Malcolm Gorrill
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Feb 15/02) - A different way of enforcing discipline in schools was discussed during last week's regional justice conference.

Lynn Taylor spoke on the restitution peace project at J.H. Sissons school in Yellowknife. After her presentation Taylor explained restitution's goal is to make things better, and that its focus is not on punishment.

"It's a whole process that helps children learn about being part of the community, repairing their mistakes, making things better with the person they may have had a problem with," Taylor said.

She explained that when children misbehave, officials look at what need they were trying to meet and then help the children come up with better methods.

"They learn to fix their own mistakes and learn to meet their needs in better ways," Taylor said.

"It's about self discipline. Usually when you think about discipline in a school you think about discipline that's external, that's outside of, imposed by somebody else."

Taylor said restitution has worked well since Sissons adopted it during the 1999-2000 school year. She said teachers seem happier and students are more polite.

"The overall numbers of incidents have gone down," she said.

"It's a learning process. It doesn't happen all at one time," Taylor said.

"You need training and you need to understand how to do it, but it's far more effective in the long term."

Taylor also put on a workshop on restitution for staff at Sir Alexander Mackenzie school last week.