Building Relationships. Strengthening Communities. Repairing Harm.

Becoming a Restorative Practitioner

by Lindsay Gange

November 2, 2015

FIRST POST!

Welcome to my blog! Becoming a Restorative Practitioner

I am currently serving as the education support staff member (and de facto social media coordinator) at Partners in Restorative Initiatives (PiRI) in Rochester, NY. I have begun this blog to document my journey from being a trainee in restorative practices to a trainer of and leader of restorative practices. I intend to work for PiRI until the summer of 2017 before I begin my next adventure in Boston!

I was hired by PiRI, a non-profit organization, because fifteen schools in the Rochester City School District are participating in a program that will enable schools to independently train their own employees and students to lead peace circles in their schools and they needed more hands on deck, given that this pilot program is a huge task. Although the Rochester City School District, a district that serves 30,000 students, has many talented staff members who have dedicated their lives and often must give much of their livelihood to make ends meet in their classrooms, everyone in the RCSD suffers because of the high rate of poverty in Rochester. PiRI hopes to improve communication and promote healing among staff members and students and to advocate for restorative disciplinary practices.

If you’re not from the Western New York area and are someone from the New York City suburbs like I am where we think that the state of New York ends at the northern end of White Plains, you should know the easiest was for me to describe Rochester’s location is to say that Rochester is just across a big lake from Canada. Because restorative practices encourage getting to know others’ stories, I will immediately divulge that I am a Jewish and Italian girl from the great Garden State, and grew up in a village with no traffic lights right between New York City and Philadelphia where the terms “lake effect,” “garbage plate” and “leaving the house when there is more than a foot of snow on the ground” aren’t part of our lexicon. It has taken everything in me not to entitle this blog, “Tales from the North Pole: The Life and Times of a Frozen Pizzabagel.” Snaps for me for having such restraint.

Rather than explain everything you might want to know about restorative practices now, ensuring that you’ll never come back to my blog, I’ve decided to keep this introduction brief and share with you what I learn along the way. Hopefully, I’ll be witty and interesting enough for you to keep coming back!

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