PBIS-Trauma Informed-RJ all living together?

Check with Ivan Haskell at Mastery Charter in Philadelphia.  I believe he is an ACEsConnection member - they have just started a large scale program to integrate trauma informed practice into their system.  I believe they may also use PBIS and possibly restorative justice. 

I would also be interested in hearing more about this.  Seems natural to integrate trauma informed/sensitive practices in schools implementing PBIS and Restorative Justice but how do folks get buy in?

Check out Wisconsin's website:  http://sspw.dpi.wi.gov/sspw_traumapbis  (specific to PBIS and TIC intersection) as well as the general page:  http://sspw.dpi.wi.gov/sspw_mhtrauma 

Best,

Elizabeth

Thanks for starting this discussion! Yes! We need a visual and additional advocacy tools for this!

 

There is talk that restorative practices and PBIS are inherently trauma-informed in there own right. However we know there are schools implementing restorative practices and/or PBIS in absence of trauma-informed approaches/frameworks/lens, and there are schools that are weaving restorative practices and trauma-informed approaches together holistically. Check out http://acestoohigh.com/2014/01...l-dorado-elementary/

 

Do we have additional data or references that support the benefits of including trauma-informed in restorative practices/PBIS? Might this be a good place to collect additional info and start advocating from?

Hi, Leora:

Several schools in Washington State that use PBIS have incorporated trauma-informed practices. It's a good fit. Here are links to a couple of stories:

There's no such thing as a bad kid in these Spokane, WA, trauma-informed elementary schools -- Spokane, WA

Q-and-A with Suzanne Savall, principal of trauma-informed elementary school in Spokane, WA    -- Spokane, WA

What a trauma-informed approach provides that PBIS and restorative justice/practices usually don't is the attention paid to vicarious trauma of teachers & staff, to how their own behavior can contribute to inadvertently triggering a student, as well as to students whose response to trauma is to withdraw instead of act out. There's also more awareness of looking at all school policies through a trauma-informed lens, which PBIS and restorative justice/practice usually don't do. 

Cheers, Jane

Hi Leora, 

 

We have done this at our school. The models truly do complement one another. Feel free to email or message me through ACEs Connection. I'd be happy to send some of our materials. 

 

Leisa

Thanks Leisa!

 

Is it possible for you to share some of your materials here on the group as attachments? Or provide a reference list for folks to refer to?

I have a question that might not make sense but kids are learning right and wrong and what is just and unjust. I had to look up restorative justice and though it seems better than punitive justice ... I don't get a sense that in a kid's mind who was treated very unjustly in this world that there is any real justice here. I think we need more... Something that acknowledges the wrong done to the 'bad kid' 'kid who needs his ways corrected' I don't know the terminology to use but here is an example...  I am on a school bus and there is a lot of bullying. I am bullied a lot but I have few allies. I have even been thrown in trash cans. I am poor, wear dirty cloths to school and smell bad because there is no water for showers. I really need a coat. It's getting cold outside and that spoiled kid that always bullies me has a nice coat. In fact he is wearing a different one every day. I steal his coat, I am caught and now I need to be subjected to restorative justice.... How well do you think that will work in my 10 year old mind when I have been bullied, humiliated, and don't have the basics I need. Will I feel there is any justice in this process? Nope I won't. I will see it as stupid and the world and all its members as dumb!  Maybe I don't understand the concept here but certainly if there is no acknowledgement of my suffering, I will feel there is no justice in this process.  I will know the rules say and will know it is wrong to steal but all I will learn about justice is that it is arbitrary, not very nuanced and basically unjust. Do I make sense???

Yes! Thanks for processing your thoughts on this here, Tina. A trauma-informed restorative justice/practices approach in a school setting, as exemplified by Cherokee Point Elementary School, San Diego CA, Lincoln High School, Walla Walla WA, and Spokane WA, includes meeting the basic needs of children and families, whether that be a bed to sleep on at home, food, a coat, medical services, a hug, or a peace corner. Everyone who interacts with kids throughout the school day is trained in what it means to be trauma-informed, from the first contact with the bus driver, to the janitor, to the principals, as your example so accurately demonstrated the need for. I return to these stories often for inspiration, guidance, and specific examples of what this work looks like in practice. The trauma-informed restorative practices integrated approach is dependent on creating creative cross sector collaboration, the goal of our work here and far beyond.

Dear Dr. Hahn (Tina Marie)

 

In response to your comments, I believe the pressure for justice arises disproportionately among the impoverished because they (we) see so little of it that we think it is that it appears to be reserved for others.  This attitude activates a huge hostile enzyme that connotes all interaction with the larger society as negative.  This negative orientation feeds itself, like a strange fruit and where the public perception of non-white individuals and communities has been one-sided and  racially biased.  If you study the evolution of RAP music in the mid 1980's for a decade, you will find large groups of individuals who have been poorly educated (illiterate), marginally nurtured, under-employed, disregarded from the work force and generally described without a future.  Rap music promotes comfort in their words - words that are images of their own reality. Words that tell it like it is. These images represent a long epitaph, wrapped up in having been judged as the unwashed poor. Justice for them means not getting caught - the presumption of which is that they are going to find themselves doing something illegal - because that is the only justice left for them. The system has disregarded people of color for a long time.  Finally, there are now hand-held cameras that show - unequivocally - the burden of life in the United States. A police officer in South Carolina was fired for excessive force, after the video captured him shooting the individual 8 times.  I wonder if outcomes would  be different by insisting females are the only police investigators conducting criminal inquiries for  rape or  sexual assault. 

Twenty years ago, I would have laughed if someone had told me an African American would be elected President of the United States in 2008.  Twenty years earlier, Fannie Lou Hammer was finally seated at the Democratic Convention (1968) after a bitter fight with then Vice President Lyndon Johnson over empowerment and the right to vote for African Americans. Poverty, wrapped in a racially biased blanket, results in freezing cold conditions.  So if I steal, so what?  I am already in jail.  No options, no future!  Will be lucky if I live to be 25 years.  Addressing the structure of trauma-informed policies and procedures is the best way to assist our local communities (and their governmental structures) have more equitable impact.  Continuing to punish the poor is the order of the day.  Sadly, however, you cannot reason someone out of a position they have not been reasoned into. Justice must be balanced - both for the individual and society.  Equity should be able to be accomplished and all of us need to fee we have equal opportunity.

 

Paul B. Simms

 

 

Yes! Thank you for this post Paul!

 

The alignment of a racial justice and health inequities lens with a trauma-informed lens is a critical component of this movement. The San Francisco Trauma Informed Systems Initiative is in consultation with Dr. Kenneth Hardy on the issue of cultural humility as a guiding principle in their work.