connect-rp

How Creativity & Crank the Croc Create Moments of Connection in the Classroom

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 16:42:41 GMT

This idea that Restorative Practice is all about the Restorative Questions is a sentiment I hear a lot. Here, I would like to discuss some of the experiences I would have missed out on and some of the things I may not have learned had my learning in Restorative Practice stopped at the Restorative Questions.

One of the most disappointing losses one might experience if you focus merely on the Restorative Questions is that of Positive Relationship Building. In September this year I met a little boy in my new class who was very shy, withdrawn and had little self-belief. He struggled academically and explained that he found school really hard sometimes. I was struck by how happy he appeared playing on the yard with his friends but how rapidly his demeanour changed when he re-entered the classroom. It didn’t take me long to figure out the classroom was not a place of safety or welcome for this child.

At the end of the first week of school I gave the children big A3 blank white folders and asked them to design and decorate them as they saw fit. I suddenly saw this little boy light up. I went down to his desk and sat beside him. He talked more to me in those 10 minutes than he had for the full week. He explained that he loved to draw and that he created comic books at home. He was engaged, happy and very open with me and I began to see all the wonderful gifts and talents he possessed. From this encounter on, I took every opportunity to praise him for his creativity and to find ways to incorporate this into his learning.

I have had the privilege of seeing this child grow in confidence over the last few months. Positive relationship building is something that comes very naturally to many teachers restoratively trained or not. However, what I have learned and what really helped me in this situation was to make this positive relationship building an explicit part of my teaching practise. To make time in the day to build relationships with my students. I have developed simple and manageable procedures such as a checklist of positive interactions to remind myself to praise all of my students. Had I not been using such strategies I may have lost out on this very positive experience and an affirming relationship with one of my students.

Another area which falls outside the scope of the Restorative Questions, and is a huge benefit of Restorative Practice is it’s power to support and nurture student’s emotional literacy. In September, I met a group of students who had had little experience of Restorative Practice and I was concerned by their struggle to label and describe their emotions and at times to regulate these emotions.

Over the first few weeks of school, I introduced the children to the Restorative Animals, one of whom is Crank the Croc. He can be a little snappy at times and needs understanding and a love bomb to help him to regulate his emotions. Two or three weeks after we had introduced these animals, I noticed one of the little girls in my class was behaving in a manner that was outside the norm for her, she was very sharp with the other children and seemed very frustrated in class.

One Friday morning I asked her to have a chat outside the door. I started by telling her I noticed that she was acting differently and I asked “What happened?”. At which point she burst into tears and told me she was just feeling like Crank the Croc, things hadn’t gone according to plan at home that morning and she was in a very cranky mood. So I asked her what does Crank the Croc need to help him when he’s in a bad mood. She replied; “A love bomb” and I asked her what that looked like for her. With some suggestions and scaffolding she decided she’d like to sit beside her friend at lunch and to have five minutes in the Cool Down Corner. At the end of the day I rang her Mam to check in and discovered that the family were going through an extremely challenging time and that things were very emotionally turbulent at home. I have never been so glad that I took an empathetic approach, had I not and had I taken a more punitive approach I feel I would have destroyed my relationship with this student. I would have left school that day with little understanding of that child’s experience and no insight into how to support her for the rest of the school year.

Finally, Restorative Practice can act as a powerful lens through which you view your professional and personal interactions with others. A question I learned to ask through Restorative Practice is “Who do I want to be?” As educators we know there are times where so much of a situation is out of our control. This can lead to some very stressful situations when dealing with parents in particular. I find looking at a situation from the parents perspective and recognising that it’s rarely a personal issue with me, rather their deep concern for their child that causes anger and frustration. This helps me to deal with conflict. Also when having contentious meetings with parents I ask myself the question “Who do I want to be?”. It by no means guarantees that I will be met with the same level of empathy but if I can leave such a meeting feeling that I was kind, professional and empathetic well then I’m happy with the only side of the conversation I can actually control.

