Circles are an important part of restorative practices. They are used in prosocial ways to build a learning community. They can be used as an academic tool to help deliver and process curriculum and content. They are also used in responsive ways to address conflicts and behavioral issues. That being said, I am concerned there is a trend starting where circles are getting way more attention than other restorative practices. All to often, circles are looked at as the soul of school wide restorative culture and they are not. Relationships and connection are the true soul of a restorative culture. Circles are one way of building and maintaining connection. They are also not the only way. Below are 5 other practices that a restorative school benefits from having in place if you want school-wide cultural change.
1. One-on-one Connections:
The relationship between teacher and student needs connection and trust. That connection and trust is built on having a safe learning space. Every conversation a teacher has with a student either builds that connection or tears it down. Often times, teachers lose connection and therefore influence over future behavior because they were too busy trying to “get their way” in the moment. They chose compliance over connection. How and when we talk to students and our fellow staff members helps to build the restorative climate we want.
- Calling people out publicly or shaming students in-front of their peers might get them to do what you want in the moment except you lost long-term trust and influence.
- Yelling also erodes the one-on-one connection to students. Yelling is a huge mistake in a restorative school. Don’t make the mistake of talking over your students. You only model poor communication techniques. If you start in the beginning by waiting for silence before talking and you always talk in a firm but calm voice, you set a tone and model for them the same behavior you wish to see from them. Be the change!
- Judgement and Blame free communication also helps. Learning to speak without blame and judgement and more importantly learning to listen compassionately without blame and judgement. This can go a long way at creating the relationships with students where they want to work with you and behave in ways that contribute to the climate you want.
- Use your one-on-one meeting times with students to listen to what is important to them rather than giving them a good “talking to.” Lectures are not connection, they are one way communication. Be sure to use restorative questions and be willing to listen to the answers.
2. Peer Mediation Programs:
Another often forgotten restorative practice is peer mediation. Not every conflict is impacting the whole class. Often, the whole class doesn’t even know something is brewing between two friends or two classmates. Many of those conflicts could be worked out more effectively if sent to trained peers rather than adults. Students learn valuable problem solving skills when sent to mediation and they get a chance to build their connections with the students with whom they previously had conflicts . They also learn to talk rather than fight.
Peer mediation is also valuable during fights or conflicts before the circle process happens. Allowing students with conflicts to mediate their disputes before circling with the rest of the class can be a valuable way to help them understand the impact of their actions.
Peer Mediation programs also teach leadership skills to the students who are trained. They build communication, conflict, and socio-emotional learning skills that can improve their actual learning. Sometimes the worst students can get a big confidence boost when they are seen as leaders in the peer mediation program. I have personally seen students who were generally seen as the cause of conflict step-up and become leaders after being trained as peer mediators.
3. Respect Agreements:
In their book Discipline that Restores, Ron and Roxanne Claassen offer a new way of creating classroom norms by way of creating Respect Agreements. More than just creating an agreement of what is and isn’t acceptable to the group, these agreements tend to force students to define respect and what it will look like for them. What I really like about these agreements, they ask for agreement about how teachers will respect students. In my experience as a consultant and trainer, whenever I ask a group of students how they want me to show them respect, they are like deer in headlights. This is often followed by story after story of how teachers and adults don’t show them respect or have gone far enough as to deeply show them disrespect. Eventually, students throw out ways they want to be respected and it sounds like: “don’t talk down to us” or “Don’t yell at us” and my favorite, “Don’t assume we don’t know stuff because we might”. We have to model respect for students by showing them respect. Listening to their opinions even when we don’t want to listen. We have to speak respectfully to them if we want them to speak respectfully to us. This agreement can help make that happen.
Another bonus of this agreement is that when we as adults break the agreement we made and we will, we get to model accountability. Students respect a teacher who is willing to apologize when they lose it or disrespect their students. Coming in the next day and saying, “I wasn’t as respectful to you as I would have liked to have been, please accept my apology” models accountability and respect for them. They are much more willing to own their behavior when they see you doing it too! Part of restorative is recognizing behavior not as something to control but something to learn from. That includes your behavior.
4. Gratitude:
Yes, gratitude is an actual restorative practice and it is just that, a practice. First off, trade praise for gratitude as it is more effective and involves more useful information. Just saying “good job” doesn’t have any information that is useful to learning. Children (and adults) don’t know the exact behavior that is so “good”. Praise can also lead to issues. First off, praise can be a trauma trigger for students who have experienced abuse. Often children who have been sexually abused head praise in a different way than the rest of us. Trauma triggers don’t always make sense. Sometimes what seems positive to us could be a trigger to someone who has experienced trauma. Praise when done too much or in over-inflated ways can lower self-esteem.
To trade praise for gratitude is to talk about how the behavior you see is impacting you. Always state the behavior you want to show gratitude for and follow it with an impact or affective statement. Example: “I am really happy to see you walking in a straight line because I value cooperation!”
Also use gratitude as a piece of the classroom climate. Do gratitude exercises! Have a gratitude wall! Have students learn to offer gratitude to each other! Make gratitude a regular part of the school day. The power of a “thank you” is amazing!
5. Story:
One of the most important tools and sometimes the first forgotten about when trying to change the culture of a school is the power of story. The culture of any group of people is made up of the stories they tell themselves and each other about themselves. When the leadership of the school is conscious of the storytelling, it can also help shift the stories from negative to positive. Stories in a school can be as simple as answering the question “what kind of a school are we?” or filling in the rest of this sentence: “At this school we….” Stories create the vision of what a restorative school looks like. Even in the classroom, having a teacher aware of the stories students tell about each other, their teacher, their school, can have a huge impact in the climate of that class. Every judgement kids have of their learning helps shape the story and the culture. “Miss Smith’s class is so boring” may become the story of her class for years to come if nothing challenges the story. What is the story at your school?