,” she said. Instead, Chou provides a solution.

OZY described how the chief safety officer responded to a southwest-side Chicago school after students pulled fire alarms for four consecutive days. When she arrived the next day, the alarm went off again, and she attempted to stop three male students who rushed past her in the melee, though they ignored the short, 50-something Chinese-American woman.

OZY reports:

She yelled after them, “I will find out who you are! I promise you.”

And she did, but she wasn’t after them. “Bring me the leader of their group — the one those boys look up to,” she told the school’s security officer.

Soon after, Chou was sitting across from the student, a young male. “I’m not here to accuse you,” she said. “You’re not in trouble, but I’d like to make you a deal. You make this stop, and I’ll find you a job.”

The fire alarms weren’t pulled for the rest of the school year.

Chou told the news site she’s worked to create a different dynamic in the district of roughly 370,000 students since she took over school safety in 2011.

“When I started six years ago, the Office of Safety and Security played much more of a role related to enforcement of rules,” she said. “Enforcement has a connotation of punitive consequences.”

Instead, Chou has worked with the Chicago-based group Umoja to train the district’s 1,300 security officers in restorative justice, de-escalation techniques, and racism reduction as part of a program designed specifically for CPS.

“What Jadine has been doing is really changing the orientation of the safety and security staff in the school to move away from catching kids doing bad things to being a positive adult in these young people’s lives,” Roseanna Ander, executive director of the University of Chicago’s Crime and Education Lab, told OZY.

Chou said the training and new focus has helped officers better relate to students. One training technique, for example, tasks officers with recalling their own struggles as children, and the positive adult role-models that helped them through it.

“Many of the officers shared very personal stories about the trauma they experienced and how thanks to one caring adult, they were able to make it through,” she said.

School safety officers are often overlooked in what James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson call the “moral ecology” of a school community, despite the crucial role they can play as positive adult influences in the lives of young people.

In The Content of Their Character, a summary of research from Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture’s School Cultures and Student Formation Project, editors Hunter and Olson write, “What these case studies [in high schools across the United States] . . . consistently show is the importance of the informal articulation of a moral culture through the example of teachers and other adults in the school community.”

In Chicago, Chou contends that the restorative justice approach, coupled with a “Safe Passage” program to help students navigate violent neighborhoods to get to school, has drastically improved student safety. In the last year alone, Chou contends student victimization has dropped by 53%.

Educators interested in learning more about the restorative justice approach can look to Lighthouse Academies, which offers a case for restorative action in Gary, Indiana.

How one school is fighting school violence with culture

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Mitchell Elementary School Principal Stephanie Andrewlevich is betting on her students, and if she wins, she could be out $3,300.

Mitchell is located in one of Philadelphia’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods, and school officials have struggled to address rampant fighting and dismal academics for years. Just halfway into the 2015–16 school year, nearly a quarter of the school’s 8th-graders had been suspended, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

But there’s a different dynamic this year, and it started with a challenge Andrewlevich issued to 33 8th-graders: If all make it through the school year without a physical altercation, she’ll pay each student $100. The principal is shopping for sponsors for the initiative, but told The Inquirer she’s prepared to cover the cost out of her own pocket, if need be.

Earlier this month, students hit a milestone—70 days of peace—and it’s creating a more tranquil school culture that’s trickling down to lower grades, Andrewlevich said.

“I wanted to challenge them to be what their families see in them, what we know they are,” the principal said. “They have a choice—to become the violence they see in their day-to-day lives, or to be peaceful models for our school and our community.”

At first, students were motivated by the money—“they’d tell each other, ‘Don’t mess up my $100,’” Andrewlevich said—but the initiative eventually evolved into something bigger.

The Inquirer reports:

There are daily reminders: It’s day 50! It’s day 63! There’s a buzz in the building, a movement. Eighth graders conduct peer-mediation sessions with younger students, and the school will soon open its “Peaceful Place,” a room for students to cool down and practice conflict-resolution techniques.