A Powerless Connection

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 16:43:09 GMT

Sometimes, in my role as Guidance Counsellor, I get asked to intervene in situations where several consequences have already been implemented. One such example was a second year “feud” between a boy and a girl who had no dealings with each other in first year and were in the same class for the first time in Second year. Over the first few months, their bickering had escalated to Year Head intervention, detentions and still the teachers were reporting problems in the class. In fact, the whole class atmosphere had been impacted and the class was labelled the problematic one of Second year.

“I felt powerless. I was confused, I couldn’t understand why she was treating me like this. I never spoke to her in First year and when we were put in class together this year she started sniggering and whispering to her friends every time I walked into class for no reason. ”

(Boy X)

These were the words of the boy in a preparation conversation before a Restorative Meeting. But they didn’t come easy. In the first round of the questions, I learned he was angry and that he thought his reputation was ruined. He couldn’t get beyond defending himself and making her out to be the ‘bad guy’. He wanted compensation and for the Year Head to call an assembly and tell the whole year he didn’t do ‘it’. At that stage, based on those answers, I was skeptical that there was a readiness for a Restorative Meeting between the two parties.

In my work as an RP practitioner, I know that identifying what feelings reside behind the facts listed are where connection and empathy are built so I delved a little deeper – back to the start of the story rather than this specific incident. I followed the question protocol again and that’s when we started getting somewhere and he made the above revelation.

This boy was very articulate, and I could empathise with the feelings he described. He described the mixed emotions of new beginnings, new classmates, and the added burden of this mysterious quarrel with a girl he didn’t know who just had it in for him. In an attempt to regain power, he began acting in a way that he wasn’t necessarily proud of but couldn’t think of approaching any differently. ‘Investigating’ the incident that landed them in my office wasn’t the priority, giving them clarity and a new path forward were.

The six questions typically guide my conversation but the more I learn about them, the more nuanced my conversations can be. Michelle calls it the dance - the ability to use these steps to choreograph something unique. I think of the questions as a tool, and much like if you handed me a drill, hammer and saw I couldn’t make you a kitchen cabinet but give me some time and practice and maybe I could learn. The questions are a tool and while their value increases with the skill of the person using them, even at the very beginning they can open amazing conversations. With greater awareness, their true value is revealed:

What happened? - a safe entry point and a non-threatening way to open a conversation. I’ve often found two accounts of an incident can be very similar, sometimes just starting in a different place (which is usually where that person sharing felt like the injured party!)

What were you thinking at the time? - in that moment you were doing the best you could so what was happening for you that made those your best options?

What have you thought about it since? - with a clear head, is anything different for you? How has this impacted you? After the action/behaviour, how are you feeling? Was it worth it?

Who was affected and how? - moving to a bigger picture, developing empathy.

What could have been done differently? - The Game Plan, if you are in the same situation or have the same thoughts, what is a better option? It’s very difficult to come up with a new way of thinking in the moment but a calm reflection can yield an alternative.

What needs to happen next? - to allow you to move on, to heal the hurt, to contribute to the community, to make amends. The words matter less than the intention. Often people say students learn off the answers – focus on the intention of the questions, hold the discomfort of a silence, don’t allow a surface apology to get a student off the hook and out of having to face the reflection brought by questions.

I went through the same process with the girl and then we agreed to all meet together. What he heard from the girl lifted the confusion and allowed him to reflect on some of his actions that contributed to this situation that he wasn’t even aware of.

“In First Year, he called a girl in our year fat. I was confused because she wasn’t fat so there was no reason to start picking on her. It did stop but when we were put in the same class in Second Year I was scared that he would come at me for no reason. I felt scared and powerless, so I got in there first.”

(Girl X)

They both acknowledged that they didn’t want to be responsible for another person feeling as bad as they had been feeling. I wasn’t sure the students knew how to treat each other with respect, even though they both agreed that was what needed to happen next, so we spoke about what it would look like. It was affecting the whole class dynamic so we did some additional work on how they could navigate it if other students got involved. They came up with sentences like:

“I didn’t hear him say that so I’m not going to get involved”

“we’ve spoken and we’ve both agreed not to say mean things to or about each other”.

