Article Summary:   When schools use restorative practices to build relationships and community, students' attitudes change for the better.

In April 2014, students at Warren G. Harding Middle School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had just finished a week of state testing, which they had found very stressful. Like all Harding's teachers, 7th grade language arts teacher Denise James had her students sit in a circle and discuss the purpose of the tests and how they felt about having to take them.

The third girl to speak began to cry, saying, "I know I'm better than what the state says I am. I'm not 'Basic'."

A boy added, "My whole life I've been told I'm 'Below Basic,' and that's the way I felt. But in here, I don't feel like that."

Harding is one of many schools employing restorative practices to build relationships and improve school culture. Circles, like the ones on testing conducted schoolwide at Harding, are one of many elements of restorative practices. From California to Maine, elementary, middle, and high schools in urban, suburban, and rural areas are using these practices, both to build relationships and to decrease incidents of misbehavior, bullying, and violence—and to prevent such problems from occurring in the first place. The International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) Graduate School is helping schools implement the practices.              

"Restorative practice is not a discipline program, but rather a framework for how to approach all relationships in a school building: leadership to staff, staff to staff, staff to students, and student to student," says John Bailie, assistant professor and director of continuing education at the IIRP Graduate School. "The way we handle discipline flows naturally out of the way we approach relationships in general. That's why we train educators in a range of practices, most of which are proactive. Responsive disciplinary practices are simply the natural result of that relational framework."

Schools that come closest to achieving a restorative school culture approach that goal through both strong administrative leadership and the creative efforts of teachers and staff. Warren G. Harding Middle School is one such school. Harding has an enrollment of more than 900 students in grades 6–8. The student body is 55 percent black, 29 percent Hispanic, 11 percent white, 2 percent Asian, and 100 percent economically disadvantaged (School District of Philadelphia, 2014)