Tricky kids, tricky classes
Tricky kids, tricky classes
Working Restoratively in Schools:
Level 1: Awareness of RP’s for all staff
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Full day Workshop
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To book this workshop please contact Bill Hansberry
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Restorative Practices are an essential part of a school’s behaviour management approach. This workshop builds on BM101, which teaches behaviour management fundamentals for teachers, such as:
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Setting out behaviour expectations in the form of easily understood and often talked about classroom rules/codes of conduct
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Explicitly teaching expected behaviour
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Developing scripted language for positive behaviour correction and follow-up behaviour conversations with students
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Using consequential management appropriately
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Understanding chronic misbehaviour as a function of social belonging
Restorative Practices in some educational settings have undergone some lethal mutations, unfortunately. Misapplications of basic principles have led to a loss of faith in restorative approaches and have drawn criticism from various quarters, particularly the learning science community, of which I am also a part. My unique positioning has enabled me to work with schools to effectively apply restorative approaches, avoiding some of the misconceptions that can lead school behaviour management systems down the wrong track.
Restorative Practices work best in schools where the following shared understandings are upheld:
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Kindness is paramount, and unkind behaviour will always be called out
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High expectations of behaviour are one way adults show that they care for students
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Calm, safe, and effective learning environments must be maintained at all times.
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Restitution is a powerful mechanism for challenging harmful behaviour and maintaining social connection
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Academic success is strongly connected to student well-being.
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Positive staff-student relationships are understood as being essential to student achievement and well-being
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Positive student-student relationships are understood as being essential to student achievement and well-being
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Consequential systems of management and restorative systems are both essential and complement one another. ​
With these understandings in mind, this training aims to build awareness of what it means to incorporate restorative practices into a behaviour management approach. We examine beliefs about student conduct (and misconduct) and how these align with the principles of Restorative Justice.
We examine the differences between punishment and consequences in terms of emotion and engagement.
Building on the scripted language of behaviour management from the BM101 training, we explore incorporating restorative scripting to engage young people in a space where they can consider others, not just themselves. We also continue the conversation around primary and secondary behaviour (from BM101), so we’re better placed to keep restorative discussions on track.
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We also explore how different 'types' of students need different levels of support to engage successfully in restorative conversations because no one size fits all!
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The skills focus is on Individual Restorative conversations —the one-on-one chats that teachers have with students. Participants will learn the individual script and its intent. We also look at small group restorative conferencing.
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