Reflections on Teachers Unite's Summer 2011 Restorative Justice Study Group

Reflections on Teachers Unite's

Summer 2011 Restorative Justice Study Group

by Ryan Mendías

The first time I visited Bushwick campus in Brooklyn, I couldn’t help but make an endless list of mental comparisons between this high school and my own. As I passed through the metal detector, emptying my pockets of change and removing my belt buckle, I was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of difference between the daily reality for students at one of Bushwick’s four schools and the reality that I experienced for four years at a high school in a middle-class city in Southern California. Redondo Union High School, where I graduated from in 2009, had no metal detectors or armed cops, it was never under the threat of closure, and its campus was entirely its own—in fact, RUHS was one of the largest public high schools on the West Coast, boasting views of the Pacific Ocean from several of its buildings.

That geographic privilege mirrored broader systemic discrepancies between Redondo Union and Bushwick campus. For us, punishment and discipline had another meaning entirely. I can still remember the first time I got detention at Redondo; I’d been caught in a so-called “tardy sweep” and was told to spend my lunch period in what amounted to an hour-long time out. I remember being indignant (How dare this happen to me, I was an honors student!) but ultimately amused, spending most of my detention joking with friends.

At Banana Kelly high school in the Bronx, while waiting for a meeting, I saw the profound frustration on young people’s faces as they jostled with one another to explain their situations to “School Safety Agents” (i.e., employees of the NYPD) and the over-worked dean of discipline, I saw their anger at and annoyance with a system that didn’t seem to hear their voices, I saw anxiety and antagonism. And I was left wondering why. Why were these emotions so absent from discipline at my mostly-white, middle-class high school but so present in these low-income communities of color? Why did punishment mean something totally separate to students at Banana Kelly and Bushwick from what it did to those at Redondo? 

I certainly don’t wish to paint my high school as a disciplinary paradise. In fact, many students there did face suspension, expulsion, and policing; and, like students in the Bronx and Brooklyn, those most susceptible to being pushed out of school were overwhelmingly poor and of color, they were students who commuted, who weren’t enrolled in Advanced Placement courses—students who were, in a word, marginalized.

Grappling with the question of who becomes marginalized and how was an important step in shaping the form and content of Teachers Unite’s summer reading group on restorative justice. Organizing the reading group was my primary responsibility during my internship with TU over the last ten weeks, and I sought to provide readings that would give educators, administrators, parents, and youth an opportunity to ask the tough questions: Why, for example, do black and Latino youth account for 82% of the students who pass through metal detectors every day? What is the actual impact of metal detectors and police on how safe students feel? What other kinds of identities (e.g., gender, sexuality, disability) are subject to harsh policing? And, perhaps most importantly, where and how can we intervene, both collectively and individually?

Our weekly reading group meetings focused on the history, practice, and future implementation of restorative justice. We learned where the idea of restorative justice—a model of community accountability that takes the place of traditional, isolating policies of punishment and incarceration—comes from, and how we can respect the non-Western, and often sacred, origins of these practices. We examined restorative practices in the classroom as well as in the community. For example, we saw how the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality worked to make their communities safer without increasing policing. Our readings and subsequent discussions took up many different threads from all kinds of backgrounds, from Native approaches to community accountability to queer understandings of sexual violence and harm.

Our final meeting focused on the question that has been asked time and time again by those interested in an alternative to the current system of discipline: “How do you do restorative justice?” We heard from school staff from all over New York City speak to the strengths and weaknesses of their restorative programs, outlining the methods, challenges, and rewards that go into truly changing a school culture. At the end of this reading group, my hope is that the conversations we’ve had will bring us closer to realizing the social change we want to see in our schools, in our communities, and in our daily lives. This work, done both as individual teachers, students, and activists, as well as with broad based coalitions, is incredibly important and pressing. Teachers Unite’s involvement with the Dignity in Schools Campaign picks up where our reading group left off and will give all involved the opportunity to effect widespread change in the city’s public schools.

My summer with Teachers Unite has been incredible in so many ways. Our work on restorative justice, however, has been by far the most galvanizing and moving experience. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to join with committed youth and educators in doing the much-needed work of making schools safe places for everyone. I know that the lessons I’ve learned and the conversations I’ve had will be with me for the rest of my life, deeply shaping my vision of activism, youth, and social change.