Equity & Excellence in Education

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Teachers of Color Implementing Restorative

Justice Practices in Elementary Classrooms: A
DisCrit Analysis

Saili S. Kulkarni & Melanie M. Chong

To cite this article: Saili S. Kulkarni & Melanie M. Chong (2021) Teachers of Color Implementing
Restorative Justice Practices in Elementary Classrooms: A DisCrit Analysis, Equity & Excellence in
Education, 54:4, 378-392, DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2021.2000519

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2021.2000519

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EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION
2021, VOL. 54, NO. 4, 378–392
https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2021.2000519

Teachers of Color Implementing Restorative Justice Practices in

Elementary Classrooms: A DisCrit Analysis
a b
Saili S. Kulkarni and Melanie M. Chong
a
San José State University, San Jose, California; bVanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee

ABSTRACT
This article provides case studies of two elementary school teachers of color
who enact restorative justice practices in their classrooms, which include
students of color with disabilities. Although the positive effects of restorative
justice practices has been well-documented for general education class­
rooms, less is known about how restorative justice interacts with disability
justice and accounts for disability and difference. Additionally, there has
been little research on the influences of restorative justice practices with
young children, including those in early elementary grades. In this study, we
explored these gaps and how two teachers of color envisioned and enacted
restorative justice practices. Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory
(DisCrit) illuminates how teachers of color navigate structural racism and
ableism through restorative justice practices in their classrooms. The article
concludes with recommendations for building networks and community to
resist institutional barriers to implementation.

Johnathan is a Filipino boy with sandy brown hair and dark skin. When he started kindergarten, he cried
every day during the first few weeks of school. His teacher was exasperated. With 28 other children in the
classroom, a scripted curriculum to closely follow, and students at varied academic levels of learning, she
sat Johnathan in a corner, crying, and continued class. The student success team at the school became
aware of Johnathan’s crying after his teacher referred him. They decided immediately that Johnathan
either must be experiencing a troubled home situation or may be emotionally unready to participate in
school. Some, including the school psychologist, ready to diagnose him as emotionally disturbed, even
suggested that Johnathan should receive an evaluation for special education services.
As a special education teacher of color (TOC) on the student success team and as someone who
supported students with disabilities in Johnathan’s classroom, Saili (first author) was in close proxi­
mity with him daily. She was surprised and saddened by how quickly he was labeled as emotionally
disturbed simply by crying. Saili decided to learn more about Johnathan and asked him about his
family and why he was crying. He explained that he missed his loving family and was experiencing
separation anxiety. After a few weeks of sharing and being around peers, he became confident, a strong
ally to disabled peers, and a classroom leader. Quick judgments could have led to very different
outcomes for this young Brown child and changed the course of his school trajectory. As
a paraprofessional and a middle school TOC in an inclusive classroom, Melanie (second author)
had a similar view into the education system for students with disabilities in their two primary
instructional settings. She saw students of color with disabilities quickly labeled as defiant or disruptive
by their teachers without consideration for how behaviors are often indicators of classroom environ­
ments failing to support students’ needs.

CONTACT Saili S. Kulkarni saili.kulkarni@sjsu.edu San José State University, Lurie College of Education, One Washington
Square, San Jose, CA 95192
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website
© 2021 University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Education
 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION 379

The outcome of Johnathan’s story is quite different for many other young Black and Brown
children, and for children with disabilities, who experience more inappropriate referrals and zero-
tolerance disciplinary practices than their white peers (Gilliam et al., 2016). Data from US schools
show recent increases in harsh and exclusionary disciplinary measures for young children of color
with disabilities (US Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2014). Black children are 2.8
times more likely than their white peers to receive harsher punishments for similar behaviors and are
more likely to be segregated or sent out of class when a challenging behavior is presented (Skiba, 2013).
Broderick and Leonardo (2016) noted that harsher disciplinary measures and segregation of students
of color are often the result of how students are perceived in schools. For example, Morris (2016)
argued that Black girls are rarely seen as girls, an idea called age compression. Black girls are seen as
adult women and experience being stereotyped.
The concept of goodness is often interrelated with how children of color are categorized and
compartmentalized across labels such as disability and discipline (Broderick & Leonardo, 2016).
These deficit perceptions reinforce existing racist and ableist ideologies and link to serious negative
outcomes, including overrepresentation of students of color labeled with disabilities (Kulkarni, 2020).
Skiba et al. (2005) highlighted how rates of suspension and expulsion of students of color were
predictors in their overidentification for specific disability categories, including learning disability,
intellectual disability, emotional behavioral disabilities, and speech and language impairments.
Further, the American Civil Liberties Union reported that students of color with disabilities are
more likely to become part of the criminal justice system for behaviors that could be addressed
through restorative practices (Hinger, 2017). As Love (2019) explained, “for too many, suspension is
a birthright of being young and Black” (p. 5).
Our purpose in this qualitative study was to understand how elementary TOCs utilize restorative
justice practices (RJPs) in elementary classrooms. Teacher case studies have demonstrated the
importance of RJPs for all students, including those who are multiply marginalized1 and dispropor­
tionate targets of exclusionary discipline policies (Kulkarni et al., 2021). In this study, we explored
three research questions:
1. What RJPs do TOCs use in their elementary school classrooms?
2. How do TOCs implement RJPs with students of color with disabilities?
3. How do TOCs navigate institutional barriers to implementation of restorative justice (RJ) across
racism and ableism?

