Professor Rick Kelly brings 14 years of experience in restorative justice to students at George Brown College

Professor Rick Kelly | Photo: Tina Todaro /The Dialog

The George Brown College (GBC) social innovation hub, will be offering students the opportunity to participate in projects with a restorative justice focus, receiving a student certificate of participation.

Acting as a hub within a hub, the restorative hub “takes 14 years of experience and creates an organizational model around it,” said Rick Kelly, a professor in the child and youth worker program.

According to Kelly, “with that (restorative justice practices) as an anchor it has evolved its presence in a number of different ways, which flow through the core curriculum adding a restorative element to all the core courses that are taught in the program.

“If we’re teaching something on adolescent development or family or community or trauma, then there’s a restorative element there,” said Kelly.

Three students from the hub, or “hubsters” as they’re known in the program, have had the opportunity to develop templates for workshops for peacemakers at the grade six level, according to Kelly.

One model used is the “peacemaking circle,” which provides students with the principles and tools for running hub-management meetings to make them both effective and humane.

Another model is the “trauma informed circle,” which encompasses a student-led support group—the model that has been used in a variety of different settings such as the Aboriginal Education Centre that uses “body mapping” as a tool to identify trauma.

According to Kelly, three students in the program have used what they learned in their placement inside Jamaican men’s and women’s prisons and alternative youth education settings.

“The training has been a very good way to reach out into the community because those are typically places where are students are in placement,” said Kelly.

Having been a certified trainer for the International Institute for Restorative Practices, Kelly has been facilitating two-day training for all levels of students in the program as well as agency partners since 2005.

The training was initially geared towards graduating students as a certification for their portfolios, since then the program has grown and Kelly has been able to do 25 training sessions with a total of 500-700 people.

The training gives a student a certificate of participation for completing the “Facilitating Restorative Conferencing” module which can also be used as a partial credit towards for either a degree or a full certificate.

School boards are incorporating restorative options as part of progressive discipline policies, and it’s also an increasing part of youth justice legislation in Canada.

For more information on upcoming training sessions students can contact Kelly atrkelly@georgebrown.ca