Join us on Monday evening, March 18 at 5:30pm for an informative and interactive event on Building Restorative Schools. Dr. Charles Curtis, School Psychologist and Restorative Justice Coordinator at Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in Washington, DC, will speak about his experience working with male African American and Latino youth using restorative justice principles. Dr. Curtis’ talk will be followed by a community forum on the value of a restorative approach in CCSD schools.
Date: March 18, 2019
Time: 5:30-7:00pm
Location: ACC Library auditorium
Sponsors: AADM, Georgia Conflict Center, UGA School of Social Work and the Clarke County School District
Dr. Charles Curtis, School Psychologist/Restorative Justice Coordinator
Ron Brown College Preparatory High School
Dr. Curtis is a native of Richmond, Virginia and has lived and worked as a psychologist in the District for the past ten years. He graduated from Morehouse College with a B.A. in Psychology with magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors. Dr. Curtis is also a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. and was initiated at Psi Chapter. Following his undergraduate work, Dr. Curtis attended University of Virginia where he earned a M.Ed. in Educational Psychology and a Ph.D. in Clinical and School Psychology.
Throughout his educational experience he was actively involved in mentoring and program development. During graduate school, he helped develop a pilot program in Albemarle County Public Schools focused on reducing erroneous special education referrals and improving the county’s responsiveness to students’ behavioral needs. It was during this time that Dr. Curtis committed his professional life to focusing on developing systemic alternatives to suspension while bolstering individual youth capacity to self-regulate.
Dr. Curtis has worked professionally with students with severe emotional and behavioral difficulties while programming for them through an alternative, Restorative Justice framed lens. He has worked to devise individualized and group interventions focused on helping students placed outside of their homes who had significant histories of school failure, trauma, and minimal self-regulation increase outcomes by transitioning back into less structured environments and successfully returning to their neighborhood schools.
Similarly, Dr. Curtis has worked in comprehensive high-school settings to create complex, multi-discipline program for the students with the most severe behavioral difficulties in the building the eliminated the need for self-contained classrooms, reduced suspensions, and increased academic output.
Through working at Ron Brown College Preparatory High School, Dr. Curtis will be engaged in the active and necessary work of disrupting the school to prison pipeline while empowering Young Kings of color in DC to be their best selves. He believes that the philosophy and program at Ron Brown High School will be in the vanguard of revolutionary education spaces for historically disenfranchised and oppressed people in America.