Dive Brief:
- The Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Academy opened in Dallas in 2015 with a new approach to personalized academic and classroom management practices, according to an EdSurge interview with the school's co-founder and assistant principal, Courtney Egelston.
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The public charter school serves 39 Dallas neighborhoods and is seeking to address this divergent student population with a disciplinary approach that focuses on relationship building and repairing the harm caused by offenders.
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While this approach has so far proved to be a challenge to teachers, some instructors say the method gets easier after the initial learning curve.
Dive Insight:
The Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Academy (IDEA) is experimenting with ways to combat the difficult challenge of maintaining school discipline without doing social and emotional damage to students. Dallas, like many other areas of the country, is experiencing a perceived school-to-prison pipeline issue. While the Texas state legislature recently passed a bill addressing the issue by limiting out-of-school suspensions in some grades, schools like IDEA are trying new strategies to address the issues on the ground level.
Other schools are exploring disciplinary practices that move away from zero-tolerance discipline policies and reduce suspensions. Jeffco Public Schools in Colorado is also implementing more restorative justice strategies in its school district. This concept is gaining traction and the Schott Foundation for Public Education now offers a restorative practices toolkit for schools wanting to incorporate these strategies into their classroom management approach.
A similar approach called “restorative justice” has been practiced in some Oakland, CA schools since 2006. In a 2013 issue of “We Are Teachers”, Ron Claassen, director of Restorative Justice in Schools, explains the concept: “Restorative justice is a fundamental change in how you respond to rule violations and misbehavior,” Claassen said. “The typical response to bad behavior is punishment. Restorative justice resolves disciplinary problems in a cooperative and constructive way.”