They both felt these would be helpful if others in the class tried to ‘stir up drama'. In the end, they left with a different understanding of each other and themselves. The atmosphere changed that day because their confusion lifted and they could relate to each other better - the opportunity to grow such empathy is at the heart of restorative conversations and one of the reasons I love the work I get to do!

If you would like to learn more about facilitating such conversations check our our Middle & Aspiring Leaders workshops here

Individual and Collective Accountability in a Restorative Framework

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 16:24:52 GMT

Individual and Collective Accountability in a Restorative Framework

Individual accountability

Accountability in restorative justice is defined as: taking responsibility and taking action to repair the harm and to prevent it from happening again.

This is in contrast to a definition of accountability in our systems as: taking your punishment.

Accountability as taking punishment is passive and shifts the person who caused harm to a perception of themselves as the victim because the power of the institution is operating to harm them.

Accountability as taking responsibility and taking action to repair harm and prevent it from happening again is active. The action comes from the person who caused harm. Action for repair is how we heal from the shame that arises naturally when we acknowledge causing harm.

From this definition of accountability we do not ‘hold people accountable’ – meaningful accountability comes from within. It is not externally imposed.

I see five elements in the process of being accountable:

1. Acknowledge that your actions caused harm

2. Acknowledge that you had agency in those actions

3. Understand the full impact of your actions on anyone who was impacted

4. Take steps to repair the harm and make amends

5. Identify patterns or habits that led to causing harm and take steps to change those habits

The first three goals of accountability are achieved in the restorative dialog process itself. The last two elements are the plan that comes out of a restorative process. Any set of obligations for a person who caused harm are focused on the questions: What needs to be done to repair harm? and What needs to change so it does not happen again?

The first element is, in general, the most painful. As a species we do not want to see ourselves as harming others – so we deny, minimize and rationalise our behaviour. We all do this. I see it often in myself. It takes great courage to truly take responsibility. Because deep underneath at the cellular level is a fear that if we caused harm, we deserve disconnection and we also know that disconnection is a kind of death. So we have elaborate internal mechanisms for denial, minimising and rationalising. This is why it is so important than anyone who needs to acknowledge harm is never sitting alone when they need to take responsibility. They must have someone next to them who will love them no matter what they have done. With that kind of support we can sometimes summon up the courage to truly acknowledge that we caused harm.

It is important for us to explore accountability in our own lives before we expect others to be accountable. In a circle I sometimes invite participants to share an experience in their own lives where they caused harm and took responsibility and made amends. When we discuss how that feels, participants commonly describe a new awareness of how painful it is to take responsibility and how often they do not take responsibility. And participants describe what a relief it is to take responsibility and do some form of repair. That is how we heal when we have caused harm, but it is not easy.

When we examine our own experiences of taking responsibility and making amends we find certain conditions that helped us:

· dignity was honoured

· awareness of the impact of behaviour was communicated without being diminished as a human being

· support – from someone who will love us no matter what we have done

· validation that the harm we caused is not all of who we are

· space to breathe

These conditions are not present in mainstream justice processes so we rarely see meaningful accountability in those processes.

These elements and questions are typically focused on individual accountability. But restorative justice is also concerned with collective accountability. No one acts just from their own inner impulses separate from all other influences. Our behavior is shaped by our internal logic and choice and also shaped by the context of our lives.

Collective accountability

The collective needs to acknowledge its role in harm, look to its role in repairing harm and in making changes so it does not happen again.

With individual accountability we ask: What has to change in that person so it does not happen again? For collective accountability we ask: What has to change in the community so it does not happen again?

Or put another way we shift from: What is wrong with this person? To: What is not working among us? How do each of us need to change to take care of all of us?

What does this look like? We turn to children because they are better at this than adults.

