Doing With, Not To or For

Doing With, Not To Or For

Based on the social discipline window (see Figure 1), the major premise holds that people benefit most when things are done with them rather than something being done to them. Wachtel (2013) stated: “human beings are happier, more cooperative and productive and more likely to make positive changes in their behavior when those in positions of authority do things with them, rather than to them or for them” (p. 3).

Figure 1.

The social discipline window. Adapted from “The Effectiveness of a Prison and Parole System,” by D. Glaser, 1964, Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.

Incorporating the model of doing things with students rather than to students, in conjunction with providing high levels of support for a student while ensuring accountability on the part of a student, is the canon of restorative practices within a school culture. Restorative practices can become embedded within a school climate, as students, counselors, teachers, administrators and staff engage in restorative dialogue and model behaviors that emphasize the principles of restorative justice (McCluskey, 2018). With a central focus on respect, reparation of a harmful situation, acknowledgement of ownership of a person’s actions, and how that action may have affected the school community comprise the components of every interaction for schools that have adopted a restorative model. At SLK Wright Academy, an alternative, fully restorative school serving both middle and high school students, the restorative coordinator (similar to the role of a school principal), Susan stated: “Restorative practices are everywhere, it’s in the classrooms, it’s during lunch, it’s in the hallways . . . it’s a way of being” (5.23.13).

Working together with students to empower them to make a positive change within themselves underlies the use of restorative practices, from the time the students enter school and begin their day with an opening circle, to lunchtime as they gather as a school community, to the time they leave school. For schools that have implemented restorative practices, the expectations are for students and staff to work together (Hulvershorn & Mulholland, 2018; Kehoe et al., 2018; McCluskey, 2018; Reimer, 2018). Through the use of restorative practices, a school community aims to transform a person’s behavior through the social and emotional development of the individual student and through the encouragement of self-reflection, respectful dialogue through the use of restorative circles and the modeling of positive behaviors by staff and students (Hulvershorn & Mulholland, 2018). Students become co-contributors to the dialogue (Freire, 1970) at a school and learn to take an active role in ensuring their school functions as a cohesive and healthy community. Students become invested in the wellbeing of the school itself. Lilian, a teacher at SLK Wright Academy, said:

In teaching, I think restorative practices fills an area that school systems are starting to realize needs to be filled, which is personal responsibility and taking a step back from what the student is doing and what’s happening in the environment and saying “Okay, let’s work on this together.” And I know the social discipline window is a really big thing . . . whenever I do restorative anything, I can’t get out of the word “with,” because it’s so important. Because if you do something to somebody or for somebody, you are not teaching them anything. It’s kind of like if you teach, if you give a man a fish he can eat for one day, but if you teach a man to fish (you do something with somebody) he’s going to be able to use it the rest of his life. So, as a teacher, that’s kind of your goal is to teach a student how to do something so they can move on from you and successfully do that over and over again. So they can apply it to their real life situations. And so restorative practices I think, builds on the basic fundamentals of teaching. You have to do something with somebody so they understand how to do it and they gain a mastery of the subject. So, it is not teaching in the sense that it is like a core subject, but it is teaching kind of core humanity. (3.27.14)