Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]
Those who regularly read this blog will know that I am very concerned about children and youth either missing from school or chronically absent. Over-represented among the missing and absent are children and youth from groups that are marginalized.
There are many out-of-school factors that contribute to chronic absenteeism or to school avoidance: family factors (income, housing, and food insecurity, health challenges and mental illness, etc.); student factors (lack of prior school success, poor social skills, lack of self-control, etc.). But there are factors over which schools have control that also contribute to absenteeism and school avoidance (disciplinary climate, limited challenge, or inadequate remediation, etc.).
Schools, school boards, and provincial ministries of education are changing policies and practices that contribute to the problem. Out-of-school suspensions for students who are chronically absent or late (yes, some suspend students for being absent or late) are being eliminated. Many are rethinking penalties for tardiness because it contributes to a punishment-oriented climate. Systems that removed students from the class list because they missed many classes are rethinking that practice because it absolves the teacher and the school from responsibility for reaching out to the student and the student’s family.
Many schools have the goal of creating a safe, welcoming, and caring school environment, and devote conscious, persistent effort to creating those conditions. It is widely recognized that when those conditions are not present it is difficult to achieve the other goals of schooling.
Schools are increasingly adopting “restorative practices” to change the school climate to nurture healthy relationships, create learning environments that are just and equitable, reduce conflict, and repair harm.[1] The term restorative practice includes a wide range of procedures based upon the premise that schools are communities where the behaviour of one person has consequences for others in the community. What I call talking circles, meetings of students and staff that are not impeded by physical barriers such as desks, are designed to encourage trust-building and shared values through personal stories or experiences, feelings, and ideas.
Restorative practice applies to all members of the community, administration, staff, students, and students’ families. Creating a context in which care for one another is prized and practiced is an important component of restorative practice. Social and emotional learning are others.
Fairness is a key value in restorative practice. Members of the community must feel that they are respected and that their feelings and ideas matter. An important dimension is that the community’s rules are clear to everyone and applied in a manner that is perceived by everyone to be fair.
Everyone benefits when schools are safe, welcoming, and caring environments – especially children and youth who come from marginalized groups. But the creation of such environments simply doesn’t happen on its own. Restorative practice takes consistent and constant whole-school effort, progress monitoring, the willingness to change practices, and the engagement of everyone, including students and parents.
[1]
Evans, K. and D. Vaandering (2016) The Little Book of Restorative Justice in
Education: Fostering Responsibility, Healing, and Hope in Schools. Simon and
Schuster.