This is illustrated by a story from The Little Book of Circle Processes.

Finding Understanding in the Classroom

A student in an elementary school threatened to burn down the school following recess. This incident occurred soon after the school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, and his anger sparked fear among his classmates.

The teacher requested a Circle of Understanding for the students and the next day the entire classroom participated in it. During the Circle, students expressed their feelings about how the threats had impacted them. Many of the students reported experiencing nightmares as a result of the student’s threat. The students also reflected on how their own behavior had an effect on the student who made the threat and how they were responsible, to a degree, for his behavior.

At the conclusion of the Circle, the boy agreed to make changes in his own behavior by: 1) not swearing or threatening others, 2) thinking before speaking, and 3) walking away when he was mad to cool down and then talking it out later. He also agreed to write an apology letter to his classmates.

His classmates agreed to make changes in their behaviour by: 1) being nicer to him, 2) not telling lies about him, 3) not teasing him, 4) playing with him so he would have more friends, 5) being his partner in class, 6) helping him make new friends, 7) sticking up for him in a good way, 8) forgiving him and giving him a second chance, and 9) playing basketball with him after school.

The Little Book of Circle Processes – A New/Old Approach to Peacemaking, pp 31-32

This is what collective accountability looks like: acknowledging the community role in the situation and seeking ways to make sure it does not happen again. These children really created the answer to the question: How do each of us need to change to take care of all of us? Even though I do not think the question was posed in that way. I have only learned to pose that question so clearly after years of working in restorative justice. The children organically began to look at their own role and what they could do the change the context of the behavior of their classmate.

The fact that children do this more readily suggests to me that we are socialized out of this awareness and sense of responsibility by the habits and messages of our culture. As adults we need to be more intentional to engage our natural sense of collective accountability.

Relationship between punishment and accountability

As a society we operate from the assumption that punishment promotes accountability.

The reality is exactly the opposite. Punishment interferes with genuine accountability and reduces the likelihood of genuine accountability.

Nature of punishment in relation to genuine accountability:

· Punishment takes our attention to self-protection, to a perception of ourselves as victimized

· Punishment reduces our ability to feel empathy for someone we harmed

· Punishment engages the more primitive part of our brain, vigilance, wariness, self-protection so that we cannot engage the higher cortex of awareness of others, empathy, rational understanding of the impact of our behavior on others (emotional intelligence)

· Punishment models power over others when something goes wrong – which then justifies harming others when we feel an injustice

· Punishment isolates those who make mistakes – genuine accountability requires connection rather than isolation – denial, deflection, rationalisation, minimisation are strategies in response to the fear of isolation – deep human fear of isolation makes accountability very difficult without reassurance that we still belong – but punishment sends a message of not belonging, exclusion both in our direct actions of exclusion, but even in our implicit messages when not using strategies of exclusion to express punishment

· Because it interferes with genuine accountability punishment cannot deliver what most victims need most from those who cause harm: acknowledgement of causing harm, understanding of how their behaviour impacted the one who was hurt and expressions of genuine remorse

Genuine accountability and building community:

· Genuine accountability promotes healing for both the person harmed and the one who causes the harm which strengthens community

· Genuine accountability engages a concrete and specific understanding of the impact of our behavior on others which increases social-emotional awareness and skills necessary for healthy community

· Genuine accountability includes both individual and collective accountability reinforcing the sense of mutual responsibility necessary for healthy community

· Genuine accountability reinforces belonging for both the person hurt and the one who causes hurt because harm is examined in the context of relationship (how other human beings were impacted by the event) – and belonging for everyone is the core of healthy community

· Genuine accountability reinforces norms and expectations for healthy relationships because it engages respectful dialog about behaviour and its impact on others

Healthy community is necessary for efficient learning. Genuine accountability builds community. Punishment interferes with genuine accountability therefore punishment undermines community and learning.

