Everyday Restorative Justice

This much-needed book provides a practical framework for implementing school-wide restorative justice practices to enhance students’ social emotional readiness.

Amidst today’s uncertainty and social unrest, this book offers teachers and students hope in the underlying principles of restorative justice that challenge us to be our best selves. Through curricular sequences, lesson plans, case studies, and narrative examples, Chaterji maps the terrain for learning and practicing empathy, studying models of repair and accountability, and creating conditions for trust and vulnerability.

While much of restorative justice in schools is responsive to incidents that have already occurred, this book argues for robust prevention and culture-building through students’ personal and conceptual exploration of pain, loss, oppression, and other emotionally charged topics.

Chaterji carries lessons from restorative justice in high-level harm, such as victim offender dialogue, to the classroom through exercises that foster tenderness, self-reflection, and skillful attention on how to “make it right.” The text includes classroom-tested strategies and activities that the author developed over 15 years working in schools, youth programs, prisons, probation and juvenile detention facilities.

Book Features:

• Vivid case studies, anecdotes, and practitioner's notes from extensive restorative justice work in schools and prisons.
• Robust collection of supplemental materials, including activity descriptions, worksheets for classroom use, lesson plans, and curricular sequences (reproducible documents in an online appendix).
• Spanish language materials for teaching concepts in restorative justice, including circle-keeping scripts, sample agendas, and activity descriptions.
• A teacher-centered approach to implementing restorative justice through concrete lessons, thematic areas, and activities that foster greater trust, connection, and healing.
• A connection to SEL core competencies of responsible decision-making, self-awareness, social awareness, relationship skills, and self-management.

Tatiana Chaterji is a longtime educator, youth organizer, drama therapist, conflict worker, cultural resistance strategist, and one of the first restorative justice facilitators in Oakland Unified School District, on Ohlone land.

“As a classroom teacher who has facilitated RJ circles, and as a labor leader who has negotiated restorative justice into contract language, I’ve seen both the promise of RJ and the real harm caused by implementation without supports and necessary conditions for success. Tatiana refuses to sugarcoat these realities, offering generous and incisive critiques grounded in the challenges that educators face, without giving up on what is possible and very much needed in our schools, particularly in this moment. During a time of political instability, repression and fear, this timely book renews hope in showing how RJ can reach its full potential and presents a path forward so we can find strength and inspiration to continue fighting for our students’ futures and create the safe schools and compassionate communities we all deserve.”
—Jessica Tang, president, AFT Massachusetts

“Everyday Restorative Justice is based on real-world experience practicing and teaching restorative justice in schools. Chaterji offers many examples and stories from her work as an RJ facilitator in Oakland public schools. She also offers practical tools for actually doing this work; something that is missing in many books about restorative practices in schools. This book is much more than an academic understanding of RJ, it is a deeply usable and practical tool for navigating the complex world of schools in a positive and generative way.”
—David Yusem, restorative justice district coordinator, Oakland Unified School District

“Everyday Restorative Justice is essential reading for those interested in the use of restorative justice in education. Filled with incredibly useful and concrete tools, accessible language, and compelling real-life examples, Tatiana Chaterji draws from her years of experience practicing and implementing restorative justice to offer a practical and powerful roadmap for restorative justice in educational settings. Furthermore, the lessons here can be applied beyond education to anyone interested in restorative justice and the work of transforming harm and conflict into something generative."

—Mia Mingus, writer, educator, and social justice activist

“Chaterji’s book is both a gift and a call to action for educators, youth workers, administrators, students, and all those working to build abolitionist possibilities within—and despite—the school-to-prison nexus. Drawing from a deep lineage of Indigenous people’s traditions, as well as her own personal experience navigating harm and healing, these grounded, nuanced, and inspiring approaches to restorative justice offer us a powerful vision for change. For those of us who believe that prison abolition is truly possible, this book helps readers to imagine concrete steps—both large and small—toward that future in one of our most consequential sites of social reproduction: Pre-K–12 schools.”
—Farima Pour-Khorshid, associate professor and teacher supervisor, School of Education, University of San Francisco

“In Everyday Restorative Justice, Tatiana Chaterji offers educators and youth workers a theoretical introduction to restorative justice alongside classroom-ready curriculum drawn from her many years teaching RJ in schools. Through case studies, lessons, scripts, photos, and somatic activities, Chaterji does what I didn’t think was possible: she made me miss my days in the classroom. This book is a powerful reminder of the joy and freedom dreaming that is possible when we live and teach through a restorative lens.”
—Anita Wadhwa, executive director, Restorative Houston, and former classroom teacher and RJ Coordinator

“Everyday Restorative Justice brings restorative justice out of theory and into lived practice. With clarity, humility, and deep care, Chaterji shows us that RJ is not just a response to harm, but a way of being—one that builds belonging, accountability, and collective healing in everyday moments. Rooted in schools, yet resonant far beyond them, this book holds together healing and accountability, structure and relationship, courage and love.”
—Kazu Haga, trainer and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice, and author of Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse

“The science of learning and development (SoLD) underscores that environments filled with safety and belonging are foundational to student learning and wellbeing. Yet many schools struggle to create these conditions. Everyday Restorative Justice enters this gap as a practice-driven exploration of how restorative approaches can strengthen school culture, deepen moral imagination, and cultivate accountability. It moves restorative justice beyond episodic crisis response and toward a sustained, generative practice of community building rooted in fairness and dignity. Written for educators and practitioners, Everyday Restorative Justice offers a rich repository of practical tools and a humanizing vision for schools, positioning restorative practice as a transformative pedagogy capable of reshaping the moral, relational, and cultural fabric of everyday school life.”

—Sarah Klevan, senior researcher at the Learning Policy Institute

“Everyday Restorative Justice is the book we have been waiting for! Providing us with roadmaps, examples, and personal narratives about how school communities embrace restorative practices, we bear witness to nurturing, accountable, and humanizing school environments. Chaterji beautifully shows us how restorative justice can be authentically woven into schools and, as a result, work towards transforming our society at large.”
—Maria Hantzopoulos, professor of education, Vassar College