Metro Class Readies For Restorative Justice

In a bid to expand its restorative justice practices, Metropolitan Business Academy has put together a class for the second year in a row that focuses on helping high schoolers learn that ​“there are other ways to deal with harm.” 

Metro English teacher Stephen Staysniak discussed the academic work happening with both teaching students about restorative practices and supporting students through rehabilitation and reconciliation instead of just punishment when they make mistakes. 

On Tuesday, Staysniak met up at the Water Street magnet school with this year’s five social work interns who will work at Metro: Briana Harrington, Courtney Maddox, Daymary Lopez, Nyla Johnay Conaway, and Tienna Guadarrama. 

Staysniak invited the interns to join the restorative work expected to happen this school year with the senior course called ​“Youth Justice and Practice,” led by him and his Metro colleague, civics teacher Julia Miller. 

In Metro’s library on Tuesday, the interns, Staysniak, and clinical social worker Connie Catrone, who oversees the interns each year, gathered to talk through the roles they all can play throughout the year with the restorative justice course and developing other supports for students. The first day of classes districtwide is Thursday.

Turnaround Time In Turnaround Room

Staysniak, who has taught at Metro for the past 11 years, estimated that 80 percent of Metro students engage with social workers and/or trauma clinicians throughout the school year. Metro has a total of about 400 students. 

About nine years ago Catrone began working at Metro to oversee the additional support of college social work interns to aid students because much of the school’s support staff’s time is used to fulfill student Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).

In just a single year interns often develop deep relationships with students. Ideally, Staysniak said, schools would offer students continuity of care by investing in more full-time social workers. 

The partnership with local college social work students began under former Metro Principal Judy Puglisi. 

Since its start, Catrone has seen an increasing need for student services. During the summer break of 2021, Catrone worked to address the growing need by securing Covid relief funds from the New Haven Public Schools district and used them to run a summer camp that allowed the 2021 social work interns to remain working into the summer with Metro students who desired that continuity of care. 

Metro’s mission centering restorative work over the years ​“keeps the heart of Metro the same,” Staysniak said, despite the several changes in leadership at Metro in recent years. 

Catrone added that ​“providing [college] student interns to adolescents works out well for them both.”

Over the years Catrone said she’s observed that students prefer someone closer in age because they prioritize taking them seriously. 

Metro’s current school social worker Chandni Patel began her work at Metro as a social work intern. 

This year’s interns attend Quinnipiac University, Southern Connecticut State University, Smith College, New York University, and Sacred Heart. 

Each intern will spend ten hours a week at the school. 

Staysniak said as an educator, ​“it’s a huge help to my practice” to have the interns connecting with the students and providing educators like himself with updates on the student needs. 

The social work interns’ schedules consist of them each being available to students in the school’s turnaround room for an hour. 

The turnaround room at Metro serves as a space for students to go when they come to school with home-concerns on their mind and can’t focus in class, can’t process their emotions, or just need a space to deal with life concerns. 

“It keeps the kids in school when they have a place like the turnaround room, and its one step closer to the classroom for us,” Staysniak said 

Boundary testing and resistance is normal adolescent stuff, Staysniak said, but teachers typically don’t have the capacity to deal with this in the classroom. 

The turnaround rooms allows for students to have the space to navigate their thoughts and emotions without disrupting their class. 

This year Staysniak will teach two journalism courses, first year English, and the restorative justice course alongside Miller. 

He expressed hope that the interns will attend grade-level meetings to report out on their insights and trends they see at the school. 

Staysniak is the senior team lead and chair of Metro’s School Planning & Management Team (SPMT) and invited the interns to attend the meetings that typically happen the first Wednesday of the month. Catrone shared at Tuesday’s meetup that she hopes to designate social work intern Nyla Johnay Conaway as the liaison between the SPMT and Student and Staff Support team (SSST).

“You’re going to get busy really fast,” Staysniak warned Tuesday. 

Practicing "Youth Justice," In Class

Staysniak and Miller’s capstone course, ​“Youth Justice and Practice,” is for the school’s law pathway seniors. The law pathway students have spent their high school journeys taking courses like constitutional and contemporary law and doing mock trials. 

The course’s year-long initiative is doing the work of the Metro Youth Justice Panel (MYJP) which is grounded in restorative principals and demonstrating what would it look like in a school with no suspensions.