Kay Pranis

Restorative Practice Myth Buster Series Part 2

michellestowe@connectrp.ie (Michelle Stowe) — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 15:29:39 GMT

Restorative Practice Myth Buster Series Part 2

In part 2 of this series, I outline some further comments I hear about Restorative Practice and explain why they are just myths.

6. Kids Can Just Learn to Say and Tell you What you Want to Hear!

I have heard some educators suggest this or that we should be elusive around the RP questions so students don’t rehears them. This isn’t about an 'I caught ya’ it is about an ‘I see you’ – your potential to do better, your worthiness of our time and potential to be part of the solution. Trust around a restorative approach can indeed take time. Some of our students have been surviving in a hostile world/place and we need to give them a reason to disarm. Sharing power, an ability to affect change and be part of the solution is key to creating safety and authentic commitment to a restorative approach. Using accountability agreements and the 3 x Es of Fair Process (Engage, Explain and Expectation clarity) can support such commitment from our students who we may feel are only tokenisticly engaging. But also, making as generous assumptions as we can and choosing to believe in our students' potential to do better is important too. What human being wouldn’t choose to be in good relationship if they knew how to cultivate it or could tolerate the risk of it. As we know, such relationships aren’t built in a day but build daily.

7. We Need to Make People Be Accountable

We can’t make people be accountable. We create conditions that cultivates accountability. Accountability and community are inextricable linked, when I feel like I belong here, like I matter, like I am connected, then I am accountable to this space. This is why it is important to intentionally build relationships, and also separate the deed form the doer when things go wrong, to promote the understanding that we are greater than the harm we have caused. Kay Pranis invites us to consider the notion of collective accountability - what needs to change in each of us, to take care of all of us? And what characteristics of the institution are part of the harm? Some of our students will find it difficult to have success in very rigid structures so it is important to have healthy boundaries and also looking at addressing unmet needs of our environment to create healthy communities. Community & accountability are inextricably linked!

8. RP Solves all Our Problems

Absolutely not – nothing will! When we are dealing with human beings there is no tick the box guarantees, there is no magic formula. RP isn't about tips and tricks to get the kids to behave, there is no list to ensure 'success'. This is about relationships, it's about nurturing connection, empathy, safety and accountability and we can never underestimate the power of planting such seeds. But it can be really hard at times, especially when we are dealing with complex unmet needs and students that find it difficult to tolerate the risk of connection. It can be hard and it won’t guarantee success if we are defining that by compliance, but neither will a punitive approach otherwise we wouldn’t be dealing with a school to prison pipeline. Both a restorative and punitive approach can be hard so just pick your hard!

For me, a restorative approach echoes who I want to be in the world but it doesn’t solve all my problems, just offers a scaffold, compass and way of relational thinking to try to navigate them in community.

9. RP in Schools is All about Supporting 'Wrongdoers' Instead of 'Victims'

A zero-tolerance approach to bullying is very damaging because we tend to send the behaviour underground rather than identify or meeting the need driving the behaviour in the first place. People engaging with bullying behaviour then just get more astute around not getting caught. A restorative approach is also about giving everyone a seat at the table, empowering those that have been affected or harmed to acknowledge this and identify what they need to move forward – which is usually safety, a reassurance that the behaviour will stop. Removing a threat, through a suspension for example, is not the same as creating a sense of safety in the future when face to face with the person who has caused you harm. Suspensions are not the answer and an authentic restorative approach is voluntary fully-informed and usually more successful when part

10. RP Only ‘Works’ if the Kids Behave or Change

We need to challenge the understanding that ‘kids behave if they want to’ versus ‘kids behave if they can’. So much of what we see as misbehaviour is when our students are dysregulated, in struggle, connection-seeking, or simply a dysfunctional way to cope in the moment, a pattern of survival in a classroom/world where we have past hurts. When I think about success, it is not defined through conformity and if we used this as our compass sure we would have abandoned detentions and suspensions a long time ago as so many of our students are continuously in that punitive revolving door but we don’t seem to say ‘ oh I tried that detention once and it didn’t “work”’ as readily as we may say ‘ I tried a restorative chat once and it didn’t “work”’. Success lies in liking who we are, modelling communication we’d like to see mirrored back, investing in relationships and living our values. It’s just a practice and what we practice grows stronger but building new capacities and skills can take time and intentional effort- how do we learn a language or indeed a second language By being emerged within it or by seeking opportunities to practise!

