Student-led restorative justice work was described by youth and adults as uniquely effective in transforming conflict, growing youth leadership, and building community buy-in—with broad agreement that we need much more of this. We heard many amazing examples of youth leading restorative justice via community-building circles and town halls, response to harm processes (circles, mediations), training youth and adults in restorative justice, and more. Participants also shared many examples of youth taking initiative to restoratively address personal conflicts with friends and family, and harm in the school community. These moments of organic youth leadership were seen as the best indication that restorative justice was ‘working,’ with a transformational impact for young people and their communities, within and beyond the school walls. Critically, youth-led restorative justice was seen as having ripple effects, building trust and buy-in with other students that was not always possible with adult-led restorative work.
Read More...At the same time, staff, students, and parents spoke about the critical role of adult support for youth taking on leadership roles, including providing training and being readily available if students want guidance. A. Geis spoke about wanting to learn from teachers’ experience and collaborate in restorative justice: “work together, share perspectives, share ideas, and then come to a conclusion.” Meaningful youth leadership in restorative justice demands that adults strike a careful balance of providing support and stepping back, guarding against tokenistic or superficial student involvement (see Democratize Schools for more.)
Youth and adult participants also spoke about creating broad cultures of respect for student views and their role in shaping school communities; as Honey put it, “uplift, amplify, and listen to those voices.” This must include young people whose needs have not been met by school, including students who have been impacted by the school-to-prison pipeline. Greater youth input and decision-making throughout school life was seen as enhancing student feelings of safety and agency. For example, we heard about the success of students developing community norms, or co-creating school policies with staff to address emerging issues, like cell phone use in school. Mike W. reflected on the noticeable shift when he and other student leaders took over hosting town halls from the adults, with “the students telling the teachers what they need, which was very… different compared to [earlier town halls] when it would just be the teachers talking our ears off.”
Restorative and democratic approaches should also be embedded in academics; as CV put it, “Students should have a bigger voice when it comes to their education.” We heard about several practical approaches for making this happen, with staff, students, and parents emphasizing student-led curricula and project-based learning. Goldie H. reflected on how project-based learning impacted her children: “Not only are they learning, but they feel proud of what they’re learning… they talk about what they have to do and they’re motivated to do it.” Others spoke about peer mentorship for academic issues, student feedback on teacher performance, and freedom for students to focus on social justice issues in their coursework.
Listen to Community Voices
Hear from students, parents, and educators about why it’s so important to let youth lead, as we build restorative school cultures.
“I’ve had some circles with my own teachers, kind of one on one I guess, and that would help a lot because they would really listen to me. I would listen to them and we were really just very cooperative and receptive, what we were saying to each other…. The [restorative justice] approach that we did was very, very welcoming but also very, ‘we want everyone to take on this leadership.’ So that outside of this, whether in another school or in a job setting or with your family or your friends, you’ll be able to be mature enough… to be like, ‘okay, we need to sit down and talk about something, because it’s really important.’”
“The times that I have felt like the restorative and transformative justice work that I’ve been a part of have felt most successful, it’s almost exclusively been about young people taking leadership and feeling good about facilitating something, about mediating something, about negotiating power in the school… When we let young people lead… when we step back to allow that. It’s not about letting them, but there is a certain amount of stepping back in a school structure that has to happen in order for young people to lead things… the default systems and structures [don’t do that].”
“Our school definitely promoted students acknowledging and using their own voices to implement change rather than having somebody speak for us… Our school is guiding us to make our own decisions and healthy decisions that we can use after we leave high school. The [student-led Black Lives Matter march we organized] was definitely a way where we could establish our own leadership… It’s important that young people establish their own leadership skills, they know what they’re passionate about, they can speak up for themselves… The topic of race and police brutality and racism is very important….So I just feel like the work that we’ve done, it actually means something.”
[Speaking about being a youth RJ leader in middle school, responding to an incident of unwanted sexual touching] “Nobody wants to involve police or anything because of a child touching another child, like that’s a lot….No one ever knows how to handle those type of situations, but it was very much thrown onto the shoulders of us because we were the youth and they [the adults] wanted the youth to help out the youth… But I think we definitely need the adults, because it was like we had taken the role of these adults… [But] we’re still figuring this out, so that was a little much for you to just dump it on us, and then be like, you got it, you know what to do… It would have been helpful if they [the teachers] were to come in, share their perspective… I think that’s what restorative justice is: when you have the perspective of a teacher who’s experienced different situations that you may have to experience, and you guys work together, share perspectives, share ideas and then come to a conclusion.”