Overrepresentation of Multiply Marginalized Youth in Special Education

The overrepresentation of multiply marginalized students in special education has been well-
documented since the late 1960s (Dunn, 1968). Cavendish et al. (2018) cautioned, however, that
much of this research within the field of special education has failed to alleviate the problem. This is
likely because of the types of research valued, the use of white students as a reference point/norm, and
an overall epistemological stance within the field that centers whiteness (Cavendish et al., 2018).
Specifically, there is importance in learning directly from the voices of multiply marginalized youth
(Annamma, 2018; Connor, 2008) who are overrepresented in the special education system. We further
emphasize learning from the experiences of TOCs (Kohli & Pizarro, 2016), including special education
TOCs (Boveda & Aronson, 2019; Kulkarni, 2021). Engaged TOCs who create RJ spaces for multiply
marginalized students are an underrepresented population in recent research. TOCs often draw on
their own experiences with under-resourced classrooms, irrelevant curriculum, and an educational
system that privileges middle-class, white ways of knowing and being (Kohli, 2012). The experiences of
these TOCs have important implications for how they enact justice in their own classrooms (Kohli,
2012).
380 S. S. KULKARNI AND M. M. CHONG

TOCs
TOCs are important in reducing discriminatory schooling practices and often work to challenge the
oppression of marginalized communities (Kohli, 2012). Additionally, research has suggested that
students of color benefit from teachers who share their backgrounds and draw the students into
culturally sustaining curricula (Duncan-Andrade, 2007; Paris & Alim, 2017). TOCs also have the
ability to work with their students to critically examine inequities. For this reason, TOCs may choose
humanizing practices for multiply marginalized students. For example, Alvarez (2017) noted in his
study how a Black male teacher, Mr. Sellers, had deep roots in the community and genuine connec­
tions to families, allowing youth to process the impacts of their trauma and heal.
Limited studies have included the perspectives, experiences, and challenges of TOCs as they work
across the identities of disability and race (Boveda & Aronson, 2019; Boveda & McCray, 2021;
Kulkarni, 2021), although research has highlighted the lack of special education TOCs (e.g.,
Billingsley et al., 2019). The field has relatively ignored intersectional and sociocultural identities
(Pugach et al., 2018). By contrast, teacher education has attended to intersectional identities while
erasing the identity of disability (Pugach et al., 2018). As Boveda and Aronson (2019) pointed out,
there is a need to look at disability as an intersectional marker of difference in broader educational
spaces. Although simply being a TOC does not necessarily create consciousness, TOCs who express
a commitment to justice have been shown to improve student academic and socioemotional outcomes
(Irizarry & Donaldson, 2012).

RJ
RJ can be defined as an approach that focuses retroactively on repairing the harm caused by an
offending behavior, while still holding the offender responsible for their actions, without the use of zero-
tolerance disciplinary measures (Cormier, 2002). By addressing wrongdoing and harm (Zehr, 2015), RJ
in education can support teachers and teacher educators in (re)imagining what equity can look like in
the classroom. RJPs emphasize (1) defining misbehavior as harm done to others, (2) expressing feelings
and needs in a dialogue as part of the problem-solving process, (3) seeking restitution and restoration of
relationships, (4) recognizing wrongdoing as an opportunity for learning, (5) giving all affected persons
voices in the restoration process, and (6) accepting accountability (Hopkins, 2002).
Research has supported the implementation of school-based RJPs to mitigate the disparate use of
exclusionary discipline practices for multiply marginalized youth, especially in middle- and high
school settings (Anyon et al., 2016; Gregory et al., 2016; Vincent et al., 2011). However, there is
a dearth of information on the implementation of RJPs in elementary classrooms. The existing
literature for elementary RJPs only incorporates perspectives of school leaders (Farr et al., 2020) and
school psychologists (Ingraham et al., 2016) and does not separate experiences of elementary teachers
from colleagues working with older students (Gray, 2021). Additionally, there has been limited
research with TOCs committed to addressing RJPs with students who are multiply marginalized
across disability and race.
Research on special education and RJ has focused on specific adaptations for disability without
mention of race, ethnicity, or language considerations (Burnett et al., 2015). S. A. Annamma and Winn
(2019) suggested the need for teacher education programs and practices that actively disrupt educa­
tional and social inequities while simultaneously creating structures that support teachers’ transfor­
mative work (Winn, 2018). There is a need, therefore, for RJ research that centers race and disability.

