RESTORATIVE PRACTICES:
TRANSFORMING TRADITIONAL CONSEQUENCES
​INTO MEANINGFUL ACCOUNTABILITY

 Monday, September 19th - Restorative Practices: Alternatives To Suspension
 Tuesday, September 20th -  Restorative Practices: The Art & Science of Changing Behavior
8:30 am - 3:30 pm CDT (Both Days)
Embassy Suites by Hilton Bloomington/Minneapolis
2800 American Boulevard West, Bloomington, MN 55431
​​(952) 884-4811
*If you need to book a hotel room, please click here or call the hotel directly at (952) 884-4811 and mention Leaving The Village to receive our group rate.
*****LIMITED SPOTS AVAILABLE*****

MINNEAPOLIS WORKSHOP OVERVIEW

One of the few things that everyone can agree on is that suspension isn’t as effective as it used to be. Kids today are growing up in a different time that isn’t comparable to any other period of the past. At the moment, a 20th Century approach to 21st Century problems simply isn’t yielding the results we need. It seems like every year there is something new that is supposed to be the answer to the challenging behaviors we face today. The only constant of all of these initiatives is that they're all flawed. If we're being honest, we also have to admit that they all have some good qualities though. In education, we have a tendency to approach deep-rooted problems with surface-level thinking which often leads to surface-level solutions.

During this two-day workshop, we work together to delve into these deep-rooted problems with an appropriate depth of thinking which should yield the solutions you need to address the behavior challenges on your campus. We encourage you to join us both days but feel free to only come to the day that fits your schedule and/or interest. Please take a moment to review the descriptions of the days below so you can learn what you should expect from attending each day of the workshop.

COST OF REGISTRATION

  • FULL REGISTRATION - EARLY BIRD Individual - $375 per person*
  • FULL REGISTRATION - GROUP RATE (2 or more) - $375 per person
  • FULL REGISTRATION - Individual - $450 per person
  • 1-DAY REGISTRATION - EARLY BIRD Individual - $195 per person*
  • 1-DAY REGISTRATION - GROUP RATE (2 or more) - $195 per person
  • 1-DAY REGISTRATION - Individual - $225 per person​
    * Early Bird Registration Ends Friday, August 19th at 11:59 pm CDT
    All Registrations end Friday, September 16th at 11:59 pm CDT

DAY #1 - RESTORATIVE PRACTICES: ALTERNATIVES TO SUSPENSION

​The concept of Restorative Practices in schools is fairly new. There are challenges in the early stages of anything new, and Restorative Practices is no exception. The greatest challenge is refuting the idea that Restorative Practices should replace traditional consequences and punishment should be eliminated. Ideally, this makes sense, but realistically, it cannot work. There will always be a need for traditional consequences in schools because there will always be situations that require us to use strategies such as in-school or out-of-school suspension. The key word to remember here is strategies. Suspension is a strategy, not a solution, and a strategy is derived from an intended goal.

FOCUS #1: HIGHLY EFFECTIVE ACCOUNTABILITY
Although Restorative Practices is necessary, it can be just as flawed as traditional consequences if executed in isolation. Restorative Practices focuses on explicitly teaching behavior to students in an effort to change undesired behavior, whereas traditional consequences are used to punish for an inappropriate behavior when we believe students should have known that what they were doing was wrong. Our goal in both instances is accountability, and the path to accountability in schools can be achieved only by making restorative practices and traditional consequences work hand in hand.

FOCUS #2: ALTERNATIVES TO IN-SCHOOL SUSPENSION (ISS)
If we're being honest, in-school suspension has some benefits.  By and large, most students resent being assigned in-school suspension primarily because of the social isolation. Most administrators can corroborate this from firsthand experiences of students pleading for out of school suspension instead of in-school suspension. Many students would prefer to serve their punishment at home rather than being isolated from their peers at school. The greatest flaw of ISS is that you are removing the student from the learning environment and it is relatively impossible to replicate the learning environment you are removing the student from. We convince ourselves that we are still educating these students by providing them with work from their teachers and a staff member in the room, usually a paraprofessional, to "teach" students as needed. In reality, the overuse of ISS serves as a temporary solution that often compounds the underlying problem which eventually creates irreparable harm to the school. We have to find alternatives that extract the benefits of ISS but also compensates where ISS is deficient.

