BRATTLEBORO-Anne Koplinka-Loehr, a seventh- and eighth-grade social studies teacher at Brattleboro Area Middle School (BAMS), has been awarded a 2025 Rowland Fellowship to integrate restorative practices throughout the middle school.
Koplinka-Loehr, the first Rowland Fellow from BAMS and the Windham Southeast School District, will serve as a teacher on special assignment this academic year, facilitating a group of staff members and students.
Even though she's the one with the fellowship, "I definitely see it as something that we are doing together as a school community," she says. "I really appreciate the collaborative group at BAMS, and I'm also looking forward to collaborating with local schools."
BAMS Principal Keith Lyman encouraged Koplinka-Loehr to apply for the $125,000, two-year fellowship from the Burlington-based Rowland Foundation, which encourages "teacher-driven, transformational change" and whose mission is "to invest in Vermont teachers in order to positively change the culture and climate of schools."
The pair worked together to develop the initiative.
Lyman called the award "an incredible opportunity for [Koplinka-Loehr] to pursue work she is deeply passionate about while having the time and resources to collaborate with our staff and fellow Rowland partners to identify meaningful ways to strengthen our school."
"Anne is the first teacher in our supervisory union, to my knowledge, to be awarded this fellowship, and I am truly excited about the positive impact her work will have on our school community."
In fact, of the 106 fellows named since the award's inception in 2009, Koplinka-Loehr and Samantha Mundt of Twin Valley Middle & High School, named in 2021, are the only awardees from Windham County schools.
Meaningful accountability
Koplinka-Loehr aims to foster a positive school climate at BAMS through restorative justice (RJ) practices.
This model focuses advancing students' conflict resolution skills and on healing, responsibility, and rebuilding relationships - an overall more holistic approach rather than the traditional punitive model of disciplinary action alone.
As described by Brattleboro nonprofit Interaction, which in 2021 absorbed the former Brattleboro Community Justice Center into its umbrella of services for youth and community, restorative justice "emphasizes the needs of those who have been harmed, meaningful accountability of those who have done the harm and the involvement of community members in the process of healing. Restorative justice also wants to provide an opportunity for change for those starting to get involved in the criminal justice system."
RJ practices include "circles," where parties affected by an incident gather and hold a constructive and respectful discussion. Other aspects include conflict resolution, mediation, community service, and other methods to heal communities and reintegrate those who have broken laws and breached trust.
Building something to restore
Koplinka-Loehr has been a middle school social studies teacher for more than 12 years.
At BAMS, students start their mornings in advisory, a kind of homeroom, but one that she describes as "a little bit more intentional and supportive than what I remember homeroom in middle school and growing up to be."
Asked why the school needs this program, Koplinka-Loehr speaks to a problem that goes beyond BAMS - and, for that matter, schools in general: "building community and relationships."
And when things happen to break those relationships in some way or cause harm within those relationships, "What do we then do to respond to that and rebuild those relationships?" she says.
"Over the last 10-plus years, I've noticed that one of the things we struggle with as a school is our responses when there are challenges or there are different people in the community - usually students with students, sometimes students with teachers - doing something that's harmful, saying something harmful, or physically threatening another student," she says.
Koplinka-Loehr says she's noticed in the past several years, notably post-Covid, that some students "have really been pushing in terms of their behavior in the classroom, and my sense is there's a reason behind the behavior."
Figuring out how to provide better support structure for students is key.
"Maybe it's because of Covid and students having more challenges with learning some of those social emotional skills," she says. "Who knows what the reasons are, but I think our job at the school is to respond and help students build skills."
Seeing some students repeating bad behaviors started Koplinka-Loehr thinking "about ways that we could shift the structures at our school."
Traditionally, schools will mete out punishments like a lunch detention or after-school suspension, she says, noting that ("luckily") out-of-school suspensions are rare.
She was aware of the restorative justice concept and knew the high school had a restorative justice coordinator who sometimes worked with middle-schoolers.
So she went to Lyman thinking those restorative circles might be expanded, that older students could help younger ones, and that there could be more efforts to "really bolster the supports that already exist and build some community partnerships."
At the time, Koplinka-Loehr was also thinking about a sabbatical, but was "a little hesitant" since "the budget has been so tight, she says.
And so Lyman suggested she apply for the fellowship to the Rowland Foundation.
Koplinka-Loehr says that BAMS doesn't really have a restorative justice process, but some stuff members have been trained in RJ principles and counselors use it a fair amount.
"Part of what I'm hoping to do with the fellowship is to systematize it," she says, noting that some faculty and staff have RJ training and that counselors "kind of de facto do a fair amount" of it.
But restorative justice at BAMS is "intermittent," Koplinka-Loehr says. Its use has depended on the situation.
"It's kind of up to administration to decide if they want to try to incorporate restorative into responding to something that has happened," she says. "We don't have a point person that specifically focuses on restorative practice."
What's the vision?
"What we came up with together as a group, which is aligned with what I was thinking going into the fellowship, is having lots of entry points for staff and students to engage in restorative practice," Koplinka-Loehr says, noting that restorative circles can be scheduled or take place impromptu in classrooms if issues arise.
"The vision is that would then lead to relationships throughout the building and stronger engagements and belonging," she says - noting those outcomes also happen to be "some of the goals the continuous improvement plan goals that school and the district already have."
As to how to "shift school systems toward connection, accountability, and relationship-building," Koplinka-Loehr says it comes down to working to ensure that "every student has a voice and is able to engage."
How will you know it's working?
The Commons asked Koplinka-Loehr how she'll measure "meaningful engagement by students."
"I think people in schools have been grappling with that for a long time, and I think there's some qualitative measures and some quantitative measures that we can use," she says.
In terms of "the numbers," the teacher notes that increasingly, students are either not going to class or not going to school - not just at BUHS but "as far as I know, across the country."
"I think there are a number of reasons for that," Koplinka-Loehr says.
"Some students have anxiety [and] some students just have a lot going on outside of school that makes it hard to either physically get to school or be at school once there," she continues. "So I think getting students to school and to classes a very measurable way."
Participation is another way Koplinka-Loehr sees to measure engagement.
"For instance, we can see how much time a student may have been pulled out of class and see if that reduces as well, as we roll out more restorative practice," she says.
As for qualitative data, a student climate survey will ask "questions about students' belonging and whether they have someone in the school they feel like they can talk to," Koplinka-Loehr says.
The survey will gauge whether "teachers are engaging and glad to see [students] and teaching what they're teaching," she says.
Making it happen
Part of Koplinka-Loehr's job will be to facilitate a group of staff and students to integrate RJ practices throughout the middle school, with support from the Rowland Fellowship.
A work group - comprised of Koplinka-Loehr, Lyman, six other staff members - meets weekly.
The group is working on adding a good group of students selected for their ability "to contribute to the conversation" meaningfully.
Koplinka-Loehr says the group already has a "pretty clear vision for what we're headed towards in the next two to three years at our school, and then we can work backwards in terms of taking steps to make that happen."
"That's really the key," she says.
This News item by Virginia Ray was written for The Commons.