Case Study: Collaborative Conversations in Action. A Novel Approach to Restorative Practices

At Lumen High School, students take responsibility for their own behavior with the guidance of trusted adults. This approach helps students recognize their role and responsibility within conflicts and pushes them to work together as a community.

The leaders who opened Lumen in 2020 wanted a form of discipline that was not punitive. The school serves a population of teen parents, many of whom had challenging school experiences before coming to Lumen. According to leaders, this includes students who had been suspended and expelled from previous schools. Leaders did not want to signal to students that once again they were not welcome at school.

“Our mission is the whole student,” said Lumen’s principal. “We have students here who are like, ‘I'm not here for my high school diploma. I'm here for the relationships. I'm here for the resources.’” This meant the school had to find a discipline model that would center relationships.

“When you have a population with such high trauma as ours, there’s going to be behavioral challenges,” said one of three members of the school’s Restorative Justice (RJ) team, the group that oversees school discipline. Student behavioral challenges commonly include the use of profanity, bullying in school and on social media, phone use in the classroom, incomplete classwork, and skipping class or arriving late to school. The school needed an approach that was not punitive but that was also effective, so students would feel safe and motivated to learn.

The answer was Collaborative Conversations — one-on-one conversations that help students identify the source of their actions, take responsibility, and build a plan toward improved behavior. In a Collaborative Conversation, a trusted adult asks a series of questions to support students in recognizing their responsibility and making a plan to address their behavior. These questions include: “Do you have enough courage to make changes? Is there anyone you need to make amends to? What is a goal for yourself after this experience? What kind of support do you need?”

Revising Their Approach

At the end of the 2022–23 school year, Lumen found that their approach to discipline was not working as well as they wanted. In focus groups, students said bullying was a problem, and teachers noted that frequent outbursts made teaching difficult. Over the summer, Lumen adjusted its approach. At the start of the 2023–24 school year, the school had implemented a Restorative Justice team to replace a single coordinator, created new protocols, and communicated clearer behavior expectations to students. 

The RJ team took the lead on conducting Collaborative Conversations, though teachers continued to do them when it would not disrupt teaching. The RJ team began collecting and regularly analyzing data using Supported School, a free app aligned with Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS). Data has helped the RJ team identify and tailor their responses to individual students. “At our [RJ Team] meetings,” said one member, “we can pull up the history and see, who is having the most problems right now? Who are we talking to the most? Is there something that we can preemptively do? Can we go to them and figure out what is going on? Is there a larger issue?”

Staff believe that clarifying procedures in the 2023–24 school year improved student perceptions about school discipline. “I think there was a feeling [last year], and many of the students expressed this, that anything goes here. ‘We can basically do anything and there isn’t going to be a consequence,’” said one staff member. “And so this year, I think they’ve seen that we are following through, and we never want to create an exclusionary environment.”

Not only student perception improved. In fall 2023, teachers and staff felt 10% more confident implementing Collaborative Conversations than the previous year. There was also a 9% increase in teacher/staff perception that they were having a positive impact on students. Following improvements to Collaborative Conversations, teachers reported that they can better navigate conflict with students, are more likely to avoid power struggles, and are better able to hold students to high behavior expectations. (Download our guide for graphs.)

Classroom teachers in particular appreciated having a clearer system and an RJ team guiding the process. “Our students require a lot of scaffolds, a lot of support to access grade level content. It’s nice to have Collaborative Conversations sort of off our plate a bit so that we can actually focus on the work that we’re doing in terms of learning,” said a Lumen teacher. “There’s so much less micromanaging [than last year] and there’s a clear process for handing things off to someone.”