Theoretical framework
We drew from Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory (DisCrit; Annamma et al., 2013) and
restorative justice theory (RJT; McCold & Wachtel, 2003) to understand how race and disability intersect
to inform disciplinary outcomes for multiply marginalized youth. We used DisCrit and RJT to
 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION 381

understand how elementary TOCs use RJPs for multiply marginalized children and highlight their
successes and challenges. DisCrit has seven main tenets, of which we focused on (1) how racism and
ableism are interdependent and propagate normalcy (Tenet 1), (2) privileging of marginalized voices
(Tenet 4), (3) whiteness and ability as property (Tenet 6), and (4) activism and support for resistance
(Tenet 7). DisCrit highlights how racism and ableism uphold normalcy for dominant groups (mainly
white, able-bodied). DisCrit aids in thinking about elementary classrooms where racism and ableism are
upheld through zero-tolerance disciplinary practices (S. A. Annamma & Winn, 2019). By disrupting the
normative structure of schools and emphasizing multiply marginalized groups of individuals, DisCrit
centers the voices and experiences of elementary TOCs who work with students across disability and race.
RJT includes three conceptual structures. We focused on how the use of RJPs with multiply
marginalized children is itself resistance that elementary TOCs use, often in defiance of schoolwide
discipline policies. We specifically focused on the social discipline window, highlighting the choices
elementary TOCs employ in disrupting social discipline in schools and positioning them as primary
stakeholders who work to repair harm (McCold & Wachtel, 1998). Overall, the use of DisCrit and RJT
ties together the importance of elementary school TOCs and necessitates case study exemplars of
working at these intersections via employing RJPs.

Method and data sources

During the 2018–2019 school year, we collected data with and from two elementary school TOCs located in
the California Bay Area (see the Appendix). We recruited TOCs through a social justice-themed newsletter
for an organization committed to racial justice. We reviewed and screened email inquiries to find teachers
who (1) worked in elementary classrooms, (2) self-identified as TOCs, (3) expressed commitment to using
RJPs,2 and (4) supported at least one student with an identified disability3 in their classroom. We selected
teachers who also clearly expressed a strong commitment to racial literacy (Kohli & Pizarro, 2016).

Research design
We chose qualitative, multiple-case studies of elementary school TOCs and their students who engage
in RJPs for several reasons. First, we were asking how questions (Yin, 2017) about the RJPs that
elementary TOCs employed. Second, our aim was to develop detailed understandings (Bhattacharya,
2017) of each teacher and the RJPs their schools were using. Finally, each case can afford new
understandings, relations, and concepts through and across cases (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015).
In the first month of the study, we familiarized ourselves with local districts’ RJ training resources. Saili
observed a district’s two-day training with teachers, social workers, school counselors, and paraprofes­
sionals. We also reviewed district-level RJ handbooks and talked to facilitators at participants’ schools to
learn about current district practices (see Figures 1 and 2). We then set up initial, in-depth interviews to
learn about participants’ educational histories and decisions to employ RJPs. After the initial interviews,
the two participants completed journal prompts with a series of questions about their practices (see the
Appendix). Each teacher completed a total of three interviews and six journal prompts. We continuously
asked follow-up questions and checked in with the participants about our initial findings.

Data analysis
Data analysis included reviews of transcribed audio, interview data, journal prompts, and follow-up
questions. Data were stored, reviewed, and analyzed using Dedoose. We used descriptive coding and
in vivo first-cycle codes, followed by theoretical/elaborative second-cycle coding (Saldaña, 2016).
Because our theoretical approach was to understand how racism and ableism operated interdepen­
dently through participants’ classrooms and school systems, we specifically looked at how elementary
TOCs countered or struggled within those systems through RJPs, as well as confirming or disconfirm­
ing evidence (Saldaña, 2016).
382 S. S. KULKARNI AND M. M. CHONG

Figure 1 Example of a restorative justice circle. During the restorative justice professional development, this was an example of
a restorative circle that included artifacts of importance that students could bring in from home (center) as well as words to describe
their feelings about a particular issue/concept (large, blue and yellow sticky notes).

Figure 2 Types of restorative justice circles. During the restorative justice professional development, attendees came up with these
advanced circles: Wheelhouse, Popcorn, Feedback, and Fishbowl.