Violence is down, school-wide, but the eighth graders especially have shown remarkable progress. In Andrewlevich’s first year at the school, students ended up at the police station for mediation multiple times, she said. So far this year, only 8 percent of the eighth-graders have been suspended. That’s down from 17 percent at the same point last year and 21 percent in 2016.

Student Zakaiya Barnes-Wiggins said last school year she “was always trying to fight somebody,” but things have changed. “ . . . Now, I don’t use my hands. I talk about it,” she said. “And it’s way better this way—our teachers can teach more.” Students haven’t forgotten about the cash prize, “but mostly, we just don’t want to fight anymore,” Barnes-Wiggins said.

Andrewlevich is leading a change in what the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture’s James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson describe as the “moral ecology” of a school.

In The Content of Their Character, a summary of research into character formation in a wide variety of schools, editors Hunter and Olson write that “Schools constitute their own moral ecosystems and are sites that advance their own particular views about human life and the just society.”

Hunter and Olson point out that, “Character is invariably formed in these moral ecologies and is reflective of them.”

While some fault Andrewlevich for “bribing” students to behave, the principal sees it a different way. She believes that these students can be peaceful—not only refraining from fighting, but mediating the conflicts of others. She believes it so strongly she put her own money on the line.

Now students are beginning to believe it, too.

Society “thinks of us as fighters, people who can’t control themselves,” 8th-grader Victoria Smith told The Inquirer. “But we’re different from that. I believe in my classmates—this is making us better.”

Building a culture where reconciliation rather than violence is normal takes hard work. The International Institute for Restorative Practices offers resources for teachers and administrators to “build social capital and achieve social discipline through participatory learning and decision making.”

In Philly middle schools, students are judge, jury, and advocate

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At two middle schools in Upper Darby, PA, students in an elective youth court class hear cases of student misconduct and issue dispositions that their classmates must fulfill. Administrators, parents—and even offending students—are embracing the youth court.

A 7th-grade student, Imani, was referred to the court for stealing from the cafeteria, which could have resulted in suspension if it wasn’t for the student court. The principals of the middle schools who now embrace the youth court “admitted they have previously been hard-wired to issue a suspension for offenses” according to the Daily Times News. In the student court, by contrast, there are three rounds of questioning: first to establish facts, second to define the harm, and third to identify how to redress the harm.

In this case, when Imani’s peer court heard her case, they issued a disposition requiring her to help with a service project at the school on Martin Luther King Jr. Day putting together care packages for people in need. “Imani and I now have a better relationship because she feels like I gave her an opportunity instead of suspending her,” said her principal Frank Salerno. “She was an all-star here helping [on MLK Day].”

Salerno explained, “While it’s not a get out of jail free card, it is going to be uncomfortable by design, but it’s really an opportunity to fix what you’ve done.”

The student courts in Upper Darby are an important part of what James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson call the “moral ecology” of a school community in The Content of Their Character, a summary of research findings in how school cultures shape character and citizenship development in American secondary schools from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. They write, “Schools constitute their own moral ecosystems and are sites that advance their own particular views about human life and the just society.” Schools are not alone in this work. “When social institutions—whether the family, peer relationships, youth organizations, the internet, religious congregations, entertainment, or popular culture—cluster together, they form a larger ecosystem of powerful cultural influences.”

Student courts play a powerful role in establishing the “just society” within a school community—and beyond. Frank Salerno said that the ripple effect extends to the families of offenders. He said they’ve had unanimous support from parents of students referred to the youth court, “almost to the point where parents have asked, ‘Can I come? This sounds like a great idea.'”

A youth court is one of the many practices that shape the moral ecology of a school. There are youth court resources and associations that vary state-by-state to help school leaders design, implement, and sustain this important practice.

Counselor of the Year understands her students deeply

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Kristen Perry is the school counselor at Lawndale Community Academy in Chicago, a pre-K through 8th-grade school that, in 2015, earned the lowest possible ranking in the district.  Through extraordinary dedication and service, she won the 2018 Counselor of the Year award.

The Counselor of the Year award is given by the American School Counselor Association. The award, according to the organization’s website, “honors professionals who devote their careers to advocating for the nation’s students and addressing their academic and social/emotional development.”

