On March 13-14, GLSP organized a training workshop for the school-based Disciplinary Committees. The workshop was attended by representatives from six Disciplinary Committees from Tbilisi and Rustavi public schools. The US exchange participants designed a training module based on their observations in Vermont. Giorgi Gakheladze, GLSP Expert/ Civic Education Expert at the Ministry of Education and Sciences; Lia Giagauri, Director of the GLSP Public School #165 and Natalia Zazashvili, Psychologist/ Director of “Saphari” NGO served as trainers and facilitators of the workshop.
The training provided the Disciplinary Committees members with restorative justice tools to help them transform their approach from punitive to restorative. Despite the fact that the whole restorative justice concept is still new in Georgia, by the end of the training participants unanimously recognized the value and benefit of this approach.
The training module included several sessions, such as Basic Principles of Social and Restorative Justice, Conflict Resolution, Legal Culture Development Principles at School, School Regulations and Restorative Justice and others.
Interestingly, student members were more open to embrace restorative justice elements compared to teachers and school principles. However, by the end of the second training day, the teachers admitted that restorative justice elements can play a role in reducing recidivism of student violations.
As a result of the pilot training, it was concluded that two days are not sufficient to cover all the topics. Therefore, GLSP team decided to add another training day for the upcoming disciplinary committee workshops in Year 2. Still, the training was a great success. Following the workshop, GLSP received multiple calls from various public school administrations, who wanted their schools to be enrolled in the program, too.
Georgia | 
