Circle in the Square: Building Community and Repairing Harm in School

In this, her first book, Nancy Riestenberg writes warmly and with long experience about the challenges facing school communities and how restorative measures­ specifically Circles­ create a safer space for learning and development for all. Using stories direct from the hallways, she brings heart to subjects that are often divisive and controversial: bullying and other violence, suspension, drug use, staff conflicts, and more. Throughout the book, Nancy s focus is on strategies that actually work for the whole school community: students, parents, administrators, teachers, and the community in which they live.

Nancy Riestenberg has over twenty-five years of experience in the fields of violence prevention education, child sexual abuse prevention, and restorative measures in schools. She has worked with school districts in Minnesota and twenty other states, from the Cass Lake-Bena School District in Minnesota to Chicago Public Schools. She also speaks nationally on restorative measures at conferences and through trainings. She provides technical assistance on violence and bullying prevention, school connectedness, school climate, dropout prevention, cultural relevance in prevention education, crisis prevention and recovery, and restorative measures. She has also provided technical assistance in restoring the learning environment to the Minnesota school districts that experienced school shooting incidents.

Nancy was a member of the design team for the National Institute of Corrections restorative conferencing curriculum for law enforcement and school personnel, Facilitating Restorative Group Conferences. She participated in the Restorative Justice and Teen Court Focus Group for the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA) and has written several articles on restorative measures in schools. She presented on Minnesota Restorative Practices at the Restorative Approaches to Conflict in Schools Seminar at the University of Edinburgh.

At the Minnesota Department of Education, she has worked with her colleagues on evaluating and implementing restorative measures in schools. She has analyzed data regarding disproportionate minority representation in suspensions and expulsions, student survey data regarding bullying, and data surrounding the state-wide violence prevention mass media campaign, You re The One Who Can Make The Peace. Prior to coming to the Minnesota Department of Education, Nancy worked for twelve years with the Illusion Theater s Sexual Abuse Prevention Program, which created and toured educational plays on child sexual abuse, domestic violence, and HIV/ AIDS prevention education. She coordinated the adaptation of Touch, the child sexual abuse prevention play, for the Red Lake People, and trained high school students in twenty different school districts in eight states to present social-issue prevention plays to their peers.