Perry connects with students at a deep level. In an interview with The College Board, she explains: “I was a troubled youth. I got into substance abuse at a young age . . . [and] got pregnant at the age of 18.”

Perry’s career as a counselor is only six years old, but she is clearly already having an outstanding impact. Willard Willette, Lawndale’s principal, said that her work has been an important factor in the school’s gains over the past several years.

Unceasing energy and persistence are hallmarks of Perry’s work, but they aren’t the only reason she was selected for the award. After all, educators everywhere are working tirelessly on behalf of children.

At Lawndale, she focused on implementing a variety of practices associated with restorative justice. This included the creation of “peace circles,” for students to learn to communicate and resolve conflict. She also brought police officers in to connect with students around topics that are important to their community.

The central tenet of restorative justice, a movement that seeks to provide an alternative route to traditional criminal justice practices, is that all stakeholders involved with a crime—the accused and victim alike—participate in a collaborative process to repair the harm caused.

In recent years it has gained traction in schools as leaders have searched for innovative ways to address misbehavior, as opposed to issuing traditional out-of-school suspensions. Perry’s efforts to bring these practices to Lawndale assuredly helped strengthen bonds between students as they practiced the essential virtue of forgiveness.

According to The Chicago Tribune, student Kyla Evans said of Perry, “I would get in a lot of fights, too. Ms. Perry helped us to work on ourselves.”

The state of IL offers guidance for educators who are attempting this long and difficult work. It is undoubtedly a challenge, but helping students to work on themselves as people is work that will pay dividends for years to come.

School counselors can play a critical role in strengthening what the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture‘s James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson, call the “moral ecology” of a community in The Content of Their Character. They write, “the environments that children grow up in and, thus, the variety of moral influences that shape them, are astonishingly diverse and . . . have enormous bearing on how children develop morally.”

When Perry invited police officers to speak to students about jail, gun laws, and community relations, she was building trust and strengthening the moral ecology. In a place where despair can feel natural, Evans says of Ms. Perry, “She makes all the kids at Lawndale feel loved and like we can do anything we dream of.”

Student behavior makes teaching harder than ever

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Hilderbrand Pelzer III once taught in a juvenile detention center. Now, as a principal, he says that student behavior in Philadelphia schools makes teaching harder than ever.

Pelzer quotes the principal of the Bensalem Youth Development Center School where he once worked: “It only takes one student to destroy and demoralize the learning environment.” In Philadelphia, officials estimate that more than half of all students have experienced a major traumatic event, according to the Philadelphia Citizen. With that many student needs, building and sustaining a thriving school climate can be a herculean effort.

Pelzer cites the Child Mind Institute, which says that about 10% of the school population nationally struggles with mental health problems. But only about one in three teachers think they have the skills to handle mental health issues.

Last year a group of teachers in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s state capital, shared stories of getting beaten up by students as young as six. Forty-five teachers resigned between July and October, 2017.

Pelzer writes: “A recent study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Consortium for Policy Research in Education found that teachers overwhelmingly think that suspensions helped them manage their classrooms.” In some schools, truancy has risen with the abolition of suspensions for minor infractions, and academic success among students not previously suspended has declined.

UCLA sociologist Jeffrey Guhin has observed similar patterns in urban public schools around the United States, though teachers are doing their best to connect with students and address the underlying issues.  He writes in the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture book The Content of Their Character that “there were often heroic commitments by teachers to show compassion to their students and to model such a compassionate life as a meaningful way to live.” Indeed, Pelzer and many others continue to make those heroic commitments, setting an example for their students.

In Pelzer’s school, “distressed students struggle to follow basic instructions, and have difficulty focusing their attention on organizing, planning and completing tasks.” The burden falls on teachers, he says. “At my school, I’ve had parents tell me with relief as they drop off their children that it’s up to us to manage them for the day.”

Pelzer concludes: “It is increasingly clear that if we want more progressive disciplinary methods, we need one or both of two things: More in-school professional help, which can be costly, or better training.”