Results
The two teachers in this study expressed desires and commitments to using RJPs in their classrooms
but faced challenges in terms of levels of commitment and availability of allocatable time and resources
for implementing RJPs. Additionally, teachers expressed different levels of self-efficacy with respect to
enacting RJPs. We provide descriptions of the participants, followed by themes that respond to the
three research questions posed in this study.
 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION 383

LC
LC is in her mid-30s and self-identifies as a Latina female. At the time of the study, she had worked in
her district as a special education resource teacher for 3 years, the first year at a K–8 school with
a strong RJ foundation and the following 2 years at an elementary school with a minimal RJ
foundation. LC was introduced to RJPs through a personal experience at her former school, where
the expectation was that RJ was used not only with students but also among faculty. As a new special
education teacher, LC experienced conflicts with her paraprofessional. The school’s RJ coordinator
encouraged LC to engage in the restorative process of de-escalation and mediated discussion to repair
the harm from their conflicts. LC and her paraprofessional worked through their conflicts and
implemented similar processes with their students.
At her current school, LC received administrative permission to attend district-level RJ trainings.
She recalled that trainings were intense and included three different phases, each lasting one to
two days with school administrators, staff, teachers, and members of the local community. LC
appreciated the district’s efforts to include community organizations that supported students. For
example, there were representatives from a newcomer’s program. LC described trainings as “powerful”
and indicated that she was still close with the attendees.
LC described her current school as one without strong schoolwide behavior plans or RJPs. There
was no coordinator to offer support, and teachers still used zero-tolerance disciplinary practices. She
“pieced together” what she learned from her old school to support her multiply marginalized students.
Her first critical encounter with RJ at her current school was with a little boy who “had some
difficulty with self-regulation” and “was thought of as a violent kid, although he wasn’t trying to hurt
anyone.” LC recalled that the boy would sit under his desk, and teachers would often yell at him to
“come out and stop acting like a baby.” LC used her training in RJPs to try a different approach. When
the boy was under his desk, LC joined him:
He said, “I’m not coming out,” and I said, “That’s fine. I just want to make sure you are safe.” He was surprised at
my reaction, but we just sat under there together. The thing was this kid tended to do the opposite of what he was
being told. Like, if the teacher said to stand up, he’d sit down. So, instead of telling him what to do, I just gave him
choices. Like with restorative circles, I said he could draw his responses, use the talking stick to share out, or pass.
And my approach to giving him those choices helped me to build a relationship with him where he knew he could
trust me. And I realized during that time that much of restorative justice is about building strong relationships
with our kids and allowing them to trust us. It’s because of that trust that he barely has any of those negative
behaviors that everyone was complaining about anymore, and he now has the tools to do things another way
when he’s angry or frustrated.

NCK
NCK is in her 30s and self-identifies as a Black female educator. When we met her, NCK was working
in a kindergarten/first-grade classroom at a public charter school. NCK moved to the Bay Area and
“fell in love with the diversity and beauty” of the area. Since moving, she has lived in or adjacent to her
schools’ communities and has worked in both special education and general education. After working
for several years in after-school programming, NCK went back to graduate school for her dual
credentials in special education and general education as well as an MA. While completing her
credentials, she was assigned as a special education teacher to a fully inclusive elementary school
supporting students with and without disabilities. After working as a full-time special education
teacher, NCK reflected on what drove her out of public school:
I saw the SPED [special education] program in this district, and it was just . . . in shambles. I mean, the district
office was just a mess. But I think the thing that really drove me out of public school and working for the district is
what I saw with special education. I mean, I was working in neighborhoods which were predominantly Latino,
like 90% of the residents there were from Mexico or Latin America. But then in my special ed program, all the
students were Black. I mean, there was so much structural segregation for these kids, like so few Black kids in this
area to begin with, but they were so overpopulated in special education.
384 S. S. KULKARNI AND M. M. CHONG

NCK decided at that point to take a general education teaching position at a kindergarten/first-grade
public charter school.
NCK was introduced to RJ through a training while she worked as an after-school programmer at
a public high school serving newcomer students to the United States from over 50 countries. An
incident with a student at the school prompted her to think about enacting RJPs and nonviolence.
NCK elaborated:

These kids, you know, were just roughhousing. At one point, they knock over these large trash cans outside the
school. And the janitor and I see them, and both of us are telling them to pick up the cans, and they refuse, sayin’,
“You clean it up,” to the janitor. And I got angry and had to keep myself from, you know, going there, to that place
of anger as my go-to emotion. And that’s when I realized that I needed to seek out more, to get at that in-between
of me and that place, get in touch with my emotions around why.

NCK went on to work with a meditation organization in the East Bay Area to learn about nonviolent
communication, and she began incorporating aspects of it into her teaching.

