This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 89 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode, we're going to look at how restorative justice works in school,

why it can have a big impact on student behavior, and how you can get started.

I usually record these episodes well in advance of the day that they are published.

And so my original intro to this episode was already done before we had our most recent school shooting in the US here in Parkland, Florida.

So I am recording this extra intro the morning of February 18th because I felt like I didn't want to release the episode without at least mentioning the school shooting and trying to put this episode in context.

I had this episode planned weeks and weeks ago, so obviously I didn't know what was going to be happening in the days leading up to today.

So I feel like so many of us educators, parents, just regular citizens, we are really at a loss at this point for figuring out how to prevent these things from happening.

And everyone has opinions and those opinions are super polarized.

So I don't really want to talk right now about the whole gun issue.

I don't feel informed enough about how all of these things work, but I do feel like one piece of making this problem stop has to do with the way that we build relationships.

And address problems in our schools.

And something like restorative justice is a different approach to the way that we typically handle wrongdoing in our schools.

And when I say wrongdoing, I'm not talking about something as extreme or severe as a school shooting.

I don't even know yet what I think about how restorative justice fits into addressing a problem like this after it's already happened, but I do feel like implementing something like restorative practices in your school in a holistic way could go a long way toward preventing something like this from happening because it focuses so much on knowing your kids on the community.

Knowing your kids and on you know teachers really building those relationships between students and between teachers and students.

I feel like and again, I don't feel like I have any answers to this myself, but this seems to be something that could be a part of a solution.

Because it seems like a school that is doing a really good job of implementing restorative practices would notice if a child was feeling so marginalized or even demonstrating the signs of a person who was maybe about to do something like this.

Because it emphasizes so much building those connections and maintaining them.

So this is already a long episode. I'm going to stop for now, but I just I just wanted to sort of put this episode in context and just also not let this date pass without acknowledging the struggle that we're all having right now and the heartbreak that we're all experiencing.

So with that, I'm going to go ahead and play the original intro and just tell you all that I love you and thank you for sticking it out.

And no one would blame you if you decided not to because this is a very scary time. Thanks.

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