Christine Penner

Using restitution within schools is a wonderful way to deal with students who behave in a bad manner. When I was the Vice-Principal at St. John’s High School I quickly understood that we had many behavior issues we had to deal with. I went to a restitution workshop which made me realize that restitution was a great way to work with students who had made mistakes. It was wonderful to see and hear students fix their mistakes. After four years of working on restitution, our grades 7 and 8 suspensions dropped from 266 to 160. This was a 40% decrease. I was thrilled to see that!

When I left St. John’s High School I had become the Assistant Superintendent, then Superintendent of the Interlake School Division. I was glad that most of the division administrators were on board to implement restitution in their schools. Students who were fixing individual mistakes were learning about dealing with negative behavior in a positive way. Throughout my years as an administrator I clearly became a fan for the implementation of restitution in schools.