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- Welcome, I am so happy that you came today.
You're going to experience a circle.
Now, when I say experience,
that means there's nobody taking notes.
You don't have to do any of that.
You're going to be the notes so when we're done with this,
you'll have an idea of what this is all about.
Before I begin, I'd like to give you a brief history
about restorative discipline practices.
It just didn't come to the map today, it came a while ago.
In 1958, this is abbreviated, remember, abbreviated, short.
I could have added much, much more but I didn't,
so in 1958, a man by the name of Albert Eglash
coined the term restorative justice.
As we move through the century, the decades,
we have in 1970 and 1980s
Howard Zehr, Ron Claassen, and Mark Umbreit
began the victim-offender mediatiation in the United States.
In 1988, the University of Minnesota
opened up a center for peace.
In 1990s into the 2000s,
the expression restorative justice took off.
It became so popular and widespread
everyone was talking about it.
A woman by the name of Kay Pranis,
whom I have a lot of books down there
that she has co-authored,
she is known as the Queen or the Mother of Circles.
This is her thing.
Kay Pranis, in 1996, implemented circles with adults,
juvenile justice systems, social workers,
school social workers, work places, neighborhoods,
mediation programs, churches, and families.
As you can see,
this is something or two that can be used anywhere,
and I'll tell you a few funny stories of when I began
and you'll be cracking up because I tried it on my family.
Bad idea.
Anyway, (laughing)
anyway, in 2000 to 2008, the restorative justice movement
attracts segments of society, including police officers,
judges, school teachers, politicians,
juvenile justice agencies like DAEP,
victim support groups, and Aborigine elders.
The University of Texas also, in 2008,
opened up the Restorative Justice Dialogue Institute.
That came out of Ed White Middle School in San Antonio.
They began using circles to reduce
the number of discipline referrals.
They knew they were on to something.
They weren't the only one in the state that did it,
but because the University of Texas took them on
to coddify their process and get all their data together
so somebody could see what happened,
they found that they dropped their referrals
by 30% the first year.
So that means if he dropped a pencil,
you didn't automatically say get out.
There was another method to do that,
because most of the referrals as you know
come from small things.
He says that when they went to Ed White they decided
that it was really a good idea to continue
and they started with one grade level, the next grade level,
after three years all of them were involved.
So I was very happy to know that they did
drop the discipline referrals,
and it gives teachers another opportunity
to find another way to engage with students,
and so this process is
what you're going to be learning today.
In addition to that, Robert Rico,
the University of Texas in San Antonio,
was the one who talked to the principle's wife
because she was in his class,
and so she brought it to her husband at Ed White,
and Ed White took it on, and after that,
Robert said you might want to get all of this coddified
so the University of Texas in Austin coddified their process
and that's how it took off,
and I'm gonna tell you another person's name,
and some of you may know him, Jim Welsh?
He's a special education attorney, big name,
and guess what he did?
He wrote an op-ed piece about restorative,
and soon as he wrote it, (snaps)
it went like fire,
and now everybody wants to know how to do it, so.
In 2014, 2015, Texas Education Agency decided to partner
with the University of Texas,
and decided to roll this out statewide
through the service centers.
We have someone from the service center here today,
and she's aware of it as well,
and so those 20 service centers,
we do an administrative training for two days,
and we teach them this process,
much more information of course,
and then there's a coordinator trained for five days,
and that five day training goes into deeper relationships,
deeper information around how do you get parents
to the place where they're good with everything,
so just wanted to give you that quick little history
so you know where it came from.
It just didn't pop up here.
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