Educators often encourage students to take risks and work hard to achieve well in school--an approach called "academic press." An assumption behind this approach is that students trust educators enough to take risks and embrace academic challenge; but when a safe, trustworthy environment isn't in place, students won't take risks and may even be hostile to efforts to challenge them. Building trust is the first step toward academic press. The authors describe how Health Sciences High and Middle College proactively uses "restorative" practices to create trusting relationships.