Hacking School Discipline Together: 10 Ways to Create a Culture of Empathy and Responsibility Using Schoolwide Restorative Justice

by Jeffrey Benson

Eliminate school discipline and classroom management problems with schoolwide restorative justice

Washington Post bestseller Hacking School Discipline brought restorative practice to classrooms around the world. The sequel, Hacking School Discipline TOGETHER, is helping all stakeholders--teachers, students, counselors, principals, superintendents, and parents--create a schoolwide restorative justice system that can change the culture of schools around the world.

When administrators, teachers and staff are not responding collaboratively to student behaviors, schools can succumb to a frustrating and anxious culture of ignoring or punishing, in which both students and adults struggle.

We may feel powerless to have a positive impact on our students and not trust the other adults to do the right thing, rather than confidently addressing student behaviors in ways that help them learn new skills, build better relationships, and learn to be accountable.

Enter the Hacking School Discipline sequel Hacking School Discipline TOGETHER, featuring all new content from 40-year teacher, school leader, and restorative justice expert Jeffrey Benson, who provides a roadmap for schoolwide staff unity, compassion, consistency, and restorative practices that do far more than send students to detention and suspension.

Benson not only shares the kind of practical solutions that typify all Hack Learning Series books, he pulls you into the story of a school shifting to a culture of restorative practices; you see one school's transformation while you learn how to create your own. Hacking School Discipline TOGETHER shows you how

Fix the chronic structural flaws in routines and practices that make it harder for students to do the right thing.Take positive actions when working with a student who is struggling to behave well.Clarify the role administrators must play in addressing significant misbehaviors.Take the critical steps for integrating a student back into the classroom.Prevent misbehaviors rather than react to them.Understand how important it is for all staff to be pulling in the same direction and how to make that happen.
This book uniquely speaks to administrators guiding a school to a culture of restorative practice, to staff members longing to help all students learn from their impulsive decisions, and to teachers creating classrooms that foster responsibility, forgiveness, and accountability.

We can change the status quo in which the adults in a school are independently making stressful decisions with struggling students, and students are concluding that their biggest mistake was being caught, and instead, follow this roadmap to a school where administrators increasingly trust staff and staff increasingly trust administrators, and students get the benefit of what we do educate.

You've read other books about school discipline; you may have read the original HSD. Now, it's time for Hacking School Discipline TOGETHER, the restorative justice education book that reveals the immense possibilities of a schoolwide discipline system rooted in accountability, compassion, and restoration.

Read the new HSD today; eliminate discipline problems tomorrow.

211 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 23, 2024

Reviews

[Jonny · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very helpful guidebook for awakening my ‘stale’ thinking on classroom specific interactions and refreshes my perspectives on the importance of systems thinking for school and student improvement. I am no longer in the classroom and share my recommendation for Hacking School Discipline Together understanding that what happens outside the door of a classroom can either support or create obstacles to learning. This book offers not only insights on global thinking about social justice, but also roadmaps, checklists, timelines and ‘hacks’ to make school wide changes that will directly improve classroom learning. The author provides first hand evidence of success and tells these stories in a well crafted way. His storytelling method had me engaged as a ‘committee’ member and I found myself while reading, raising my hand to interject my own comments during the fictitious meetings Jeffrey created in his chapters.

I first worked/volunteered along side Jeffrey in the early 1990s at the Boston Area Educators for Social Responsibility, where I witnessed his mission driven passion for not only thinking about social justice, but creating and implementing systems and curriculums for making important improvements to those school systems that needed change.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful and affirming book on developing a school wide behavior management system based on restorative practices

I am entering my 3rd year as a school principal, and I read this book over the summer as I reflected on our existing processes for responding to student misbehavior and what changes we might need to consider.

This book affirmed many of our practices, and also suggested many practical solutions for improving our process, including a timeline for rolling out ideas.

I will be implementing a number of suggestions from this book as we begin our new school year.