Bianca Martinez implements new practices as RPC coordinator
Bianca Martinez is putting a new spin on RPC.
Her classroom walls are painted muted purple and covered in colorful posters. Some students sit in desks, while others relax on couches. And there’s a set of chairs arranged in a “talk circle” for kids to discuss issues they have had and what they can do differently, which give students a chance to express their own emotions.
Photo by Valentina Sorana Gonzolaz. Martinez’s colorful and inspiring posters.
“We really focus on restorative justice, which is all about repairing relationships and harm,” Martinez said. “This method does help change behavior.”
It’s vastly different from one year ago, when RPC was held in a windowless space that used to be a computer lab on the 160 hall and students often avoided the room.
“I love laughing with kids, being able to support them, and helping them make the right decisions,” she said.
Photo by Kyla Bannerman. D’angel Lloyd and Kyla Bannerman participate in recreational activities in RPC.
This is Martinez’s second year at Riverside. Last year she taught English two. Originally from northern Virginia, she moved to Durham from Memphis Tennessee when her wife got a new job. Her own experiences as a student inspired her to become an educator.
“I remembered my favorite classes were the ones where the teacher was very compassionate,” she said. “My 8th grade teacher was amazing and I was like ‘Wow, I want to do that.’
”Traditionally, RPC – which was called “In-School Suspension” or “ISS” at Riverside until 2018 – has been a punishment for students instead of a way to guide and help them. Students were held in the small room and never discussed what happened or how things could be handled differently.
As a result, students kept going back. Junior Kwi’Ahrra Void recalls what it was like in RPC last year.
“You didn’t really talk about what happened,” she said. “You just sat in there all day. It literally was just prison. I don’t think it did [help], because people kept going back.”
Martinez’s version of RPC takes a more positive approach.
Photo by Valentina Sorana Gonzolaz. Cozy couch in the RPC room adds a comfortable environment for students
“When I first came in here we had a whole conversation about what happened,” she said. “I feel like I could use that in future situations, and it’s a better environment in general.”
The Restorative Practice Center is meant to be a positive and more encouraging alternative to traditional In School Suspension (ISS), which has been implemented in school districts across the country since 2015.
“Schools across the country are being urged to adopt restorative approaches as an alternative to suspensions, which may disproportionately affect students of color,” wrote Laura McLean in a 2016 article published by Edutopia.
She works for the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility and helped implement restorative practices in New York City public schools.
“Instead of using punishments and rewards to influence the way students behave, restorative address es the underlying reasons for students’ hurtful behavior and nurture their intrinsic desire to treat others with care and respect,” McLean wrote.
Martinez’s approach is closely aligned to these new practices.
“The goal this year was to turn RPC into a space where kids are able to process their emotions as well as their actions in a way that wasn’t so focused on punishing them,” Martinez said.
She also focuses on how students’ behavior is addressed.
“Instead of saying ‘you are bad, you need to be punished, we’re gonna suspend you,’ it’s ‘you made a bad choice but you’re not a bad person, so how can we make this right?’” she said.
Photo by Valentina Sorana Gonzolaz. Martinez during an interview with the Pirates’ Hook staff.
The district’s overall rates of both in-school suspension and out-of-school short-term suspension have stayed relatively the same since last year. But Martinez is noticing great differences in the number of students in RPC compared to last year’s records.
Last year’s suspension rate was 12% and it has since decreased to 9% according to DPS Restorative Practices Discipline data.
According to DPS’s Student Discipline Data collected this year RPC there have been 45 RPC assignments for half a day (one period), 41 full day RPC assignments, and just 3 repeat students.
This is a significant reduction from the 2022-2023 school year, when an average of 175 received RPC assignments each quarter.
“We have had less students than we did last year in RPC,” Martinez said. “There have been less repeat students.”
