Our Team
dorothy vaandering
dorothy vaandering is a professor in MUN’s Faculty of Education and the Director of Relationships First Newfoundland and Labrador (RFNL). She has been researching Restorative Justice in Education (RJE) for 15 years and is passionate about nurturing relational communities where all people are honoured as worthy and interconnected.
Learning to live relationally in all aspects of life is core to who she is. dorothy acknowledges that she is indebted to so many, young and old, who have been patient with her and accepted her for who she is so that she can now draw on life, teaching, and research experience to explore RJE.
In 2009, having worked for 20 years as a Primary-Elementary educator in Alberta and Ontario, she started work at Memorial University NL where she is a professor at the Faculty of Education. dorothy focuses on designing and implementing innovative, transformative professional learning approaches for the sustainable implementation of RJE. Engaging in making reconciliation real as a settler-Canadian has become a priority in her work.
She is the author and co-author of a variety of academic and professional publications including “The Little Book of Restorative Justice in Education.” She is honoured to serve as Director of RFNL.
Sarah McDonald Moores
Sarah McDonald Moores is a graduate of Memorial University's Bachelor of Music/Bachelor of Music Education and Master of Education: Educational Leadership Studies Programs. Throughout her learning journey Sarah has taken a keen interest in holistic restorative justice in education.
Sarah is currently seconded to Relationships First Newfoundland and Labrador (RFNL) from her position as a music educator. Sarah has worked with the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District (NLSchools) in various positions since 2006, and works as a Per-Course Instructor, teaching the graduate course ED 6463: Rethinking Educational Engagement at Memorial University. In her current role as Restorative Justice Education Coordinator with RFNL, Sarah hopes to help those engaged in all levels of education to embrace restorative justice as a way of being.
Sarah is a founding member of Lady Cove Women's Choir and Projēkt Chamber Voices. She has been a featured soloist with both of these groups and has traveled all over the world with choral and instrumental groups as a chorister and as a conductor.
Lisa Charlong Norris
Lisa comes to RF-RJNL with a BA, a BEd and an MEd and over 15 years of experience working in research administration - whether it’s grants facilitation, proposal writing or managing Canada Research Chairs (CRC) Tier I and Tier II projects. She also brings extensive experience in structured data and data management as well as in scholarly communications and humanities computing. Her current interests include demonstrating research (and public engagement) impact and research project management.
Outside of MUN hours, Lisa is passionate about working with young women and men who walk a restorative path towards healthy relationships with self, with family, with community and with the Creator.
Her favorite place is in the cold, salt water, even in winter months.
Danielle McGettigan
Danielle McGettigan (B.Sc, B.Ed (Int/Sec), M.Ed)) is a high school teacher, dance teacher, event coordinator, and RJ advocate from St. John's, Newfoundland. Her research, The K-12 School Experiences of People Who Are Incarcerated in NL, seeks to understand the mechanisms of the school to prison pipeline in NL and shed light on the stories of the human beings at its center, with the intent to inform policy and practice. In 2023, she worked with the Council of Atlantic Ministers of Education and Training as the coordinator for Connect & Transform: Trauma-Informed Perspectives, Policy and Practice in Education, a virtual professional learning symposium for policy makers.
Danielle has a unique and varied teaching background and has presented her research nationally and internationally, including the Relational Schools World Conference and the National Restorative Justice Symposium. Over the years, she has worked in a variety of coordinating roles with RFNL to encourage relational ways of being and knowing in all capacities.
Tisia Procopio Stemp
After 25+ years as teacher, university instructor, and community advocate in New York and Las Vegas in the US, tisia procopio stemp relocated to Newfoundland and Labrador in 2022 to continue her educational journey and doctoral work in relational pedagogies and collaborative cultural knowledge.
tisia comes to RF-RJNL with extensive background in justice education having worked with local policy leaders and educators across the globe to develop and initiate arts-and-culture- based programming in schools and community learning spaces. Passionate about making connections, building relationships, and exploring our mutual humanity, tisia’s work focuses on designing and implementing culturally sustainable teaching and learning experiences and decolonizing approaches to broaden the scope and integration of restorative and transformative justice education.