For just over two years, community organization Advoz worked with middle and high school students in the Elizabethtown Area School District to reduce conflicts and promote restorative practices.

Although the Lancaster-based organization's participation in the district ended after grant funding ran out, Advoz saw positive results from collaborating with the students, and it's now looking to expand Advoz partnerships with other districts in the county.

From Elizabethtown, Advoz staff members worked with ninth-grade students in the School District of Lancaster to highlight mitigation of classroom conflict and improve communication skills.

"We focused on an introduction of conflict skills, 'I' messages, and the various conflict styles of different people," shared Krista Rittenhouse, interim executive director and director of restorative practices for the organization. "We worked on community building. We believe if we don't trust each other and we don't care about each other, we're not going to engage well with each other."

Advoz also supports the peer mediation program in the School District of Lancaster, providing a facilitator in the school to oversee student mediators who have been trained by Advoz.

"Students are really seeing the value of this program," Rittenhouse said. "It's mitigating violence in the hallways, streets and after school, even on social media. Students are learning that if they handle conflict in the supportive environment of mediation, that spills out into how they handle conflict when they aren't being supervised."

Advoz also works with Sacred Heart School in Lancaster, providing services one day a week for the small private school.

The goal of Advoz's collaboration with school districts is to reduce the need for low-level offenders to be referred out to authorities such as district judges.

"They can report to our embedded school resource officers, and they still have consequences for their actions, but we are focused on repairing and maintaining relationships," Rittenhouse explained. "Our students are going to absorb their education, and engagement is best when they feel supportive, they feel safe, and their brain is not in an activated state."

In other words, she noted, restorative practices help students stay in their "learning brain," not in their "survival brain."

"We are all about turning conflict into conversation," she said. "All of the programs we have are intended to create structures to remove barriers to having hard conversations, to empower collaboration and inclusive conversation so everyone has a voice in determining a solution that works for everyone."

Formed in 2017, Advoz was created from a merger of Lancaster Mediation Center and the Center for Community Peacemaking. Those organizations have roots that go back 40 years, so the depth of knowledge and resources is strong, Rittenhouse said.

Advoz concentrates on restorative practices, an umbrella term for the values and guiding principles that include collaborating, inclusive learning, community building and response to harm. Restorative justice comes into play when harm has been caused.

"Now we're in a subset of restorative practices that requires accountability, making things right," she said.

According to statistics provided by Advoz, schools that employ restorative practices see positive results. Graduation rates increase, truancy decreases and suspensions also decline. Teachers report that restorative justice practices help them build caring relationships with their students and make a positive impact on school climate, ultimately leading to an increase in safety.

"Change comes when students have a sense of feeling connected and invested in their community," she said, adding that it's not a quick fix. "Restorative practices often get misrepresented because it takes three to five years of intentionality to see a culture shift and to see skills change."

Schools that choose to work with Advoz should be prepared to put in work up front to see big results.

"It takes more time on the front end to get a program going," she said. "You have to give up instruction time in the beginning, but you gain it back when students are engaged, inclusive and collaborative. When students are actively being invited to engage in their learning, they are less likely to be disruptive in the classroom."

If a school is interested in working with Advoz, Rittenhouse suggests reaching out for an initial consultation.

"We offer multiple ways to support schools," she said. "We have training for individual staff, for teams, for direct facilitation."

The organization also works with businesses on conflict resolution and team building.

"We want our organization to be connected to the community and community owned," Rittenhouse said. "We believe if people are using these strategies in their own lives, in their work and their homes, that has a trickle effect into the community."

For more information, including upcoming training programs, visit https://advoz.org.