Services for Schools
Mediation, Restorative Practices, Dialogue Circles/Class Meetings, Bullying Prevention, Discipline Disparity Assessment and Response
Training, Services, Interventions, & Consulting
for positive school climate and academic success
Garrity Mediation & Consulting provides training, services, interventions, and consulting that build, maintain, and restore positive relationships to create and support a positive school climate and academic success.
The goal of all training and services for staff, students, and parents is to enhance student achievement by supporting the whole child, the staff, and the learning environment. Making positive connections keeps schools comfortable, safe, and successful.
Mediation
Conflict in school can distract students and staff from academics and disrupt the learning environment.
Mediation training and services for staff and students help schools address and manage conflict to ensure a positive instructional setting.
Training
Mediation training participants will learn and practice knowledge, skills, and methods:
- The approach and thinking of a mediator
- Patterns of conflict
- Working with anger and strong emotions
- Listening and problem solving skills
- Mediation process
- Training and managing student mediators and mediation services.
Services
Garrity Mediation & Consulting provides mediation training as well as services and interventions for individuals and groups.
Restorative Practices / Restorative Justice for Schools
Restorative Practices include both proactive and responsive methods for building, maintaining, and restoring positive relationships in schools.
Restorative Practices serve all students, parents, and staff across cultures and differences to support school climate and academic success.
Garrity Mediation & Consulting supports restorative practices in schools through training and services.
Training participants will learn:
Skills for teachers to build, maintain, and restore positive working relationships with each student.
Skills and methods for staff to bring students back to class and school in a positive, productive way that restores relationships and makes things right.
Proactive and Responsive skills and methods including:
- active listening
- affective questions
- emotional intelligence
- cultural competencies
- restorative questions
- restorative conferencing
- restorative reentry processes after referrals or suspensions.
Services include:
Conducting restorative conferences when someone has been harmed or the class or school have been affected.
Conducting restorative mediation for conflict between students
Conducting a reentry process when a student has been suspended
Dialogue Circles/Class meetings
Dialogue circles/class meetings build relationships among students and teachers, reduces conflict and bullying, builds community, and helps students feel respected in the classroom and the school. These conditions support academic success and behavioral improvement.
Training participants will learn and practice
- The effectiveness of dialogue circles/class meetings
- Skills and methods for conducting meetings effectively
- Using circles for community building, decision-making, problem-solving
Bullying Prevention
Students who are bullied, who bully, or who observe bullying are negatively affected in their academics, morale, feelings of safety, confidence, and social interactions.
A whole-school approach to bullying prevention supports student achievement by enhancing school climate and increasing school safety. An in-house coordinating committee is trained and supported in implementing the program.
Garrity Mediation & Consulting will:
- Develop a school-wide bullying prevention program (Olweus model)
- Train the Bullying Prevention Coordinating Committee
- Train school staff
- Conduct lessons for students
- Coach and consult on bullying situations
- Merge the program with other programs and methods in the school
Discipline Disparity Assessment & Response
Research reported by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder indicate that African American and Latino students are three times more likely to be suspended from school than their white peers. Schools can address this question through a process of assessment, planning, training, implementing, and reassessing. Reducing suspensions and building positive relationships enhances academic achievement and behavior.
Garrity Mediation & Consulting will support schools with:
- Assessment
- Planning
- Training
- For teachers and staff
- Skills and methods for building positive relationships with students Cultural
- competencies
- Methods for restoring relationships
- Interventions
- Implementing new methods
- Reassessment