Restorative Practices Training

Restorative Practices (RP) is a philosophy that grew from Restorative Justice (RJ) which aims to provide communities with safe, inclusive, and effective tools to develop healthy relationships. RP also helps teach Social Emotional Learning (SEL) skills such as understanding and managing emotions, exhibiting empathy, and establishing and maintaining positive relationships. The RJ Project provides trainings to equip educational institutions with safe, inclusive, and effective tools to develop relationships that can create a healthy educational environment for all stakeholders.

Introduction to Restorative Practices: Provides key learnings about the rationale, purpose, and critical practices in the RP continuum.
Community Building Circles: Teaches facilitation skills as well as components of community building & problem-solving circles.
Introduction to Restorative Language: Teaches cognitive empathy and affective communication, and social-emotional competence.
Restorative Conversations: Introduces de-escalation skills, restorative questions, and informal restorative conversations for low-level conflict.
Refresher Sessions: Refresher sessions are held at the beginning of each year for the purpose of review and orienting new staff.

Upcoming Trainings

K-12 Restorative Justice Practices Implementation Academy
Monday, July 15, 2024 – Thursday, July 18, 2024

Join us for this four day immersive experience designed to support K-12 schools and district leaders in learning how to plan and lead the implementation of restorative justice practices (RJP) in a way that achieves systemic transformation. Click here to learn more and register!

Trainings, Professional Development & Coaching

The RJ Project partners with educational institutions to offer RP trainings designed to help meet the needs of the community, including:

Introduction to Restorative Practices: RP help teach Social and Emotional Competency skills such as understanding and managing emotions, exhibiting empathy, and establishing and maintaining positive relationships. The training equips academic institutions with safe, inclusive, and effective tools to develop relationships that can create a healthy educational environment for all stakeholders.
Community Building Circles: The Community Building Circle builds positive relationships within and across social groups. This proactive strategy can create a culture of connectivity where all participants can feel valued and thrive. The process establishes trust and respect for differing points of view and teaches inherently important communication skills that reduce and prevent conflict.
Restorative Conversations: Emphasizing responsive facilitation approaches to de-escalate and/or resolve issues before, during, and/or after conflict has arisen, Restorative Conversations provide a way to hold meaningful dialogue relative to interpersonal relationship challenges. Additionally, this process offers a way to collectively respond to an incident of harm that affects the community as a whole.
Coaching Circles: Coaching Circles offer opportunities for trainees to troubleshoot and discuss strategies on how to effectively facilitate RP to create a culture of connectivity.

Training Types

K-12 Training

Restorative Practices support positive and safe school culture and climate by utilizing a holistic approach to discipline. The Restorative Practices continuum balances relationship building with processes to repair harm. In this way, schools create opportunities for connection and positive relationships in forming community. This is significant because accountability to the community comes through connection, rather than through punishment. That is, if one is connected to the people, places, and things contained in one's community, one is more likely to care when it has been negatively impacted.

Each tool on the Restorative Practices continuum is linked to positive behavioral, cultural, and relational outcomes. Restorative Practices are based on the principles of inclusivity, interdependence, fair process, and mutual accountability.

Higher Education Training

Across the nation, Restorative Practices (RP) implementation on college and university campuses has been gaining momentum as a vital contribution to improving social interaction among students, their families, professors, campus staff, and administrators. The aim is to build and develop stronger relationships amongst all educational institution stakeholders which in turn, positively impacts the academic learning environment. Proactive RP, the foundation to successful implementation, focus on positive culture building when implemented using a social justice lens. Responsive RP focus on conflict de-escalation and repair of harm. RP has the potential to uplift and center marginalized voices while empowering all students, faculty, and staff to act as transformative agents of culture and climate change through relational understanding and perspective-taking that informs organizational reform.

Meet the Trainers

Schoene Mahmood

Program Manager, Restorative Justice Project

schoene.mahmood@lmu.edu