“Every student was expected to lead [a community building circle] at least once before they graduated and so that was scary for some students, but they eventually did it with the support of even their peers. And so… how do you put them in that leadership role with support but also provide them with feedback, right?… I think of that space as a place where we not only built relationships with students but also students with one another. We empowered them [the students]. They were able to use their leadership skills [to lead community building circles]. And it was a space of joy, but also a place where, when there was community-wide harm… we could address it in what I like to think of as a safe environment. Students were like, “Oh man, our school’s really struggling with this, like if there was a fight up the block, away from school, we’ll be like, “What happened yesterday? Let’s have a community discussion.” And students will come up and open up to and even call each other out. So it wasn’t led by the adults right, as like “You did this,” but students were kind of like, “We need to protect our community.””
“We have a lot of student participation in restorative practices. We have a strong peer mediation program and I was thinking specifically of [having] time to infuse students, especially from our peer mentor program, in circles when things have happened. To both provide support for the person who did the harm and the person who was harmed, if they’re both students. And also just these additional layers of people who can participate [in a circle] and say, ‘This is how the community was affected. Also, I can understand where you’re coming from.’”
“[Our lunch-time community-building circles] were exclusively co-facilitated and co-planned by students. It was pretty cool because…instead of the transformative justice work in our school that was student-led being relegated to this tiny group, it gained more visibility and more access points where anyone in the community could participate… And then also folks who were enjoying them or who saw a need…they would approach the organizers and say that they wanted to be involved, like, “Hey, how come y’all don’t do one on this topic or this thing happened, can we do a circle on that?” And that’s how we’d phase more people into the process. It was pretty dope because it was… identifying community members who weren’t as obvious to me.”
Work through Contradictions
Vent Diagrams help us reflect on the challenges, complexities, and contradictions of doing this work, and figure out how we can keep moving forward. Here is one of the big tensions we heard about growing youth leadership in school communities.
Youth want adults to trust them & step back
Youth want adult support & mentorship
Talk with Your Community
What does this look like for you and the people in your life? Use the prompts below to explore ideas about youth leadership with others in your school and communities, laying the groundwork for community understanding and making change. (Check out the Community Conversations Toolkit for downloadable guides for facilitating discussions about this project.)
Explore. What does it mean to you to be a leader? Where do you see leaders in your community?
Share Experiences. Can you think of a time when a decision was made in school that would have been different, had you been a part of the decision making process?
Envision. How do you think a student’s experience in school would change if they had a role in making decisions for their school community? What would change?
Explore. Why is your voice important? What do you want to bring or give to the people around you?
Share Experiences. Can you tell us about a time that you felt like a leader? What were you doing? Who were you leading with?
Envision. Imagine if there were youth in every decision-making space in a community… What do you think would change in your community?
Make It Happen
The young people, educators, and parents we spoke with shared incredible examples of how youth are already leading the way in their schools, as well as visions of the world we must keep fighting for…. This is what restorative justice looks like, when it’s On Our Terms.
Build School Practice.
Here are specific ideas about how school communities can grow student leadership.
- Integrate peer mentorship within the school culture generally and restorative justice specifically, with young people sharing skills, knowledge, and support with other young people (i.e. Peer Group Connection model of older students supporting younger students as they transition into high school).
- Support all students in learning to facilitate community building circles as a routine part of school culture (e.g., in advisory, or classroom discussions), growing leadership skills and relationships among students.
- Train interested students to facilitate restorative circles and provide other forms of support in response to harm, expanding capacity to respond to harm within schools, as well as fostering youth leadership in restorative justice beyond the school community. Some schools have structured these efforts as an elective class or internship.
- Support and compensate staff in facilitating youth leadership development, via advisory or other classes, rather than as responsibilities tacked on to their teaching positions.
April A. (she/her), school staff: I’m an advisor of… an elective for our 12th graders at our school where they facilitate activities with 9th graders once per week. And so we consider this a huge tier one program for our school…. But last year was the first year of [12th grade student leaders who also took the class] when they were 9th graders… That whole year… was, for me, the reflection of our restorative and transformative justice practices really coming to fruition. Because these students were referring to what it was like when they were 9th graders, how important it was to them to have someone like a 12th grader or an upperclassman or just someone who’s on their level, who is practicing these things and these values of restorative and transformative justice. And I see that again starting this year.
Demand Policy Change.
Here are some key policies needed to better support youth leadership in our schools.
- Compensate youth-led restorative justice in schools, via stipends and/or credit-bearing internships.
- Fund and prioritize youth-led restorative justice training and support for other young people (ie: Student Success Center Model), and create opportunities for youth input in training for adults, with compensation via stipends or credit-bearing internships.
- Create citywide youth leadership positions to inform restorative justice and other school policies, with decision-making power and/or voting rights.