The International Institute for Restorative Practices addresses the training need through its degree, continuing education, and professional development offerings. There are no quick fixes, which makes the heroic perseverance of Pelzer and his colleagues all the more impressive.

District fights violence with conversation

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In Burien, Washington, elementary students begin their day with greetings, handshakes, eye contact, and polite questions. This activity is a cornerstone of the district’s impressive record of reducing discipline referrals—down 43% from 2014 to 2016—and suspensions and expulsions—down 70% in the same period.

But although the disciplinary overhaul at Highline Public Schools—a racially diverse district south of Seattle—has drawn praise, it has triggered criticism from teachers who worry that they weren’t trained adequately in alternative approaches to discipline. Teacher turnover has jumped, according to the Hechinger Report.

Some teachers say the changes happened too quickly and that classroom discipline has suffered. A high school special education teacher reported that students became more disrespectful after the threat of out-of-school suspensions diminished. And in-school suspensions rose dramatically as the number of students being sent home shrank.

Discipline is one of the most vexing issues for administrators. Schools often fail to initiate the teachers through formative practices, according to the Hechinger Report. At Highline, the district didn’t provide much guidance for how newly hired re-engagement specialists were expected to run their classrooms for students suspended in-school. Even where there is broad agreement among faculty and administration that a school or district needs a better formative culture, building that culture is slow and hard work.

This seems to be a challenge across urban, suburban, and rural contexts. In a chapter of The Content of their Character, a forthcoming publication from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, field researcher Richard Fournier observed: “Fragmentation also existed in the moral messaging between teachers and students, primarily as a result of the refusal or inability of school cultures to agree on deep, specific ethical and moral guidelines on serious social or academic issues that students encountered.”

At Highline, the district has committed to building a strong school culture.  The superintendent acknowledges missteps but is committed to staying the course—for the good of teachers and students.

Administrators who want to lead that sort of cultural change in a district or school are not without resources. The state of Illinois has published guidelines for implementing restorative justice in schools, and the International Institute for Restorative Practices offers graduate degrees, continuing education, and licensing opportunities.

Jewish college partners with public schools to prevent violence

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After a fight at a Philadelphia area high school left eight teachers injured and four students arrested, the dean of a nearby Jewish college approached the local school board with a plan to work with younger pupils in community building and relationship skills.

The Jewish Exponent reported that the early morning fight at Cheltenham High School in May 2017 began between two female students and quickly escalated when two more girls jumped in with punches.

Rosalie Gurofsky, Gratz College dean and vice president of academic affairs, offered Cheltenham District Superintendent Wagner Marseille a proactive plan, using restorative justice practices aimed at getting to the root of violent outbreaks. Because the college offers a master’s program in safe schools, Gurofsky also pitched the idea to other Gratz faculty members. Ultimately, it was decided to start the training at the lower grade levels. In October 2017, a customized program of four contracted workshops for 5th- and 6th-graders began at nearby Elkins Park School.

Gratz now is training teachers, as Gurofsky says, as “a natural extension of the Jewish identity of Gratz.”

The School Cultures and Student Formation Project at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture investigated the particularities of distinctive schools—and Jewish schools were among those unique schools. Was it possible that their unique and strong moral sources could equip them to strengthen a community—rather than splinter it along religious, ethnic, or class lines? Dr. Jack Wertheimer, the lead researcher of Jewish day schools writes in The Content of Their Character: “For all their distinctives, Jewish day high schools share a good deal in common with their public and private school counterparts when they address matters of private virtue.”

In the case of Gratz, it is the combination of a unique Jewish identity and broad commonality with the public schools that catalyzed this partnership. Such collaborations underscore the vital role that distinctive institutions—religious, civic, and educational—play in forming character.

That partnership is helping teachers on the frontlines of forming school culture. At Elkins Park School, “more than 86 percent of the teachers surveyed rated the training highly impactful to their classrooms.” With sustained effort, the district trusts that this hard work in the earlier grades will shape the skills and dispositions of students before they reach the pressures of high school.

To learn more about how to use classroom circles—as the Elkins Park School teachers are learning—the Open Society Institute in Baltimore offers this guide.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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