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Restorative Justice 101

Program explores new methods in healing troubled youth


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Far Rockaway high school students were among the attendees at Monday’s event. Pictured from left to right are: Benita Nwalozie, Jermaine Powell, D’Carlos Critchlow and Kemone Mitchell.

Recent gang-related shootings in Rockaway are part of the impetus that has spurred New Visions Charter High School for the Humanities IV (NVCHS) to lead the charge in steering youngsters away from a life of crime through inclusionary practices and building relationships.

Members of NVCHS recently enlisted the services of justice educator and activist Eric Butler to introduce both adults and teens to a new approach in instilling discipline that replaces punitive mechanisms that many believe are only turning away young adults and marginalizing them from mainstream society.

Butler invited a gathering of 50 listeners during a Monday, Aug. 20 seminar at the Beach Channel Educational Campus (BCEC) to understand why so many young individuals elect to pursue a criminal path wrought with hopelessness.

To that end, he recounted the tale of a 15-year-old boy named Cedric, who had no other recourse but to start selling drugs when facing the all-too-familiar prospect of suffering through a period in which neither he nor his two siblings had little-to-no food to eat.

“When I was interviewing Cedric, he called that portion of time ‘hungry time,’ explained the New Orleans-born restorative justice advocate when referencing the mother of the high school student and her chronic relapses that left her two boys and one daughter famished and desperate for any kind of support.

“Under the same circumstances, how many of us can say, ‘We wouldn’t really sell drugs to feed our family?’ If we leave Cedric to his own devices, are we going to say anything? Something’s going to happen.”

Cedric’s illicit peddling eventually saw the neophyte drug pusher carrying a gun to school every day until the time it went off in the classroom, which resulted in the boy serving 10 months in a juvenile facility.

But unlike many other similar cases in which youngsters are doomed to a lifetime of criminal recidivism, Cedric was rehabilitated through his school’s restorative justice program, which formed a circle of trust around him.

Educators and fellow students helped him reacclimate himself to school life and, in addition, come up with a plan whereby his mother would be able to re-enter the workforce. Cedric, it was noted, it now a committed scholar with a 3.11 grade point average.

Butler went on to focus on how far too many schools are unnecessarily pouring their energies into “legislating taste” by instructing students to pick up their pants, to take off their hoodies or baseball caps instead of cultivating a strong bond with them.

The featured speaker claimed that oftentimes students that show no interest in exceling in subjects, such as algebra, can be motivated to do so by an adult who they trust and actually listens to them.

NVCHS Director of Student Engagement Rob Maitra is at the forefront of building a network of restorative justice programs and training on a local level by interfacing with the Rockaway Youth Task Force (RYTF), Queens Law Associates (QLA), several youth cornerstone groups and The Child Center of NY, among others, in organizing regular monthly meetings in the interest of tapping into Rockaway teens and taking a deep-rooted interest in their daily issues.

The objective is to get out in front of gang rivalries and other sources of tension before they spill out into the streets and lead to tragic consequences.

“Can community and staff respond in a way that helps heal, that helps repair harm and prevent these things from happening in the future?” asked Maitra when detailing his school’s restorative justice mission statement.

“We can’t prevent everything. So, if students get suspended, is it over? We’ll bring gangs together, people involved in rival turf areas and say, ‘How do we create a peaceful environment where people can interact and grow and learn…and live harmoniously?”

This “higher-level” strategy, maintained the 23-year city educator, will prepare youngsters to assume a leadership role among their peers by allowing them to guide and counsel wayward individuals in tandem with their adult mentors.

Maitra told The Wave that in his years working with children, he’s determined that the best way to deal with students is by listening to them because they want to heard, although they don’t always expect people to listen.

“They know all the things I’m going to say. They know all the reasons why they should come to school on time; they know why they study…making those decisions is the rough part. Knowing that they’re going to be heard is the most impactful thing I’ve learned as an educator.”

Also weighing in on the NVCHS’s endeavors to ameliorate the social and emotional health of their student population to combat the school-to-prison pipeline was the school’s principal Hannah Kehn, as she sang the praises of restorative justice programs.

“When harm is caused, you have two options, right? You can try to punish the person who caused harm or you can try to restore the relationship that was damaged.”

“It’s believing that even if you cause harm to me, I may never be ready to talk to you about it, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be healed or that I can’t be healed individually. So, sometimes restorative practices include two people coming together and talking about something that happened and me having the opportunity to share that with you, how it felt. Maybe that’s going to provoke you to change or apologize, which can be very healing in itself.”

Listeners were all ears during Eric Butler’s impassioned presentation.

 

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