Restorative Practice Myth Buster Series Part 1

michellestowe@connectrp.ie (Michelle Stowe) — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 17:06:00 GMT

Restorative Practice Myth Buster Series Part 1

In this series, I will outline some of the comments I hear about Restorative Practice and why they are simply myths.

1. RP is About Being Positive All of the Time

Although RP is about building positive relationships and taking a positive and solution-focussed approach. It is not about being robotic, we are allowed to make mistakes and have ‘Off Days’, RP just offers a compass to find our way back. Conflict is also not a bad thing, it can be an opportunity for connection, especially when dealt with in a restorative way. We don’t pretend everything is OK or ignore challenges when being restorative; acknowledging harm is a big part of this – we can’t change what we don’t acknowledge but here we move from blame to restorative. RP can give us the conflict literacy skills and language to navigate these awkward and uncomfortable conversations.

2. RP Takes Too Much Time

I think at times it can take more time when we are referring to a restorative chat rather than filling in a referral but in my experience, we either spend the time investing in the relationship and identifying unmet needs or we spend the time responding to all the challenges, behaviours, exclusions that emerge over and over again when we don’t. Sometimes there is no time in the school day for a 10 min process, this is just true – we are metaphorically trying to build a circle into a square at times – finding time to talk and reflect amidst the hustle and bells of school life. But RP is also a 10 second way of thinking ‘ I wonder what is underneath that behaviour’?, a 2 min One Word Whizz to start a class that builds a great learning environment, or a simple re-phrase from “YOU’ to ‘I” to de-escalate an issue - ‘ You ‘ll be in big trouble if you don’t turn around’ versus ‘ I’d love us to work together here, will you turn around in your seat and we’ll give it a go?’. There are many ways to ask a student to work with us and a restorative one can take 2 seconds and avoid an exhausting power struggle. Remember good relationships are at the heart of effective teaching & learning.

3. RP is a Soft Approach

I think RP does develop what can be described as 'soft skills' - skills for building relationships through positive communicating; relational skills such as listening, identifying and communicating emotion, being self-reflective. They say that EQ, emotional intelligence, is one of the most overall success factors in careers (& a happy life!). In my experience, being willing to sit with uncertainty with a student by sharing the power to be part of the solution; having brave and awkward conversations with a colleague rather than continuously giving about a situation in our head; and being willing to look at ourselves and model accountability when we have made mistakes can be very hard indeed but this is the birthplace of empathy, connection and growth so worth it.

4. RP is All About the Restorative Questions

Many people are attracted to the restorative questions, and I can see why they are appealing. They are accessible and explicit. But RP is a philosophy and way of thinking that believes better relationships we have, the more we flourish and the less likely we are to cause harm. RP is about intentional community-building, check ins and check outs, circles, relational pedagogy, mindful moments, group agreements and decision-making processes, community accountability, social support networks and restorative questions, language, processes for conflict engagement and resolution.

5. There are no Rules So Kids Can Just Do What They Want!

RP is not about abandoning everything we have ever done in schools. It is about a collection of small shifts over time that enhance community, the idea of promoting integrity where our students do the right thing even if no one is watching. I like replacing the focus on rules to agreements that centre around our values – so that we have an understanding of values in action, an expectation as a community that aligns with our ethos. It’s not a ‘Do what you want!’ approach but it is also not a ‘Do it or you’ll be in big trouble!’ approach; it is a ‘IT’s the right thing to do to take care of our community and ability to learn in community’ approach!’. When we break our agreements, it is important to acknowledge this and enable our students to make amends, to repair the harm. We move from getting even to getting whole; from take away privileges to inviting our students to give back!

