restorative practice

The Pressure to Punish

/ Julie Nariman / 2 Comments

Snowing in the Bronx

Right before winter break started, a teacher approached me, visibly upset. A student had sent him an email saying, “I hate you” and wishing the teacher a “horrible” winter break, among some other unkind things.

What had preceded this email? The teacher explained that he had called the student’s parents in for a meeting regarding the student’s behavior. Afterwards, the student had sent the angry email to the teacher. (On a positive note, the email was clearly written and formatted correctly, a “modern skill” we now teach in our English classes.)

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After a fight

/ Julie Nariman / 5 Comments
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Student tracing a sketch in art class.

This week, two girls had a fight in the cafeteria.  We found that it had been instigated by other students, and stemmed from unkind posts on social media.

The issue for me wasn’t the fight; we quickly broke up the fight and held a mediation between the students involved that was successful.  The issue was that a large number of our 9th and 10th-grade students cheered on the fight.

Earlier in the year, we had spoken to our students about integrity and how it relates to not encouraging a fight.  I was disappointed that the students had cheered on the fight until a friend reminded me of “rubbernecking” in traffic: “That’s just what people do.  Remember how in traffic, people slow down when there’s a car accident because they want to see the accident.   It’s not always because they actually need to slow down, it’s just that human curiosity.” Continue reading →