AVP and AVP-based adaptations have been transforming the lives of students too.
A Youth Manual full of meaningful exercises is available at: www.avpusa.org
In my world, Peer Mediators Advocating Alternatives to Violence for Everyone, or “PAVE” ran for twelve years at Rondout High School, Accord NY:
To Whom It May Concern,
The PAVE program is one of the highlights of our counseling program here at Rondout Valley. One of the most important benefits that PAVE delivers to our students is the opportunity for each one of them to share their life experiences with others who are from vastly different socio-economic, race, and gender backgrounds.
To see the trepidation of their individual faces when PAVE begins to the genuine feeling of respect for our differences when PAVE concludes is nothing short of extraordinary.
From the outside observer the skills gained from participating in the workshop may be viewed as “soft” but these are real world, real life skills that are built into a structured day that will stay with each and every student long after they are out of our school! You can’t put a price tag on this!
I have personally participated in PAVE and it continues to be one of the most enriching experiences that I have had since being employed here at Rondout Valley. (2001-present) I would recommend it strongly to any school, anytime and anywhere!
If I can be of any further assistance in your endeavors with regards to PAVE and its benefits please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Charlie murray
K-12 Counseling Liaison
Rondout Valley High School
AVP converged on Philadelphia for these dramatic outcomes:
Two Stories of a Philadelphia School’s Transformation
August 20, 2014 by Eve Tushnet
from Jeff Deeney. First, in July 2013:
Last year when American Paradigm Schools took over Philadelphia’s infamous, failing John Paul Jones Middle School, they did something a lot of people would find inconceivable. The school was known as “Jones Jail” for its reputation of violence and disorder, and because the building physically resembled a youth correctional facility. Situated in the Kensington section of the city, it drew students from the heart of a desperately poor hub of injection drug users and street level prostitution where gun violence rates are off the charts. But rather than beef up the already heavy security to ensure safety and restore order, American Paradigm stripped it away. During renovations, they removed the metal detectors and barred windows.
The police predicted chaos. But instead, new numbers seem to show that in a single year, the number of serious incidents fell by 90%.
The school says it wasn’t just the humanizing physical makeover of the facility that helped. Memphis Street Academy also credits the Alternatives to Violence Project(AVP), a noncoercive, nonviolent conflict resolution regimen originally used in prison settings that was later adapted to violent schools. AVP, when tailored to school settings, emphasizes student empowerment, relationship building and anger management over institutional control and surveillance. There are no aggressive security guards in schools using the AVP model; instead they have engagement coaches, who provide support, encouragement, and a sense of safety.
more; and then January of this year:
…Of course, many readers were skeptical of such a precipitous drop in such a short time. Maybe the school under-reported violent incidents. Maybe with no security guards violent incidents aren’t getting reported at all. But since the story ran more corroborating information has come from the police department to support the school’s claims. Since Memphis Street Academy initiated restorative practices, the police department says they no longer need to send the 11 patrol officers they used to send every day to oversee the hectic and potentially explosive dismissal time. The police department has been able to begin serving other schools in the area, which used to get barely any resources even when reporting something as serious as a student being hit by a car because the need for security at the old Jones Jail was so great. Juvenile crime rates in the immediate area are down, as are truancy and curfew violations. Officers are freed up to focus on the considerable amount of violent crime that can jump off at any time of day in this drug- and gun-ridden part of the city. At neighborhood town halls citizens reportedly praise students and the school for having solved a persistent neighborhood nuisance. Memphis Street Academy CEO Christine Borelli says the school’s restorative practices continue having a major impact. “We only have 2 serious incidents that require police involvement thus far this year.”
Now imagine if Jones Jail had decided to go with harsher enforcement instead of restorative practices. Of course, that’s disregarding the fact that many Philadelphia schools have long had very martial approaches to discipline and extremely tight security with linkages to school police, truant officers, and juvenile probation and still suffered a tremendous violence epidemic over the years. But if Jones Jail had instead taken on some of the harsher zero-tolerance policies that predominate, such as automatic suspensions for minor infractions like tardiness, in order to forcibly impose order? Then the school would only send more of the most at-risk children home, where they would be deprived of instruction time and exposed to more social pathology that predominates in their neighborhood.
There are many other ways to provide safety and security in every school without using force or threats.
Junior high kids hanging out in the West Kensington neighborhood that feeds into Memphis Street Academy instead of being in school are more likely to be recruited as look-outs and runners by the older kids who sell drugs on nearly every block. If there is violence in their homes, which considering the rates of domestic violence in the neighborhood are not unlikely, they’re more likely to be exposed to even more of it. If there’s no food in the house, which is distinctly possible, considering that food scarcity is a major problem in North Philadelphia, they’ll go without the school lunch they would have received. And receiving punitive messages from an institution you’re already ambivalent about can be enough to push a struggling student away from school altogether—from any school.
