Law and Order:HVSS

Sudbury has its own justice system, run by the Judicial Committee or JC for short. As I may have said before, I'm too lazy to check previous posts, anybody can write anybody else up for breaking the rules. Staff can write up students, the students can write up staff or eachother. I believe everybody is expected to serve on JC at some point, even the five year olds.

When you are brought up before JC you have the option of pleading guilty or not guilty. If you plead not guilty they have a trial.

Amelia loves, I mean really loves, JC. Everyday she reports on how many JC's she'll be a part of the following day. Who she wrote up, why she was written up, if she was just a witness. She also lets me know about other people's cases and fines they have had to pay. Ray was worried that she was going to get a reputation for being a tattletale or I don't know, rat?, or just someone who is a pain in the ass but I don't think it works that way. I suspect that the kids like having a central place to work their problems out. Especially because the rules are the same for the staff and the students. It makes it a more legitimate process.

Conflict came home the first time Amelia wrote Des up. She didn't single him out, it was part of a larger girls vs. boys complaint and Des wasn't mad at her but he got upset when she started to tell me because he didn't want me to know about it. They concocted a story, they basically told me what happened but left Des out of it, and when they were done I said "Are you telling me the whole story ?" Amelia immediately said no and Des got upset again. I guessed out loud that he had been involved but I told him that I wasn't going to do anything about it. I said "Des, Sudbury has a very good way of handling these things and I will leave it up to them. You can tell me or not tell me what goes on at school but you can't lie to me about it." We also talked about how if they wanted to talk about each other getting in trouble at school that was fine as long as they weren't coming to me for justice.

It's working out pretty well. They tell me when they get written up and what the consequence was. If they want, we talk about where they went wrong or how they could avoid the situation next time. This is probably good practice for the teenage years. I'm trying to train myself to listen and keep my comments neutral unless they ask for my opinion but it is soooo hard sometimes!