A year older...and far wiser

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 12:22:31 GMT

A year older...and far wiser

I teach in a good school. It’s academic and my students are high achievers. And I often wonder... What am I teaching them? What am I actually teaching them that they couldn't get out of a book or online? And then an opportunity arises where I can hold up a mirror for a student to reflect on their behaviour, and who they want to be in the world. And those opportunities generally happen when students engage in “bad behavior”.

One example is from last year. I had a third-year SPHE class and we were playing “Rock, paper, scissors, champ” (the team version from the RP Student Mentor Programme ). This programme, Be Here, Be You, Belong is a wonderful way to offer connection and peer support. It builds the leadership capacity of young people. I have experienced all of the potential this way of implementing RP in schools and so I am so frustrated when *Jamie (whose name is not Jamie) decided to add in a secret weapon and when the team jumped around, instead of saying rock, paper, or scissors, he shouted “jizz”. The lads on his team burst out laughing and I was fuming. I vividly remember thinking he was making a mockery of my class, trying to show off in front of the lads in the class, and degrading the girls in his class. I also felt foolish for taking a chance on a game and getting it thrown back in my face. Straight away I kicked him out. After a couple of minutes, I went outside to him and just looking at him I could feel my anger rising. I snapped, “I'm too cross to talk to you now. I'll come back in another couple of minutes” and I went back inside. When I calmed down sufficiently, we had a conversation which left an impression on me, and although I no longer teach Jamie I met him this year to ask for his help writing about it. That was an enlightening conversation.

April 2023:

What I said What I was thinking at the time

What Jamie said What Jamie was thinking at the time

What happened?

I didn’t know what I was supposed to say so I just shouted something.

Maybe she didn’t hear exactly what I said so I’ll try to get away with it.

He’s being defensive. This isn’t going to work...

Can’t you see how inappropriate that was?

I was only messing

I can see that it wasn’t great, but I’ll try to deflect.

This definitely isn’t going to work...how can I get him to realise? (I’m starting to panic a bit!)

Do you have a sister?

Nodded

I don’t like where this is going

How would you feel if that happened to your sister?

She’d know I was only messing

I was still focusing on what I did and not how it affected anyone else

It’s not you doing it, it’s someone in her class that she doesn’t know that well. How would you feel if your sister had that done to her?

Shoulders dropped, long pause

This is serious...it’s really bad

I wouldn’t like her to be put in that position, I know she’d be really uncomfortable

I can see his defensiveness drop, he’s got it and I can see how bad he feels. Now, I feel the urge to make him feel better. It’s an instant transformation.

I see you as a leader. Some days in class I think you’re going to be school captain and then other days I think, “Nope, you’re going to get arrested” (I say jokingly)

Jamie is looking at the floor but he smiles

I just wish it hadn’t happened, I wish I could go back and not do it. I’m really sorry for what I did.

That’s kind of funny... but this is clicking how out of line it is, this makes me think of the way my mam reminds me I’m a role model for my younger brother

November 2023

After we had gone through this, I asked Jamie what he thought might have happened if I had gone the route of going to his year head and putting him on detention. This was his (extremely wise) response.

It wouldn’t have made me think about what I had actually done. It would have just built up a hatred towards you and in classes after that it would have just been a battle and I would have been trying to get one up!

I’ve told this story at workshops and been asked whether Jamie has reformed. In all honesty, some days he’s super and sometimes he still makes questionable choices. But I was curious so I asked him if he thought that anything changed for him as a result of this conversation.

I think about others before I act now. I know there’s a line and when the lads come up with an idea of something funny to do I think about it, sometimes I tell them not to do things that I wouldn’t have thought about before.

I’m not trying to suggest that one conversation has reformed this student but I know that I had a conversation with him this year that I could not imagine having 6 months ago. I fully believe that a wise, mature young man was in there regardless of our chat but it was definitely a valuable learning experience. It speaks volumes that he remembered it so vividly months later.

