Don't dismiss the nay-sayers

The US Department of Education has just released new guidelines that will reduce the use of zero tolerance and punitive approaches to school discipline, especially suspensions and expulsions. The new guidelines promote wide-spread use of restorative practices. 

Great news for many students and for the RP movement?  Maybe. Maybe not! The challenges involved  in scaling up the use of RP will be very significant. And there are a number of voices expressing serious concerns about the move to what they see as soft or weak approaches to poor student behaviour. For example,  consider the views expressed here: news.investors.com/ibd-editorials… 

Such perspectives need thoughtful consideration by all RP advocates. It would be a mistake to simply dismiss such perspectives as being ill informed about restorative practices, which I believe they are. Restorative practices do not require teachers to 'tolerate poor behaviour' - quite the opposite!!

But... the skeptics and critics could well be right about the likely outcomes in situations where implementation of the guidelines is simplistic, naive, incomplete and/or poorly managed. 

Restorative practices are not 'silver bullets'. They are much more than a set of techniques to fix problems. To be effective they need a context that includes shared values and purposes, an engaged and supporting community, and real moment-by-moment relationships that are deeply valued by all concerned. 

Implementing the new guidelines will not be effective if seen as a simple administrative change to the way in which schools respond to problematic incidents. At the same time, implementation will involve major administrative changes to the way many schools manage problematic student behaviour.

Proper implementation of the new guidelines will require the achievement of sustainable whole school change and will take a number of years. Consider this very useful overview from SaferSanerSchools.org: http://t.co/U1xPTDIiWt

Anything less could well be more harmful than helpful. Poor implementations could harm the credibility of restorative practices and hence restrict its potential to help improve our schools in particular and our society in general.

The new guidelines will bring new challenges for the skilled and experienced restorative practitioners on whose achievements the new guidelines are based. 

Please don't dismiss the nay-sayers - we have much to learn from each other. 

Serious incidents can be distracting

Don't be distracted by the serious school incidents
Restorative Practices can be vital in responding to serious incidents in schools. The outcomes that are often achieved by using restorative practices can be life-changing for those involved - relationships to self and others are restored, the harm repaired to some extent and the sense of identity, belonging and community greatly enhanced for key participants and those who care about them. The flow-on effects include improved attention to the core purposes of schools (teaching and learning) and less waste of precious school resources (time, effort...). Such achievements are often quite spectacular. Even when all this is achieved could we still be missing something?
Restoration needs to be undertaken as early as possible.
Serious incidents rarely happen without some prior factors being in place. Students, staff & family members who seriously harm others have often been previously harmed themselves through abuse, neglect and/or trauma. This prior harm may well have happened elsewhere and a long time ago and have no real connection with the school. Still such harm can underpin serious school incidents.
For this reason schools need to be restorative for all students all the time.
Serious incidents are urgent and important . But what about the unresolved harm from elsewhere that is being carried by students and staff?
The everyday use of affective statements, a wide range of circles, and asking the restorative questions are essential and powerful practices that can gently (and indirectly) reduce the harm done elsewhere at earlier times.
Even without explicitly addressing the earlier harm, the circles and questions can restore  a student's (or staff member's) sense of identity and belonging, and give key insights that reduce the likelihood of the student being involved in a serious school incident in the future.

Restorative Schools - Accreditation

I have been wondering if there are any systems /schemes that give formal accreditation to schools in relation to restorative practices?

Such an arrangment could be very useful in helping schools develop and sustain their restorative practices. 

I am confident that, properly managed, formal accreditation would...

• give a clear and consistent developmental pathway for schools to become increasingly restorative
• provide clear milestones that would enable schools to demonstrate progress (improvement and achievement)
• articulate the links between restorative practices and the key purposes and functions of schools (teaching, learning, community building....)
• provide an ongoing cycle for re-accreditation and further development of the school
• enable ongoing self evaluation and reporting by the school
• prompt the school to commit (and recommit) to the school-wide use of Restorative Practices
• prompt the school to acquire and deploy resources ($, time, effort....) as required
• add to the school's identity
• locally in ways that add to the school's standing in the community
• more widely as a member of a national/international network of schools and other organisations building community and serving those in need
• support the school's sustained use and development of Restorative Practices in the face of competing demands and emerging "alternatives"
• improve the success and well-being of all staff, students (and those who care for them)
• improve the school's overall effectiveness in all aspects of its life and work
• significantly build the restorative community locally, nationally and world-wide
• ...

What do restorative practices actually restore?

Recently I have been pondering the question:

• What is it that restorative practices actually restore?