“The research tells us that a kid who’s acting out in a way that causes them to be suspended, the last thing they need is more alienation, is to have those relationships be further broken and them being taken from their school community with no support,” Staysniak said. 

The 90-minute class arranges its senior law students to practice the roles of judge, clerk, student advocates (lawyers), and a student jury. 

The seniors first get trained during the first month of the school year and take an oath of confidentially before each hearing. 

The course takes on the ​“cases” of Metro students who made mistakes like chronically skipping class and leaving the school building without excuse. 

The student who made the mistake opts in to getting the restorative support from the MYJP seniors who host a hearing for the student who is taking accountability for their mistake. 

The class’s student advocates have the job of providing the ​“jury” with the student’s story so the jury can operate with a full set of facts. 

Instead of labeling the restorative method as a ​“trial,” the course work is referred to as a hearing or panel. 

“One of the issues we’re working through is so many of our students have really negative experiences with the criminal justice system and so one of the things we’re working through is how this doesn’t have to look like a court,” Staysniak said. 

Staysniak invited the interns to join the MYJP work throughout the year. 

The outcome of the hearing is not for the jury to find the student guilty or not guilty, because the student who the hearing is for has already opted to participate as a way of holding themselves accountable for the mistake. 

The goal of the jury instead is to create a contract for the student who has made a mistake that will satisfy three conditions: first, the student takes accountability for whatever harm has been done; second, they agree to repair any harm that’s been done with three to five consequences; and third, they accept supports so the mistake is not repeated. 

Staysniak says he sees the interns being included in this year’s work as they can be written into the hearing contracts for a student who could benefit from their services. 

“Something that might be written into a contract is support, like you have the option to attend one mood management course. A lot of times kids want to have services from social work interns but there’s just no room. Y’all are just too busy so we say we’re going to reserve you a spot,” Staysniak said. 

Staysniak added that the interns may learn about student mistakes like a fight in a bathroom that teachers or school staff don’t know of, so he sees them also helping to refer students to consider a hearing with MYJP. 

Last year the course had hearings for six cases. 

During one hearing, a ninth grader made a deep connection with one of the senior student advocates which resulted in the final contract having a written ​“consequence” for the ninth grader to check-in with that senior during the year. 

Staysniak said as the course grows, he can see it developing into having a family mediation type of component or proactive mediations when there are student tensions before harm is done. 

Lopez suggested the course introduce a mediation meeting option for student leaders to host mediations for students to talk through tensions while educators supervise. This would help resolve building conflicts and be less intimidating by involving less people, she said. 

Staysniak agreed, while adding that Metro needs more designated staffers or student leaders to lead mediations. 

“If you have that experience I would love if you would share some of those skills with the group,” Catrone advised Lopez. 

The MYJP class stemmed from a Yale-run after school program called project youth court founded by Yale undergrads in 2014, which Metro students participated in about six year ago. 

This resulted in a small group of Metro educators, including Staysniak and Miller, coming together to replicate the project’s student-centered approach to juvenile justice at Metro. 

The team created a curriculum for the Metro Youth Justice Panel while adapting it to the schools model. 

In March of 2020 the team hosted its first hearing with administration and it went well, however then schools were shut down for 13 months and the course was put on pause. 

During the 2021 – 2022 school year the initiative’s grant money ran out and the team of educators involved had too high caseloads to continue the work outside of school. 

Last year the initiative was pitched and approved by Principal Coleman to become not just an after school effort but a course at Metro. This led to MYJP hearing half a dozen ​“cases” resolve to address harm caused by student mistakes. 

Staysniak emphasized that while MYJP won’t be able to address every issue that happens in the school, it does train two dozen seniors to ​“move about the building with this skill set” along with the students involved in last year’s six hearings

“We think that there are seeds that this can really be a part of a culture shift within our building,” he said. 

The course teaches all involved to think more about our conditioning to believe punitive consequences are the only route to resolving mistakes, Staysniak said. 

In MYJP, students learn restorative responses and that ​“there is another way” to deal with harm. 

It also normalizes getting access to mental health supports and building connections with social workers and/or trauma clinicians and can motivate students to continue to seek out supports in the future, Staysniak said. 

Ideally, Staysniak said, a designated school restorative practice coach would be at Metro and all schools at some point to deal with the follow through of MYJP hearings and other restorative efforts. 

Students experiencing MYJP in all capacities are able to ​“tap into a radical imagination” and see that ​“another world is possible because it exists at Metro.”