RJPs
To answer our first research question about the types of RJPs TOCs use, we attended RJ trainings,
reviewed existing literature, and generated a definition of RJ based on RJT (McCold & Wachtel, 1998),
dysfunctional classroom ecologies (S. Annamma & Morrison, 2018), and the knowledge that racism
and ableism are inherent in school policies and practices that seek to uphold notions of normalcy and
whiteness (Ohito, 2016). We defined RJPs as a means of undoing harm, enacting resistance, and
providing humanizing experiences for young children of color with and without disabilities. As
evidenced next, both participants enacted RJPs in similar ways.

RJ circles to honor student voice

Both teachers mentioned using restorative circles as a RJP for multiply marginalized children by
navigating how they individually respond to community circles. Using different restorative circles was
a meaningful way to deescalate and understand conflicts among students in their classrooms, honor
student voices, and allow students to become leaders who employed RJPs independently.
NCK’s use of RJPs centered around teaching kindergartners through a feedback circle process
called “A Bug and a Wish.” Our second research question asked how RJPs were used for students of
color with disabilities. NCK provided language prompts to help students identify discomfort around
behaviors or actions (what “bugs” them) and how to create changes (a “wish”). These prompts helped
students express frustrations constructively:

We use “A Bug and a Wish” to give students the sentence stem and the structure to be able to use their words and
resolve conflict. [Since the first time we spoke,] I have continued to encourage students to use that with fidelity. It
was something I was introduced to last year . . . and I feel like I’m using it. Every time a student comes to me with
a conflict, I redirect that student with “Did you give that person your bug and your wish?” It’s something that
I think I can scaffold and use with all my students. For students who don’t do it in our community circle, it can be
an individual activity or something they do with just one other person. For those who can’t say the words, I use
visual cues that can help them participate.

Later, NCK mentioned that she noticed students in her classroom using sentence stems inde­
pendently. Students addressed conflicts using “A Bug and a Wish” without her prompts. She
highlighted a conflict in which one child, whom NCK identified as a Black boy with speech and
language impairments, was talking to another boy, whom she identified as a Black boy without
disabilities. The student with speech and language impairments used the stems to say, “It bugged
me when you pushed my arm,” and “I wish you would . . . stop.” At this point, NCK provided
 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION 385

additional guidance: “That’s great that you shared. . . . What do you wish he would do instead?”
The student revised the sentence to “I wish you would high-five.” Importantly, the two students
initiated the conversation before NCK intervened.
In order to create reset circles in her classroom, LC avoided having a designated classroom
desk. Reset circles allowed students to come back together after time apart (e.g., recess, tense
moments, school breaks). Removing the traditional desk helped her “see everyone” in the class.
Her use of reset circles encouraged students to rebuild community after spending lengths of
time apart:
On Fridays, we drink tea and do a “How Was Your Week?” We definitely do reset circles after big breaks. . . . After
winter break, we did a circle, always just to gauge where [students are] without asking them what happened over
break. It’s really natural. They have a table, and it’s always kind of in a circle. And I’ve intentionally designed how
I teach to be able to see everyone. So, that helps at building relationships.

LC described how she maintained a classroom community and built on circles by “honoring and
respecting [her students] and their observations”:
It’s funny how aware kids are about differences. One of my students, who, while we are reading a book called The
Little Black Dog, says, “Why are all the animals black?” and I was like, “I don’t . . . know.” And he says, “And why
are all the kids white?” And when I looked at it, I thought, well, there’s a little kid in a wheelchair, right, so it’s
inclusive, but . . . it really was not. And we closed the book and read something else. I don’t know, I guess I wanted
to really honor the student, like “I can see your point.” And maybe it wasn’t the intent of the author to exclude
anyone, but I definitely saw what he [the student] meant. And I think about giving kids that respect and really
honoring that.

Additionally, LC mentioned the prospect of encouraging her students to take on leadership

roles by leading their own circles. In particular, she envisioned this leadership as an oppor­
tunity to connect students across grade levels and abilities around a common goal. LC made
specific connections between the leadership students could provide in facilitating their own
restorative circles and students with disabilities leading their own Individualized Education
Program meetings:
I’ve been trying to give them opportunities to develop leadership skills, and maybe some of the fifth graders lead
a circle or with a kinder group. I kind of liked that idea to give them more ownership over things. . . . So, I’ve been
thinking about that, and all the information I found on how to do that was tailored to middle schoolers or high
school, and I really thought, Wow, this could be something that my upper elementary kids could do, or like
something that could bring older and younger kids together.