FOCUS #3: PARTNERING WITH PARENTS TO HOLD STUDENTS ACCOUNTABLE
One thing that almost everyone can agree on is parenting today is drastically different than it was years ago. Many educators believe parents of students today are responsible for why we are currently seeing such a widespread of adversarial behavior in schools. You can debate whether we have a parent problem or societal problem in our country but one thing that we do know is that pointing fingers or playing the blame game isn't going to solve this problem. In fact, one could argue that the lack of trust between schools and parents is the primary barrier preventing educators from getting a handle on this problem. Leveraging partnerships with parents is paramount if educators have any hope at finding solutions to the behavior problems in our schools today. This can only be accomplished if we can convince parents to partner with us to work together in the best interest of their child rather than act as their kids' defense attorneys as many parents currently do.

Day 1 of the workshop will provide participants with:
  • a Discipline Decision-Making Process that helps ensure decision makers are making thoughtful and thorough decisions when addressing students who need to be held accountable for their behavior.
  • a framework for creating Highly Effective Accountability that is designed to change the adverse behavior while maintaining the idea of some traditional consequences.
  • how in-school suspension can be modified to minimize the amount of time a student is removed from the learning environment by strategically working to change the underlying behaviors
  • specific alternatives to in-school suspension that can be effective in minimizing the need for traditional in-school suspension
  • how educators can partner with parents in the accountability process to change adverse behavior
  • specific interventions that seamlessly allow parents to be a part of the accountability process

​WHAT TO EXPECT ON DAY 1

DAY #2 - THE ART & SCIENCE OF CHANGING BEHAVIOR

The number one intention of giving students consequences is to hopefully change their behavior. It’s safe to say no one has ever assigned a consequence without the goal of the student coming out of the consequence with a changed behavior. With that said, our problem at the moment is that many of our students’ behavior don’t change for the better after they’ve completed the assigned consequences. Whether you suspend students, in-school or out-of-school, for one, five or even ten days, the results are typically the same. They come back into the school or the classroom with the same disruptive behavior that resulted in their removal. Changing behavior requires intentionality, persistence and patience which isn’t an easy process. This training focuses on providing participants with a logical understanding about how behavior changes and the creative process for how to change behavior. ​

FOCUS #1: TRANSFORMING TRADITIONAL CONSEQUENCES
It’s unrealistic and counterproductive to remove traditional consequences such as in-school suspension and forms of detention from schools. The issue isn’t whether they should exist but rather how to make them effective when they are necessary. When a student’s behavior is jeopardizing the integrity of the learning environment, they need to be temporarily removed from the learning environment. With that said, removing disruptive students from the learning environment is a short-term and surface level solution that, in many cases, perpetuates deeper problems. It temporarily makes us feel comfortable that something was done to address the problem but often leads to further frustration once the students return to the learning environment. The reason why many of our disruptive students’ behavior rarely change is because we rarely work to change their behavior. We assume that the punishment alone will change their behavior but the only way to change their behavior is to identify the root causes and actively work on the behavior. Many of our current traditional consequences naturally provide the structure that is necessary to allow us to work on challenging student behavior. We simply need to reimagine how these traditional consequences should look if we want better outcomes. ​

FOCUS #2: OBJECTIVE QUESTIONING
​If you think about it, how receptive are you to unsolicited advice from an authority figure? The honest answer for most people is not too receptive. In most cases when people give advice, they are genuinely sharing their perspective to help another person. But in so many cases, advice falls on deaf ears because the person receiving the advice isn’t receptive. It’s mind-boggling to most when they give someone what they believe is good advice, but the person’s response becomes defensive or defiant. Ironically, when the advice giver becomes the receiver, they often find themselves not too receptive either. The reason for this is people typically don’t like being told when they might be doing something wrong. A changed behavior is a personal choice that cannot be forced upon someone. The intention of the advice giver isn’t the problem in most cases. The real problem is that the greatest challenge is the delivery. As the advice giver, we believe we are teaching when we share our advice, but the advice receiver feels they are being preached to. Nobody likes to be preached to and the result is people either get defensive or shut down. If a changed behavior is a personal choice, personal reflection is required. 
One of the best strategies to assist with guiding someone down the path of personal reflection is the use of objective questions. Most people are familiar with the common objective questions used in Restorative Practices, such as what happened, what were you thinking of at the time, who has been affected by what you have done, and what do you think you need to do to make things right? These are great examples of foundational objective questions, but they cannot be used as a script. If the goal is a changed behavior, there must be a conscious effort to customize objective questions that encourage personal reflection. Objective Questioning is the practice of asking intuitive questions that enables a person to be reflective rather than defensive.