Obviously there are lots of possible answers to this question. For example, a school that was using Martin Seligman's approach to Well-Being would use restorative practices to restore the 5 main elements (PERMA) that contribute to success and well-being, namely,

1. Positive Emotions – experiencing joy and pleasure
   • While the outcomes of bad experiences are the opposites of joy or pleasure, it is important for people to ultimately feel more positive after dealing with the bad things that they have done, or have been done to them. 
   • Unfortunately, some traditional approaches leave people who have caused harm to others in the state of feeling bad (shamed) about what they have done as 'logical consequence'. However this is likely to result in on-going disengagement, resentment and other limiting factors.
   • Similarly, traditional approaches often fail to address the emotional needs of the person who has been harmed so that they continue to feel bad about what has been done to them
2. Engagement (or flow) – being consciously involved in our activities
   • Managed disengagement (isolation, suspension...) is also often seen as a 'logical consequence' of doing the wrong thing but this reduces the likelihood of productive engagement
3. Relationships – having enjoyable and supportive interactions with others
   • Damaged relationships are very often a result of wrong doing. Failing to restore damaged relationships is likely to result in a long term state of reduced success and wellbeing
4. Meaning – creating a purposeful narrative about our lives; being engaged with or serving something larger than ourselves
   • Having been harmed, or having caused harm to others, changes our personal narratives for the worse. Experiencing restoration of positive emotions, engagement, relationships... helps to restore constructive meaning in our lives.
5. Accomplishments – completing our goals and following our core values.
   • Those who have been harmed, or caused harm, are likely to experience a sense of failure. If unresolved this is likely to reduce a person's subsequent capacity to achieve and act in ways that better match their own core values.

Clearly restorative practices provide rich ways of restoring each of the five elements of Well-Being.

What is your school's answer to this important question?

Understanding the "outcomes" of a restorative process

 It seems to me that it would be helpful to encourage people to consider and report the outcomes comprehensively.  And it will be helpful if those responsible for implementing RP can articulate the real outcomes -  they will need to be able to tell 'the full story' of what was achieved.

From the examples given in the workshop, outcomes can be

• actions - "apologise", "shake hands", "make restitution", "forgive", "reconcile", "vent"...
  
• experiences - belonging, being heard
  
• changed relationships - changes in the way in which particular people interact with self and others during and following the meeting
  
• learning and insights - a better understanding of how the world and people are, and how they work: cause and effect, flow-on effects, the experiences of others, similarities, differences, motivations,...
  
• attitudes - beliefs and feelings that guide judgements and actions in relation to self, others and property
  
• life chances - the ability to access opportunities that lead to success and well-being for
  
• ...         (these are the one I have managed to identify so far)

And outcomes also need to be considered on a timeline:

• immediate - e.g., concludes the issue
  
• short-term - e.g., retains student at school, avoid the courts, improves the relationship between the student and others,... 
  
• long term - life chances - improved likelihood of success and well being

And finally the outcomes will be unique for each of the parties involved: each offender; victim, supporter.... and all need to be considered and accounted for.

Checking perceptions of justice

Insights into how we really dispense justice can be powerful and essential contributions to aching change. I suspect that many staff would be surprised at the what they actually practice.

Staff perceptions
One way to bring these out would be to
1. Get several staff members to tell a story of a recent difficult situation and how it was dealt with, then

2. Get them to rate it (putting dots on a triangle) in terms of

• retribution,
• deterrence and
• restoration

I would see such an exercise as being important in the implementation of Restorative Practices in any school.

Student Perceptions

And there is another 'triangle' that could also be useful... in this one students might rate staff  in terms of whether they are

• controlling (assertive/aggressive)
• helpful (altruistic)
• just focused on the facts  (analytical)

Same technique: get each student to

1. Tell the story of a recent experience then

2. Rate what the staff did (put dots on a triangle) in terms of in terms of the these three possible responses

The Role of the School in Restorative Practices

Restorative Practices involve a major response from the school itself (over and above the staff response). Staff need PL (knowledge, skills and understanding) but, that is just the beginning...
RP involves a change of culture which requires

• engagement of senior staff in the everyday life and work of the school, especially
• engagement of senior staff in the everyday conversations
• and a change in governance 

Associated changes in school governance need to be made and communicated ...

• the school accepts responsibility for the use of RP (staff act on behalf of the school)
• the school enables staff to use RP - time, provides structures, process, support, back-up, recovery strategies and assistance (it need to be OK to fail, at least in the short-term),
• the school monitors the use, costs and contributions of RP (especially to capture the learning and experiences...)
• the school genuinely lives the values required at all levels
• the school understands RP as an investment (not just a solution), which means,
• the school accepts that it is OK to lose time now in order to save time later on

Consequences and our notions of justice

I came across an interesting study the other day. The study collected stories involving justice issues - what happened and how things were handled.

The study then asked the contributors to tag their stories in terms of the extent to which they were about
1. Retribution (on behalf of the victim???)
2. Deterrence of the offender and others from repeating the offence
3. Restoration of the offender

Lots of food for thought here I think.

I suspect a lot of the use of 'logical' consequences in schools is
  - about retribution
  - justified as a deterrent
  - with an implied 'logical' outcome of 'restoration' of the offender 

Of course, our responses are shaped by
  - the significance of what happened, and 
  - the offender's response.

And, what we believe others would expect of us is also very powerful. I continue to be amazed at how little awareness many people (not just teachers) have regarding the natural consequences of doing the wrong thing. It is common for the natural consequences to be underestimated or simply disregarded.

Doing the wrong thing is very bad for the offender (Glasser was strong on this).

IMHO, one of the most common reasons kids continue to be difficult after doing the wrong thing is that
  - they are embarrassed  - the know they have done the wrong thing and wish they hadn't, and 
  - they feel disempowered - it can't be undone, and they don't know how to fix it up.

So to save face they get into denial, blaming, justifying.... It is a very painful to lose face - something I never required of a student. Maybe Restorative Practices is as much about restoring the offender's face as it is about restoring relationships.

After all, face is very much the key element in all relationships.