Nancy Riestenberg has thirty years of experience in the fields of violence prevention education, child sexual abuse prevention and restorative measures in schools. She has worked with school districts in Minnesota and 20 other states, from Cass Lake-Bena to the Chicago Public Schools, and speaks nationally on restorative measures at conferences and through trainings.
She provides technical assistance on violence and bullying prevention, school connectedness, dropout prevention, cultural relevance of prevention education, crisis prevention and recovery and restorative measures. She provided technical assistance to the Minnesota school districts that experienced school shooting incidents.
Nancy was a member of the design team for Restorative Measures: Respecting Everyone’s Ability to Resolve Problems and the National Institute of Corrections’ restorative conferencing curriculum for law enforcement and school personnel, Facilitating Restorative Group Conferences. She participated in the “Restorative Justice and Teen Court Focus Group” for the American Probation and Parole Association and has written several articles on restorative measures in schools; the most recent one in the Summer 07 edition of Reclaiming Children and Youth, the Journal of Strength-based Interventions.
Prior to coming to the Minnesota Department of Education, Nancy worked for twelve years with the Illusion Theater’s Sexual Abuse Prevention Program, which created and toured educational plays on child sexual abuse, domestic violence and HIV/AIDS prevention education. She coordinated the adaptation of Touch, the child sexual abuse prevention play for the Red Lake People, and trained high school students in 20 different districts to present social issue prevention plays to their peers.