As a social worker I’ve worked both in public schools and in the criminal justice system, so I’ve seen what it’s like at both ends of the pipeline. I remember arriving for the first time at the probation department and immediately thinking that it was uncannily similar to the public high school I worked in just before I took the job.
For years a body of troubling evidence has been building that reveals racially discriminatory practices in school disciplinary measures. Black and Latino children are more likely to be disciplined, be more severely disciplined, and are more frequently are suspended or expelled or sent to special alternative schools. “Zero-tolerance” policies that presume all explanations for infractions as small as being late to school are excuses and there’s no such thing as mitigating circumstances have been particularly hurtful to poor black and Latino students. Supporters of zero tolerance say the policies are designed to teach accountability and maintain order in some of the country’s most dangerous schools; critics say they push at-risk kids who need the most help and attention out of school and send a message that they’re not wanted. Simultaneously, schools have over the years more heavily relied on law enforcement and courts to deal with problem students, creating the so called “school-to-prison pipeline” that for many perpetuates into adulthood.
Now the civil rights arms of both the Departments of Education and Justice have jointly set guidelines for school discipline. These guidelines are meant to help schools avoid racially discriminatory disciplinary practices as outlined in the Civil Rights Data Collection, a survey of all public schools that’s been regularly conducted by the DoE since 1968. Among the discouraging findings the study outlines:
African-American students without disabilities are more than three times as likely as their white peers without disabilities to be expelled or suspended. Although African-American students represent 15% of students in the CRDC, they make up 35% of students suspended once, 44% of those suspended more than once, and 36% of students expelled. Further, over 50% of students who were involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement are Hispanic or African-American.
The study goes on to say that these findings aren’t explained by more frequent or serious infractions by minority students. The consequences for students are severe, leading to an array of negative outcomes from increased juvenile criminal justice involvement to drug use to lower academic achievement.
Some may feel, despite the voluminous data that black and Latino kids are too frequently targeted for harsh punishment, that disciplining black and Latino children less frequently and less severely can only lead to more chaotic and dangerous schools. In fact, there is considerable advocacy in the wake of Sandy Hook and other school tragedies to expand security practices typically found in inner city schools, including metal detectors and on-campus police, to predominantly white, middle-class, and affluent districts. But the Department of Education outlines in a separate release called “Guiding Principles, A Resource Guide for Improving School Climate and Discipline” what it sees as the way forward for maintaining order and safety in schools without relying on correctional-setting security tactics.
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A Philadelphia School’s Big Bet on Nonviolence
Among the many alternatives to automatically suspending or expelling students or making rushed referrals to juvenile criminal justice, the DoE’s 37-page-long Guiding Principles mention restorative practices no less than nine times. This approach evolved from the restorative justice movement that seeks to make both victims and offenders whole and productive again through mediation and amends-making. Restorative practices in schools aim to prevent the spread of violence through non-punitive conflict resolution and peer support and to resolve problems that do occur peacefully through communication among victims, perpetrators and facilitators. Skeptics may think that this sounds like some hippy-dippy nonsense that’s doomed to fail when it hits the streets in a predominantly black inner-city school, but that’s not the case.
Last year I wrote for The Atlantic about a notorious North Philadelphia junior high school known for years as the “Jones Jail.” Its rambunctious students wreaked such terror on the neighborhood that the police put the streets surrounding the school on lockdown every day at dismissal. Nearby shop-keepers locked their doors and porches as 800 of the city’s poorest kids streamed out the doors, often reportedly climbing over parked cars in their unruly rush to get out of school. When the John Paul Jones Middle School was taken charter and reopened as the Memphis Street Academy, the new administration decided, to the mystified dismay of the police department , that they would strip the school of metal detectors and window gratings, get rid of the security guards, and instead utilize nonviolence based restorative practices.
The number of violent incidents dropped 90 percent in a single year.
Of course, many readers were skeptical of such a precipitous drop in such a short time. Maybe the school under-reported violent incidents. Maybe with no security guards violent incidents aren’t getting reported at all. But since the story ran more corroborating information has come from the police department to support the school’s claims. Since Memphis Street Academy initiated restorative practices, the police department says they no longer need to send the 11 patrol officers they used to send every day to oversee the hectic and potentially explosive dismissal time. The police department has been able to begin serving other schools in the area, which used to get barely any resources even when reporting something as serious as a student being hit by a car because the need for security at the old Jones Jail was so great. Juvenile crime rates in the immediate area are down, as are truancy and curfew violations. Officers are freed up to focus on the considerable amount of violent crime that can jump off at any time of day in this drug- and gun-ridden part of the city. At neighborhood town halls citizens reportedly praise students and the school for having solved a persistent neighborhood nuisance. Memphis Street Academy CEO Christine Borelli says the school’s restorative practices continue having a major impact. “We only have 2 serious incidents that require police involvement thus far this year.”