Monica Evans made it clear early in her Thursday presentation to the Hamilton Southeastern School Board work session that she does believe in discipline. She retired as a Detroit Police Officer in 2014. She was a teacher for 12 years before joining law enforcement. All her sons now are working in law enforcement.
She is an instructor for an organization named The International Institute for Restorative Practices and is part of that group’s Graduate School.
Ms. Evans says she is absolutely in favor in discipline, but believes it must be done “in a restorative way.” She emphasizes that there “is a difference between authoritative and authority.” In other words, discipline “must not be meaningless, everything has to be learned.” Accountability must be a part of this.
We all have biases, she told the board. The restorative part is putting that reality on the table for everyone to see and know at the outset. Conversation and communication is all about what restorative practices.
A big part of restorative practices centers on knowing at the outset what the expectations are, and the consequences of not meeting those expectations. That sets boundaries at the beginning.
Restorative discipline is focused not on rote punishment, punitive in nature, but finding a way to restore harm that some behaviors may cause. It is a part of restorative practices.
She talked at some length about the differences in the concepts of equity, equality and justice. Empathy has a lot to do with restorative practices, Ms. Evans says, and is not the same thing as sympathy.
She told the story of how a Detroit school spent 5 years implementing a restorative discipline program and the result was keeping gang members in school. Instead of punitive discipline, those gang members were forced to clean up every neighborhood where they had been involved in gang activity, working with their community and learning a skill set at the same time.
There was a lively discussion between members of the school board and Monica Evans. It will now be up to HSE school officials whether to move forward with restorative discipline.