The opportunities to lead circles provided prospects of ownership and self-determination for
LC’s students. Additionally, the activities helped faculty and staff see LC’s students as respon­
sible and competent, an issue she later brought up in thinking about institutional barriers.
Both LC and NCK described how racism and ableism operated interdependently in their
schools and created dysfunctional ecologies (S. Annamma & Morrison, 2018) when considering
more specific ways they could support students with disabilities using RJPs. Despite these
constraints, both participants worked to center the voices and perspectives of multiply margin­
alized students, aligning with DisCrit Tenet 4 (Annamma et al., 2013). Aligning our first two
research questions, we noted that both participants also included adaptations and opportu­
nities that specifically considered the race and ability profiles of students. NCK used restorative
circles and “A Bug and a Wish” to help students self-manage and resolve conflicts, also
providing sentence stems to support students with language. LC was particularly cognizant
of employing restorative circles as a method of fostering self-determination and ownership
among her students by allowing them to facilitate and lead their own circles and bridging
connections between older and younger students.
Across participants, using restorative circles was a cornerstone of RJPs. Although each
teacher had unique beliefs about restorative circles, both employed them to build strong
classroom communities of support among students and made classrooms a space where all
386 S. S. KULKARNI AND M. M. CHONG

students, including students of color and students with disabilities, could feel welcomed and
safe. NCK’s description of her former school—where 90% of the students were from Latinx
backgrounds, yet almost all students in special education were Black—illustrated a theme of
anti-Blackness and ableism. LC also noted this in her description of student observations about
animals and people in the storybook. This theme was perpetuated in both school contexts.
Both educators had to work to resist and challenge these perceptions by constructing leader­
ship opportunities and using RJPs to highlight students’ assets in the face of whiteness and
ability as normalized in their school contexts (DisCrit Tenet 6).

Defining RJ as a lens
In response to our first research question, both participants reported using RJ as a lens for all their
work in their schools. This shifted our conversations from singular practices toward flexibility with
students, staff, and school culture. Participants constantly adjusted practices for students and allowed
themselves to deepen their understandings of differences. In a journal prompt, LC described her
approach to RJ as using a restorative lens:

I define restorative justice as a way to build community and communicate feelings with its members. Students
should be able to express themselves using familiar language and express feelings, such as anger, frustration,
disagreement, excitement, joy, happiness. Overall, restorative justice influences how I teach, including my
interactions with other teachers and relationship with students, classroom management, classroom space, and
classroom culture. Students need to feel safe in their classrooms and know that I work to foster empathy. When
they feel safe, they can feel ownership in the classroom. I do this by moving away from a teacher desk. I also don’t
overload students with text or decor in my classroom. Students help me to set up the space, and we collectively
revise it over the school year.

NCK also shared how her approach to RJ moved toward ideas and concepts that could transcend
classroom spaces and support students’ emotional needs. She described RJPs with her kindergartners
as meeting a need to be “restored” rather than “depleted”:

Restorative justice is a means of responding to harm that allows those involved to be restored and not depleted.
It allows students to have safe dialogue. Regardless of the time/place, it’s always there. My hope is that students
understand conflict is normal, it’s healthy, it happens, and that we can navigate it no matter where we are—the
classroom, the playground, the community, our home—without losing friendships or dignity. When we
navigate students with a desire to help them learn to respect each other and hear each other, everyone walks
away stronger.

Overall, using LC’s words of “restorative justice as a lens” is a way to distinguish the work of these
TOCs in their commitment to supporting young children. As we learned from the teachers and their
descriptions of their classrooms, RJ is more than scripted procedures and practices. Each teacher
leveraged RJPs as a way of being. Both discussed how RJPs were part of their daily lives. LC uses RJ
concepts and ideas with staff and other teachers to resolve conflict, and NCK, through her work with
a nonviolent conflict center, emphasized that RJ is “always there.” Moments of conflict will likely
always exist in the daily lives of students and staff, but as NCK said, when students “respect each
other . . . everyone walks away stronger.”
The strength and engagement of both teachers in moving beyond RJ as co-opted or performative
(O’Brien & Nygreen, 2020) allowed for deeper engagement with their students. Moving beyond the
lure of individual conflicts, participants understood that RJPs need to be holistic. They understood
how multiply marginalized students were most at risk for dysfunctional classroom ecologies (S.
Annamma & Morrison, 2018), as they described their schools’ lack of commitments to RJ. Here,
DisCrit Tenets 5 and 6 illustrate how the teachers worked to combat historical and present margin­
alization of these students using RJ.
 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION 387

Institutional barriers across race and ability

Although both participants were committed to using RJPs with their students, including meaningfully
engaging disability and race, both faced structural challenges which we respond to with our third
research question. LC described her biggest barriers to implementing RJPs as caseload and time. She
described how implementing RJPs meaningfully and consistently was challenging because of short
blocks of time with a wide range of students:
As a resource specialist, one of the biggest challenges is time. I have 25 students from kindergarten
through second grade and students who have a wide range of needs. Each student receives different amounts
of service minutes each week and in different settings. For instance, I can provide student A in-class support twice
a week for 30 minutes, and I can provide small-group support in the resource room for student B four times
a week. I can only consistently have small-group RJ circles with students I see most often.

