School Justice

Are you or your teachers frustrated with carrots and sticks, detention rooms, and suspension-antiquated school discipline practices that simply do not work with the students entering our classrooms today? Our kids have complex needs, and we must empower and embrace them with restorative practices that not only change behaviors but transform students into productive citizens, accountable for their own actions.

Much more than a response to harm, restorative justice nurtures relational, interconnected school cultures. The wisdom embedded within its principles and practices is being welcomed at a time when exclusionary discipline and zero-tolerance policies are recognized as perpetuating student apathy, disproportionality, and the school-to-prison pipeline.

Accomplished educator Kass Minor delivers an inspiring and practical exploration of what it means to be a just teacher in a system that actively incentivizes injustice. The author explains how to build joyful experiences even in the face of inevitable injustice and demonstrates how to accept the seemingly conflicting experience of joy in the face of heartbreak. In the book, you'll learn to be a catalyst for change, unlearning the patterns of school that have marginalized children while becoming aware of tenets of justice as they manifest in educational spaces.

The Arthur G. Dozier Boys School was a well-guarded secret in Florida for over a century, until reports of cruelty, abuse, and “mysterious” deaths shut the institution down in 2011. Established in 1900, the juvenile reform school accepted children as young as six years of age for crimes as harmless as truancy or trespassing. The boys sent there, many of whom were Black, were subject to brutal abuse, routinely hired out to local farmers by the school’s management as indentured labor, and died either at the school or attempting to escape its brutal conditions.

Efforts to address inequities within our schools tend to ignore the underlying beliefs that sustain injustices, and focus instead on short-lived policies and practices. This book takes a different approach to eradicating educational disparities. Drawing on more than 40 interviews with teachers, principals, and district leaders, Manya C. Whitaker offers educators guidance for leading a school or district grounded in social justice that centers teachers - not just teaching practices - and that focuses on the belief systems that shape decision-making.

This book guides PreK-12 educators and school-based clinicians on how to embed socially just practices into their day-to-day roles to achieve more equitable outcomes. Social Justice in Schools uses vivid vignettes and personal reflections to demystify complex concepts. It pinpoints ways educators can better understand their racially and ethnically minoritized students, reflect on and challenge implicit bias in assessment and decision making, and build meaningful home–school relationships.

A Romantic Mystery The teacher had apparently walked in on a robbery and been killed in his classroom Resource Officer Lanell Rhodes is determined to see justice for the young man. Pilot Connor Prescott is shocked to learn of the death of the young teacher his sister has been dating. But when he arrives at the school and seeks information, he is warned by the attractive Resource Officer that he is not to meddle in police business. Lanell and Connor share a common goal of finding justice for the victim, but can they overcome their differences and share a future together as well?

When 14-year-old Carlotta Walls walked up the stairs of Little Rock Central High School on September 25, 1957, she and eight other Black students only wanted to make it to class. But the journey of the “Little Rock Nine”, as they came to be known, would lead the nation on an even longer and much more turbulent path, one that would challenge prevailing attitudes, break down barriers, and forever change the landscape of America.

In 2014, Chessy Prout was a freshman at St. Paul's School, a prestigious boarding school in New Hampshire, when a senior boy sexually assaulted her as part of a ritualized game of conquest. Chessy bravely reported her assault to the police and testified against her attacker in court. Then, in the face of unexpected backlash from her once-trusted school community, she shed her anonymity to help other survivors find their voice.

The stated goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are often reasonable, if not noble—to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment for all. Yet, as more and more people are discovering, DEI as commonly practiced isn't a natural extension of past civil rights movements or an ethical framework for opposing discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, etc. Rather, it is inextricably connected with an illiberal and authoritarian ideology—Critical Social Justice—that demands adherence to its tenets and punishes any dissent from its dogma.

All of the humans in schools—kids and adults—deserve joy. Yet, our experiences in schools, and the experiences of our students, are often far from joyful. Humans Who Teach invites listeners to explore the complicated humanity of those who teach, with a focus on how we have been socialized to accept the status quo, our very real fears in disrupting the status quo, and how we can rely on our human capacity to love to engage in teaching for social justice even in the presence of fear.

Restorative justice represents "a paradigm shift in the way Americans conceptualize and administer punishment," says author Maisha T. Winn, from a focus on crime to a focus on harm, including the needs of both those who were harmed and those who caused it.

This book is the culmination of a lifetime of love and lessons that have shaped my personal journey from a young man in crisis to a champion for children. There were critical moments in my story where self-appointed “Hope Dealers” like my mother, Alice Lovelace, and my educator, Dr. Lorraine Wilson, intervened in my projected course to failure. The lessons I learned from them became the foundation of my own work with and for young people facing challenges that they often did not believe they can face alone: hopelessness, shame, disability, tragic home life, generally summed up as the ...

Parents who have enrolled their children in a Montessori school deserve to know that Montessori organizations are turning political by promoting the social justice movement. Social justice is the antithesis of the Montessori Method, which recognizes that each child is an individual with his own self-created character. Social justice has its roots in Marxism, viewing people as members of either oppressed or oppressive groups with innate characteristics. There are Montessori schools pushing queer pedagogy, drag pedagogy, gender transition, restorative justice, revisionist history, and fake ...

Boots On The Block By Kyri Demby When Bentley, a carefree middle schooler from Pleasure Ridge Park, suddenly falls ill, his best friend De’Shawn—sharp, curious, and from the quieter suburbs of St. Matthews—can’t shake the feeling that something more than cafeteria mystery meat is to blame. What begins as a worried Google search quickly turns into a deep dive into environmental justice, exposing the hidden dangers of aging pipes, chemical spills, and forgotten neighborhoods. Together, the two unlikely heroes form PRP Water Watch, a grassroots movement powered by research, resilience,...

Criminal Trial Lawyer… Memoirs of Managing Chaos and embracing it. The book, sometimes humorously, describes my memoirs and adventures as a successful criminal trial lawyer both as Prosecutor and Defense Counsel. It begins as a child and explains the influences which made me a criminal trial lawyer driven by my desire to serve The Lady of Justice, Justicia. I fell in love with her and lived a Samurai of Justice love story. Beginning with a Trial Lawyers philosophy, I describe the entire chaotic thinking and acting process from meeting the client and trial preparation, through actual ...

Black Lives Matter at School succinctly generalizes lessons from successful challenges to institutional racism that have been won through the Black Lives Matter at School movement. This book will inspire many more educators and activists to join the Black Lives Matter at School movement at a moment when this antiracist work in our schools could not be more urgent and critical to education justice. The book includes essays, interviews, poems, resolutions, and more from educators, students, and parents around the country who have been building Black Lives Matter at School on the ground.

At fourteen years old, Carlotta Walls was the youngest member of the Little Rock Nine. The journey to integration in a place deeply against it would not be not easy. Yet Carlotta, her family, and the other eight students and their families answered the call to be part of the desegregation order issued by the US Supreme Court in its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case.

The last thing Ash expects when she lands in Clearwater, Florida is to be stalked by a troubled teenager. If that's not bad enough, she is caught in a shooting spree next to the nearby elementary school. The cops think it’s an attempt at mass killing, but Ash wonders if the only victim was specifically targeted by the killer. Will she manage to identify him and have him arrested before he comes after her?

In 1951, Carlotta Walls Lanier was one of the nine African-American students to integrate Little Rock High School, and the first to earn a diploma. Here she provides a firsthand account of her experiences - including the bombing that rocked her home, the constant threats she and her classmates faced, and the pressure and bullying her parents endured.