Nobody does well without a sense of safety and security in a relationship-
nobody! And that is how we're wired, if we don't have that we're not gonna learn.
The importance of human relationships that is the basis of everything that we
do and the focus of restorative practices I believe is based on
relationships and how we cultivate those relationships.
We want our students to be
able to connect with their teachers you know they're gonna spend 180 days with
their teacher and that line of communication has to be strong between
student and teacher for any kind of learning or teaching to take place.
The research is very clear that children learn well when they feel
secure and they don't learn well in fact they really don't learn at all if
they're insecure . You know until they know each other, like each other, trust
each other and me it's just really hard to get them to focus the way that they
need to. Teaching and education is a human endeavor and the power of
relationships and trust I think is the most important. Anytime we try to do
school where we forget that or we move away from that I think we're at risk, so
to me restorative practices has given us the opportunity and kind of released us
in administration and conflicts and in classrooms to do what we wanted to do
from the beginning and really love kids get to know them and help them grow as
humans and academically as well.
I didn't really have any problems until
fourth grade and I had extremely long hair so I a lot of people would end up
calling me a girl and whatnot. And I was taught by my family the way that you can
stop that is by stopping those people. Every single time I had got in a fight I
would get suspended these suspensions made me feel like the normal thing to do
in school is to go there and get in trouble. After years and years of trauma
and going through not only bullying but what was going on at home I think we
were living in motels and whatnot, I sort of gave up with school altogether.
I think it took about a year or two before I finally ended up getting back into
high school
It went from me being traumatized-me feeling like everyone's out to get me, me
feeling like when I go to school today I'm gonna have to get in a fight just
to even learn something. But now I'm feeling like I can go to school and learn
something just to better my future just to try to get back on that path of
courage and that's why I'm trying to go to On Track Academy because I have
good courage at the moment, you know I feel I'm gonna make it now.
In these classroom circles or community circles what we do is just
start off with a welcome. Sometimes it's just everybody going around saying hello
to each other, sometimes it's asking them to just go around and say one thing on a
topic.So today I asked them about their favorite foods and it just got them going
and got them thinking about each other. What I heard today and saw today is that
the kids were really able to make connections between themselves. That
really allows us to build a community that then in turn allows me to get
the kids to the hard work of the academic stuff. So my question to you is
you were listening to what everybody was saying did you hear other stuff that you
also love to eat. It used to be that I would just let kids say oh you've got a
conflict with somebody go out in the hallway and solve it. Well what we're
learning is that kids don't know how to do that for real and I have to do some
coaching with them, helping them identify what the conflict is, identify how they
really feel and then identify what they need to have this resolved. And I've had
really good success with that, sometimes there are such deep hurts happening that
kids really do need to have a conference with each other and
with me in order to have that happen. The other thing is that we'll have class
meetings that are a little different than the community circles and that's
where we actually do some problem-solving together as a class.
So I'll say this is a problem that we're having generally in the class let's
think about what the causes of the problem are and then let's see if we can
brainstorm some ideas, select a solution that we're gonna try
and then come back and see how it's worked. The kids really need to feel like
they can trust me and that they can trust each other, and this is how we get
that done. It takes a lot of time but you can come in any time and you'll notice
that because we've taken that time they're kinder to each other, they're
more understanding, you can come back and see the kids in action working together
collaboratively. And they're able to do that because they've built trust.
Children are remarkably sensitive and when they've been harmed or have harmed
somebody else, they need to learn that mistakes have consequences in
relationship versus mistakes have consequences that take me out of
relationship. When we suspend students it doesn't necessarily mean that they're
being held accountable. For some students that means a free day out in our
community and so to actually have a response that requires students to stay
accountable to the behavior and make up for their wrongdoing is I think a step
in a positive direction. It's not just a matter of serving your amount of time
and now you're ready to go and everything's fixed. That doesn't
repair any of the harm, that doesn't connect them back to the community. What
happened what really works is having them sit down and think about how they
process so the first thing that everyone has to agree to come in voluntarily.
That's the first part. The second part is we have to agree to common courtesy-
which means no name-calling or yelling. We don't want to make the situation
worse. The third thing is they have to agree to have an open mind, which means
they'll actually listen to the other person. And the fourth thing is that we
don't have to agree on all the facts of the situation. We're gonna talk about
each person's perspective on the conflict they've had, but we do agree
that there's a problem and we need to solve it.
