Race, poverty, and gender interplay with school discipline, to make schools ancillary to the juvenile justice system (Morris and Perry 2017). Exclusionary discipline contributes to the school-to-prison nexus, a metaphor that illuminates the complex, interconnected relationship between schools and prisons (Okilwa, Khalifa, and Briscoe 2017). Introducing preservice teachers to possible alternatives such as restorative justice practices is one way to engage preservice teachers to reimagine classroom and school discipline practices. Developing alternative practices, such as restorative practices, for elementary age students provides students at a very young age opportunity to engage with their schooling experience and become active participants in changing their own school environments. This paper explores the experiences of undergraduate students in engaging in social justice action research and the ways in which application of restorative justice practices empowered these preservice teachers to see themselves as critical community builders in their classrooms with the capacity to change inequitable and punitive schooling structures.