FOCUS #3: ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECTS
”Busy Work” is one of the most counterproductive things we assign students in education. It’s typically assigned to students with punitive intentions to pass time when a student is serving a consequence. Busy works comes in many forms such as make-up work, a written apology, or reflection sheets. For example, we place students in in-school suspension and provide them with assignments to work on from their teachers. The idea behind this is that the student will be able to keep up with the instruction that is taking place in the classrooms while they serve their punishment. But too often, that isn’t how it works. The greatest flaw of ISS is that it is virtually impossible to replicate the learning environment you are removing the student from. We convince ourselves that we are still educating these students by providing them with work from their teachers and by having a staff member in the room, usually a paraprofessional, to “teach” them as needed. While well intentioned, the assigning of “busy work” in these instances doesn’t yield us the results we are looking for and, in some cases, it does more harm than good.

Day 2 of the workshop will provide participants with:
  • how they can transform traditional consequences into frameworks that intentionally work to change student behavior while maintaining the structure of traditional consequences
  • how to use objective questioning that is intuitive and encourages students to genuinely reflect about their behavior
  • how to incorporate Structured Days, facilitate Restorative Circles and develop Accountability Projects that work together towards changing students' behaviors
  • how to incorporate the necessary stakeholders (i.e., teacher, parents, community members, etc.) in the school’s community to support efforts in changing the adverse behavior of some students

​WHAT TO EXPECT ON DAY 2

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs)

What's the cancellation/refund policy for this workshop?
If you are unable to attend and need to request a refund, you must submit your refund request in writing SEVEN (7) DAYS prior to the scheduled date of the workshop. Submit all refund requests to billing@leavingthevillage.com. If you submit your refund request within SEVEN (7) DAYS of the workshop, you can be provided with a credit that can be applied to any of our future workshops. 

Should I attend if I've already attended an Alternatives To Suspension and/or Guide To Implementing Restorative Practices virtual workshop series?
Almost all of the strategies and concepts presented in the three virtual workshop sessions in both series will be presented again during the in-person workshops. With that said, the in-person workshops provide a greater opportunity to give more context because all of the strategies are presented in a day versus over the course of three 90-minute sessions. The in-person workshops also provide an opportunity for hands-on learning activities that can't be duplicated virtually. The in-person workshop would be beneficial for those who have attended our virtual workshops but would like a refresher with some hands-on learning opportunities.
​
Is this workshop beneficial for elementary educators?
Our workshops are differentiated to meet the needs of all levels, K-12. With that said, Kelvin Oliver, the presenter, was a PK-6 campus administrator when he implemented Restorative Practices on a campus. His time as a campus administrator is where he developed many of the concepts that are presented during these workshops. While the focus will be on all grade levels, elementary educators will not walk away from this workshop feeling that it didn't apply to them.

Are these workshops only intended for administrators?
No, you don't have to be an administrator to attend these workshops. All educators that attend these workshops will find great benefit in these workshops.

Will I receive any supporting resources if I attend this workshop?
Yes! At the conclusion of the workshop, each registered participant will be mailed one complimentary cheat sheet resource for each day of the workshop they registered to attend. Each Cheat Sheet is strategically designed to support attendees of our workshops when they return back to their campus. If you register multiple participants for both days, you will receive the pair of complimentary cheat sheets for each paid registrant.

When should I expect to receive the supporting resources?
Participants who fulfill payment for their registration prior to the start of their scheduled workshop can expect their complimentary cheat sheets to be shipped to the shipping address provided at registration within two weeks after the conclusion of the workshop they attended. Participants who register using a purchase order as a promise of payment will need to fulfill the purchase order payment before their complimentary cheat sheets are shipped. Once the purchase order payment is fulfilled, participants can expect their complimentary cheat sheets to be shipped within two weeks of receipt of payment. 

Will lunch be provided either or both days?
We've allotted one hour and 15-minutes for workshop attendees to have lunch on their own. Because most attendees work on a campus with students, they are rarely afforded the opportunity to go to a restaurant for lunch. Our hope is that each attendee takes advantage of this unique opportunity to enjoy a sit-down lunch like most other working professionals are able to do. Throughout both days, beverages such as coffee, water and hot tea will be available to all participants. 

​Is there a room block available with a special room rate?
Yes, please click here or call the hotel directly at (952) 884-4811 and mention Leaving The Village to receive our group rate.

Will I be able to receive CEU hours if I attend this workshop?
Unfortunately, we can't guarantee that you will be able to receive continuing education units if you attend our workshops. We offer our workshops around the country and we are in the process of ensuring our attendees can earn credits in the future.

How can I contact the presenter if I have additional questions?
You can email us at info@leavingthevillage.com.

MINNEAPOLIS WORKSHOP REGISTRANT FORM

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