Oftentimes students don't have the tools to process their feelings and emotions
and so it's our job to kind of work with them and
give them some of those tools to help cope and process and communicate.
Restorative practices definitely provides students with a different avenue in
order to go about solving any of their issues and problems. When you do
restorative practices right you increase accountability, you increase transparency
and you increase the feeling of teamwork and support that you wouldn't typically
get with conventional approaches to discipline. It doesn't mean we're not
gonna hold kids accountable or say, "Listen I'm glad we've had this talk and
now here's where we're going here", but they know that we've heard them and
that we care about them regardless of what happened, and that actually is a way
more powerful way to discipline, to restore to change behavior.
Students who disrupt our community within the school we allow them some
time to kind of deescalate and when they feel ready they'll process with a staff
member, and what that looks like is they first acknowledge from the students
perspective like what the incident was, what occurred. From there they talk about
what and how they were feeling at the time and what they needed, and then
finally when they meet with the staff they'll go through as far as having
agreements to what's a better alternative method to get your needs met
that didn't have to involve the disruption of the community. We also do
ongoing mediations so if there's a conflict between students we'll have a
staff member mediate. Students will tell the perspective of the incident or the
ongoing issue with the other student and the other student will listen. Then they'll
kind of reverse roles. From there we'll ask the students what they need from
each other and then we'll again establish some agreements that we can
kind of move forward as a community. When agreements are broken among students
it's frustrating, especially when you give 110% every day to students and
you think you have a good plan moving forward and then only to come back the
next day and that relationship has been damaged again. Every teacher hopes that
you only have to teach the lesson once and it sticks but you know
it is definitely something that you're constantly building on. How long did it
take you to learn to drive a car right? You didn't learn it in one session.
Yes you have a great instruction and you do it really well
and the next day you forget much of it, especially when you're dealing with the
level of stress that struggling kids have, you're trying to identify with the
student their actions and the consequences of their actions and then
how we can go about kind of restoring some of the the community back in place
due to a an incident that occurred and so you're just keep coming back to it,
coming back to it. Ruptures are essential for a healthy relationship,
and the way they're essential is that the caregiver is big enough to realize
something important has happened and their primary goal is to repair the
relationship. And when the child learns that loop, there's a rupture then a repair,
there's a rupture then a repair, if that happens again and again again that's
when you get a secure child. And what I've learned over time you'll go through
maybe four or five different agreements on four or five different occasions and
eventually something clicks. So it's about that trust, that relationship and
using that to fully understand the whole student.
Our new policy 3240 incorporates the use of restorative philosophy but that
doesn't mean that restorative practices are the only way that we respond to
student behavior. We still have suspensions. There are still appropriate
times when we need to suspend a student. We also have detention, we have community
service, and our overall philosophy is all about an interest to change behavior,
maintain the relationship with the student and the family and re-engage the
responsibility, it's not just the teachers responsibility, it's everybody's
working together including the student. We all have a responsibility to build a
community inside of our schools and that is one of the most important things that
a classroom teacher does. And the best classroom teachers do that, they create
community inside of their classroom. They get to know each student. They ensure
that each student knows that they care about them, when that happens in every
classroom across a school that has a significant impact on how students feel
and how they behave. I've got a really great group of kids right now and they
came to me some of the kindest children that I've ever worked with and I think
that's in part due to the work that the teachers have been doing recently in our
school with restorative practices and so we are benefiting from that as a whole
school. Given time and and being really growth mindset in the open mind
when you approach restorative practice, it's paid our students dividends as
far as really being more insightful and more reflective about why they do the
things they do. To me the why is to honor the dignity and the humanity of every
person you encounter. Every person has a perspective and every person is going to
be in conflict at some time and how do we hear them in the midst of that and
how do we move through it? When we're trying to change a culture and you're asking
district staff and families and the community to step up to the plate, you're
also trying to do it in a way that everybody is raising the bar together at
the exact same time. If one body is not invested or doesn't believe in the need
for the cultural change or in the need for a new approach to practices then the
other two can't hold the bar up by themselves and it won't work. So
everybody kind of has to do it together and that always takes a lot of time and
a lot of energy and it has to be consistent. It's like you just keep
hammering at it and then the next thing you know the bar is up there
and everybody's like "Wow we lifted it we didn't even know!"