On April 12, 2024, the Loyola Center on Education Law & Policy, in partnership with Illinois Disciplinary Equity Project and Forest Zafran Consulting hosted numerous educators, administrators, and attorneys for the Restorative Practices in Schools: Where are We Now? Symposium. The event featured administrators from various schools throughout the Chicagoland area discussing how their schools implement restorative practices to foster student success.
In the morning, Heather Cullnan and Allison Fish from Hinsdale Central High School presented their “Student Success Center.” The focus of the Student Success Center was to provide a support system that empowers students to return to the classroom with success. Some of these supports include improving executive functioning skills, providing a space to catch up on work from long-term absences, or easing the return to school from injuries such as concussions. Then, Melissa Zientara, Daniel Hoskin, Bryan Rome, and Claudia Lopez from Highland Park High School talked about how they implement their Tier 3 MTSS Intervention program to facilitate healing communities for students experiencing trauma and other situations. This lively presentation gave practical examples of how their school promotes co-regulations using restorative interventions.
Lynn Morton from KL Morton Enterprise, Presenting on Plugging into the Power of Parents
Sandra Franco and Pamela Fenning from Loyola’s School of Education spoke about the 4 stages of implementation science and addressed key questions to ask before proceeding to the next stage. The presentation gave an overview of the exploration, installation, initial implementation, and full implementation stages and how schools can work with their teams to identify the issues and evaluate the progress of their restorative practices program. Much discussion was centered around the importance of buy-in amongst the administration and staff to successfully evaluate and implement an effective program.
Participants engaging in discussion.
In the afternoon, Ilana Zafran Walden from Forest Zafran Consulting discussed embedding restorative practices within a school’s systems and structures. This presentation discussed the importance of auditing the school’s programs and reflecting on how to embed restorative practices with them. Ilana took the group through a sample auditing practice where she focused on auditing a program based on the school’s current assets and individual needs. From there, the school is better able to identify and prioritize which procedures and policies need to be implemented immediately and which ones need more time. Finally, Ilana emphasized how staff and administration needs to be trained before being asked to implement these new policies to foster complete buy-in.
The symposium ended with Amanda Turley from BeMindful Chicago talking about her experience providing teacher counseling at Lincoln Park High School. In an era where teacher burnout is prevalent, Amanda talked about the importance of providing restorative practices to teachers, as well as students. She discussed how she facilitates weekly support groups for faculty, works on emotion regulation and peace circles for content departments to further embed restorative approaches in the school.
Brenton Villasenor is a law student at Loyola University of Chicago Law School and wrote this blog post as part of the Education Law and Policy Course.
