Restore the Respect: How To Mediate School Conflicts And Keep Students Learning

Unresolved conflicts in schools build barriers to learning, including low motivation, lack of focus, and disruptive behaviors that remove students from the classroom. When teacher-student conflicts occur, the negative effects can be long-lasting without a safe and structured way to repair the relationship.

This reader-friendly guidebook has a concrete, evidence-based solution: an easy and effective 50-minute mediation technique for teachers and students in Grades K-12. School psychologist Ondine Gross guides you through the whole process of starting a teacher-student mediation program, conducting successful mediations, and collecting and monitoring data to determine the effectiveness of the program. You'll also learn how to use the technique to mediate conflicts between students and between adults in schools, including staff members and parents.

Highly successful as a Tier II intervention, this common-sense solution will help your school leave ineffective discipline techniques behind and embrace more supportive approaches that model social and problem solving skills, reduce suspensions, and keep students learning.

Why Mediation?

• Reduces disciplinary actions 82% of students who participated in mediation had no further disciplinary referrals from that teacher
• Removes or reduces obstacles to student learning and achievement
• Gives teachers insights into student stressors so they can develop positive solutions
• Strengthens and repairs relationships among all members of a school community: teachers, students, staff members, and parents
• Enhances social-emotional learning and communication skills
• Builds trust and promotes an environment of caring and respect among people of different backgrounds
• Fits perfectly within response to intervention and systems of schoolwide positive behavior support frameworks
• Works in any school embed it as a Tier II intervention in your multitiered system of supports or use it as a standalone strategy

* Statistic derived from average of three years of data from the author's school

Practical Materials: Compelling case stories; candid feedback from teachers, students and administrators; sample mediation dialogue; step-by-step mediation training and practice scenarios; an intervention tracking tool; and a mediation toolbox of handouts and forms.

Table of Contents

About the Forms

About the Author

Foreword Jed Baker

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. A Call to Action: Reforming Discipline, Improving Relationships, and Building Better Schools
2. Systems to Help Students: How Response to Intervention and Multi-tiered Positive Behavior Supports Transform a School
3. What Is Teacher–Student Mediation?
4. How to Conduct Teacher–Student Mediations
5. What Is Required of a Skilled School Mediator?
6. Sources of Teacher–Student Conflict, Problem-Solving Strategies, and Sample Mediations
7. Feedback on Teacher–Student Mediation
8. Promising Data: Mediation Is Effective
9. How to Conduct Student Mediations
10. Mediation with Adults in Schools: The Next Frontier

Afterword

Appendix A: Your Mediation Toolbox

Appendix B: Tier II Intervention Guide

References

Index

"Restore the Respect offers valuable and practical guidance for nurturing respectful student-staff relationships through mediation. Ms. Gross describes the importance of creating caring school communities along with step-by-step procedures for conducting mediation and a ready-to-use mediation toolbox. Restore the Respect will transform schools in a very positive way."
- Lori Ernsperger, author of Recognize, Respond, Report: Preventing and Addressing Bullying of Students with Special Needs

"In Restore the Respect, Ondine Gross incorporates humor and a lifetime of public school experiences to share ways to use mediation by all stakeholders. As she says in the preface, "…schools are made up of people, and how people treat each other makes all the difference. Relationships matter!" A truer statement was never written. What especially captivated me was Gross's work with the adults in a school and mediation. So often it is the adult relationships that are toxic or at least unhealthy. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in a very doable road map of how to put the teaching back into disciplinary consequences as well as strengthen collaborative relationships among all within a school."
- Linda Sloat, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign