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By BETH QUIMBY
MaineToday Media, Inc. 01/14/2008

MaineToday Media, Inc.

Two years ago, when students at the Troy A. Howard Middle School in Belfast misbehaved, they wound up in the detention room for an hour.

The room usually held about 14 students every Tuesday and Thursday, overseen by a teacher who shared the after-school duty.

Today the scene at the middle school detention room is entirely different. The room often is empty because no one has misbehaved. When it is occupied, students and teacher sit in a circle and talk.

The changes in the detention room, school administrators say, is due to a program called restorative justice, which tries to teach students the consequences of misbehavior. Not only do students openly discuss their infractions, but they must apologize and make restitution in some way.

"It has been a huge, huge positive," said Principal Kimberly Buckheit.

Widely used in juvenile criminal justice systems, restorative justice practices are moving into school rooms across the country. In Maine, a few schools have pioneered the techniques, said Barbara Blazej of the peace studies program at the University of Maine.

A conference on the use of restorative justice the program co-sponsored last fall drew 70 educators, mostly from Maine. Teachers and administrators who use the techniques report a drop in misbehaviors and a kinder and gentler atmosphere at their schools.

The Regional Education Alternative Learning School, an alternative school for seventh through 12th-graders with campuses in Windham and Macworth Island, has used restorative justice techniques for the past five years, with help from a grant from the Department of Corrections Juvenile Justice Advisory Group. REAL School Principal Pender Makin said the techniques have changed the culture of the school.

At Howard Middle School, restorative justice practices are used not only to address misbehavior but to improve communication between students and teachers throughout the school.

Buckheit said the school's former after-school detention program was based on the traditional model used at most Maine schools. If students showed disrespect to a teacher or another student, the offending student was assigned an afternoon detention and that would be the end of the matter.

"The kid put in his hour of time staring at the clock or doing homework," she said.

Now students may choose to attend a community resolution circle led by a teacher. Each student must tell the other students in the circle what they did. The other students and any victim who agrees to participate discuss how the student's misbehavior impacted other people at the school.

The student must come up with a way to make restitution through some sort of community service, such as cleaning a teacher's classroom or - in the case of a food-throwing incident - helping the janitors clean the lunch room. The student must also make a verbal or written apology.

"There is just a lot more communication going on," said Bonnie Gallagher, an eighth-grade teacher who leads the circles. Community circles have been incorporated into classroom instruction as well because the techniques give every student a turn to speak, Buckheit said. Teachers now form circles to discuss books or social studies topics.

"Everybody has a voice," Buckheit said.

Incidents of misbehavior at the 470-student Belfast middle school have dropped from 28 to three or four a week, and the number of repeat offenders has dropped, Buckheit said. In the first year, the "huge list" of students who were regulars in the detention room dropped to six or seven. This year only one student is on the list.

Going through a community circle is a condition for the return of five eighth-graders who were expelled for selling marijuana at the school this year. Those circles included their parents, school staff and Belfast residents.

The common trait among the 50 students at the REAL School, who are there because they have not been successful at traditional public schools, is that they fail to take responsibility for both their good and bad behavior, Makin said.

Makin said the students would blame their teachers for misbehaviors and attribute their their accomplishments to luck or some other reason beyond their control.

Makin said restorative justice techniques have helped students understand the impact of their behavior. She said disciplinary incidents have dropped and visitors comment on the gentle interaction between students.

"Which is not what people would expect from students who tend to have long disciplinary histories," she said.

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