Communicating the school’s purpose and intent in developing a restorative culture to your parent community is vital. These are the very people you will want to support your approaches, especially when it’s their children involved.

 

Looking at Restorative Practices from the outside in, it’s very easy to get the wrong idea about what we stand for when we immerse students in Restorative Approaches to address conflict and wrongdoing. Some parents can quickly judge us as being permissive with the ‘naughty kids’ unless we get good at communicating how we are very serious about setting high standards for student conduct and holding everyone in the community accountable to these standards.

 

Like it or not, we are in the business of marketing to our community the merits of what we choose to do. A failure to do this presents a significant hurdle to the cultural change you are working toward.

 

This 2-hour parent evening gets right to the heart of what it means to set high expectations for behaviour, offer high levels of support to meet these standards and hold people accountable when they fail to meet standards.

 

Bill begins by sharing a true story of a student who was severely bullied and the restorative process that followed that restored a sense of control for this young man. This story gets to the heart of what Restorative Pedagogy is all about and wins hearts and minds in the process. This story becomes the common thread that runs through the rest of the workshop, tying together theory and application.