LC also spoke about the challenges of following scripted academic interventions for students in her
resource classroom with the need for deeper community building. To mitigate these constraints, she
restructured lunch to build in extra support for multiply marginalized students. She also noted that
behaviors deemed challenging by other instructors were significantly reduced by community-building
lunch sessions.
NCK also mentioned time and resources as barriers. Although she participated in nonviolent
conflict sessions, she still felt that she did not have enough training on leading RJPs. Additionally, she
brought up her desire for more RJ trainings for elementary teachers and how she wished her school
had a schoolwide plan for RJPs. She noted that it was “difficult doing it alone.” LC similarly found that
implementation of RJPs was limited to her own work with students and staff. Both teachers yearned
for school support for RJ and connections to other educators using RJPs. LC specifically mentioned
how even though she was using an RJ lens, “the school still uses all those other types of discipline,”
including zero-tolerance policies that disproportionately impact multiply marginalized students.

Resistance as critical excellence

As noted by our first research question, both participants were independently employing RJPs in their
classrooms and using RJ as a lens for students with disabilities across their school practices. This embodied
critical excellence as teachers moved to center multiply marginalized youth and resist zero-tolerance
practices. Despite institutional barriers such as time constraints, caseloads, lack of schoolwide supports,
and limited opportunities for further training, both teachers persisted in their commitment to RJPs. We
asked them why they decided to continue despite challenges they faced, and LC said, “Because it’s what’s
best for the kids.” NCK added, “How else will we break the cycle of inequalities for kids of color?”
LC’s lunch group mitigated some of the issues around caseload and time and illustrates her deep
commitment to supporting all students through RJPs. NCK’s commitment to practicing nonviolent
communication illustrates how she supports her kindergartners in deescalating conflict. Both teachers
play critical roles not only in their schools but also in addressing the broader need to support young
children of color with disabilities by cultivating inclusive, restorative environments. Both teachers
persisted in their commitments to RJPs during initial interviews and focus groups, and even during
follow-up interviews.

Discussion: centering disability and race in RJPs

Several tenets of DisCrit (Annamma et al., 2013) were valuable in understanding how participants’
practices worked to support the racial and disability identities of their elementary school-age students
and how it positioned the teachers as excellent, critical educators who worked to disrupt existing
systems of disciplinary exclusion with young children. Practices that LC and NCK employed that
challenged institutional culture and resisted dominant disciplinary structures at their schools aligned
with Tenets 1, 4, 6, and 7 of DisCrit (Annamma et al., 2013).
388 S. S. KULKARNI AND M. M. CHONG

Both teachers used RJPs to break up this normalizing of dominant groups. LC’s description of how
she “got under the table” with her student to ensure that he was safe counters the existing, dominant
structures in place at her school, namely, that students should be yelled at, given consequences for such
actions, or dismissed as “bad” (Broderick & Leonardo, 2016). NCK’s description of how using “A Bug
and a Wish” equipped her young students with tools and language to disrupt existing conflict also was
critical in unlearning normative disciplinary structures at her school. These teachers’ work in honor­
ing their students’ voices and providing students with meaningful alternatives is a critically important
part of disrupting existing racism and ableism in their classrooms. From an RJT typology (McCold &
Wachtel, 2003), these aspects of the teachers’ RJPs center care reconciliation, victim reparation, and
offender responsibility.
Research centering the voices, experiences, and practices of TOCs has focused predominantly on
general education teachers (Kohli & Pizarro, 2016) and only recently on special education TOCs
(Boveda & Aronson, 2019). Opportunities to reconceptualize the importance of TOCs who work with
students at the intersections of race and disability highlight the voices of marginalized teachers whose
identities match their students’. In this study, we found that TOCs who work to employ RJPs with
young children of color with disabilities are an overlooked yet important population. As Lalvani et al.
(2015) explained, collective social justice education often erases or silences issues of disability-related
oppression and ability-related segregation. The teachers in this study, through their descriptions of
implementing RJ, showcased an increased understanding of racial literacy and a growing under­
standing of ableism.
Both NCK and LC used resistance as a form of activism (DisCrit Tenet 7) in moving away from
exclusionary discipline practices for multiply marginalized students. NCK’s example of two boys inde­
pendently initiating conflict resolution was a strong example of her continued support of her kinder­
gartners, leading to the students themselves resisting dominant forms of conflict. LC’s description of the
restorative lens and her ability to listen to her students and value their voices, despite their young age, also
resists dominant understandings of what young children of color with disabilities are able to know.
It is important to note, as we posited in our third research question, that both teachers faced
challenges centering disability and race in their discussions of RJPs, both at the schoolwide level and
because of their limited resources, time, and other barriers. This invites a larger question about how
intersections of race and disability have been rendered invisible in RJ conversations (S. A. Annamma &
Winn, 2019) and the ongoing need to value perspectives of multiply marginalized young children and
their teachers.

Limitations
There were several limitations to this study. First, participants had different levels of teaching experience
and worked in different districts. The Bay Area is seeing increases in the number of charter and
independent schools, and it is important to note that LC worked in a public elementary school and NCK
at a public charter school. This had implications for how their schools were structured, the types of
autonomy they had in implementing RJPs, and the demographics of their students. In this study, we did
not specifically examine the differences between charter and public schools. LC also had more students
of color with disabilities whom she directly supported. NCK supported a diverse sample of students, but
only a few had identified disabilities. This sometimes led to very different descriptions of how the two
teachers’ practices were supporting students of color with disabilities. In both cases, the teachers were
still developing their understandings of ableism as they centered students of color with disabilities.
We did not specifically ask the participants about their own school-based experiences with
discipline, and both teachers identified as able-bodied TOCs. LC briefly described her experiences
of getting into trouble in school, but we did not specifically ask the teachers about their own
experiences with racism and ableism. Future studies or follow-up to this research should work to
generate this connections among teachers’ experiences as students, as able-bodied, and as TOCs and
their use of RJPs.
 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION 389

Conclusion
This article expands the existing literature on RJPs used by elementary TOCs. We asked how TOCs
implemented RJPs with multiply marginalized students (students of color with disabilities) and how
they navigated racism, ableism, and institutional barriers.
Although far too many students of color with disabilities are disproportionately targeted for harsh or
exclusionary discipline (Gilliam et al., 2016), there are critical TOCs (Alvarez, 2017) who are disrupting
exclusionary disciplinary practices to create equitable and restorative supports for young children. This
study highlighted the commitment of two elementary TOCs using RJPs for their students. Both teachers
provided examples of how they worked toward equity and excellence by resisting exclusionary and
harsh disciplinary practices, even when they were the only ones engaged in RJPs at their schools.
Specifically, the teachers incorporated opportunities for student autonomy, student voice, and
humanizing approaches to RJ rather than leaning into individual practices. In their experiences, we see
the challenges of attempting to navigate racism and ableism in school spaces as they were met with
resistance from school discipline policies and lack of support for RJ. Rooted in their inherent desires to
implement RJ, both participants were motivated to seek out resources, trainings, and professional
development to improve their practices.
At the conclusion of the study, both teachers desired to stay connected with trainings and
networking to strengthen their RJ support. This illustrates the importance of building collectives to
sustain RJPs and efforts. RJP networks should lean on the following principles learned via this study:

(1) Use RJ as a lens to guide educational practices across students, staff, and education
professionals.
(2) Engage students’ voices in the process of instruction and classroom community building.
(3) Move away from dominant and exclusionary forms of discipline and toward restorative,
humanizing frameworks.

Of critical importance is how RJ framing can inform the ways in which schools commit to
supporting teachers’ implementation. As O’Brien and Nygreen (2020) reminded us, without
a critical understanding of power structures, history, and oppression, “RJ can be reduced to
a method of behavior modification and co-opted for punitive ends” (p. 527). Both teachers in this
study were operating within school structures that risked co-opting RJ programs, although both
teachers authentically aimed to resist these structures. Future research needs to engage how racism
and ableism operate interdependently in classroom spaces to necessitate the move toward using RJPs
under these intersecting oppressions. Furthermore, the field of education needs to address how RJ
interacts with disability justice and accounts for disability and difference. This requires what LC
described as a restorative lens and what O’Brien and Nygreen (2020) emphasized as a paradigm shift.
Meaningful RJ would ensure valuing the humanizing stories and experiences of students like
Johnathan, thereby changing the trajectories of their school and post-school experiences.

Notes
1. The term multiply marginalized refers to the ways in which youth of color with disabilities are treated and
experience the US school system (see Kulkarni, 2021).
2. We looked for TOCs who self-identified as using RJ in their classrooms practically and conceptually, but given
the limited research on restorative practices with students of color with disabilities, we did not identify specific
RJPs that the TOCs needed to employ.
3. As noted by an Individualized Education Plan or 504 Plan.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
390 S. S. KULKARNI AND M. M. CHONG

Notes on contributors
Saili S. Kulkarni (she/her/hers; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8133-798) is an associate professor of special education at
San José State University. Her work specializes in DisCrit in teacher education. She is the cochair of the Disability Studies
in Education Special Interest Group for the American Educational Research Association and the principal investigator of
a Racial Equity Special Grant from the Spencer Foundation focused on restorative, humanizing discipline practices for
young children of color with disabilities.
Melanie M. Chong (she/her/hers) is a graduate student in special education at Vanderbilt University.

ORCID
Saili S. Kulkarni http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8133-7980
Melanie M. Chong http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4439-2670

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