There has always been (and will always be) “bad behaviour”. That is, as long as we define some behaviour as good and some behaviour as bad. I’m now curious about the need under behaviour, like Jamie’s need for reflection, supportive challenge or empathy that day and my need to connect with Jamie in a more positive way.

My focus used to be to minimise the bad behaviour and now I seek it out, I relish the opportunity to work with students in this heart space. I try to consider what is this behaviour communicating and engage in conversations that promote empathy and growth. This is where I know they learn something more than what they can find online. It’s where I get to make a real difference and be the change I wish to see!

If you would like to know more about our RP Student Mentor Programme join one of our Community Cafés on the topic or find out more here .

Building Strong, Resilient and Positive School Cultures with Restorative Practice

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 15:45:38 GMT

Building Strong, Resilient and Positive School Cultures with Restorative Practices - John Madigan

It's hard to put a finger on it…but you know it when you see it, when you hear it, when you feel it. It is something that will most likely become immediately apparent from the moment you walk in the door of a school building…

A positive school culture is like a beautiful piece of music played by mu ltiple instruments in a finely tuned orchestra where students, teachers, parents, and key stakeholders are all working together to create an environment where everyone thrives.

The benefits are far reaching and profound, contributing not only to the overall wellbeing of students and staff but also higher academic attainment and better outcomes for the wider community. However, as we all know too well, building and maintaining such a culture can be challenging, elusive and often unquantifiable.

Although elusive, there are most certainly some essential ingredients that can be put in place for a positive school culture to exist.

These include:

An agreed set of fundamental expectations of each other as human beings in this community and the necessary supports in place to reach said expectations.

Being deliberate and intentional in relating to each other in a respectful, honest, fair, consistent and understanding way.

Creating regular structured and un structured opportunities for connection, empathy, shared understanding and growth amongst all adults and children.

Modelling and espousing an agreed set of core values as a compass for being and thriving in the community.

A ‘shifting of the lens’ in terms of how we perceive each other towards a more understanding, nurturing, and non-judgmental one. A lens through which we consistently ask ourselves, "What is the most generous assumption we can make about our pupils and each other?"

This is where Restorative Practices and the work of Connect RP comes in; a holistic approach that empowers schools to cultivate strong, resilient, connected communities where a positive culture underpins everything.

Restorative Practice (RP)

Restorative Practice is grounded in the belief that relationships are at the core of a healthy and positive school culture. These practices also recognise that when conflicts arise, they provide opportunities for growth, understanding, accountability and connection rather than punishment, stigmatisation and division.

At the heart of RP is the values . We created acronyms for primary and post-primary settings in support of building visibility and literacy around this.

In a school committed to working with Connect RP, it is vital to be deliberate and explicit in holding a space where we develop a shared understanding of how we can embody these values on a daily basis and empower our students to do the same.

The Friendship Keepers and Relationship Keepers curriculum programmes are a fantastic conduit for exploring these values with pupils and students in school. Young people love the interactive nature of these programmes and the balance between self-reflection, group work, relationship-building and fun. These courses are also curriculum focused (SPHE & Wellbeing) and they enable educators to use a values-based approach to empower young people to connect with each other in a more meaningful way and to cultivate a strong resilient community in the classroom. Our new RP for TY Wellbeing Programme is a dynamic way for students to learn about building relationships through positive communication.

Engaging All Key Stakeholders

Building a resilient school culture requires the active involvement of everyone in the school community, including students, parents, teachers, boards of management and administrative staff. When all stakeholders cooperate and collaborate, their collective efforts create a sense of belonging and ownership in the school's culture. Just like those musicians in the orchestra, each person plays a unique role in shaping and reinforcing the positive atmosphere.

Engaging parents/guardians in RP can be especially powerful. Through engaging with the Connect RP resources for parents, we support an explicit broadcasting of important messaging to build goodwill in good times and partner with parents/guardians in nurturing their child's development and contribution to the school community. This connection between home and school through RP strengthens the overall community fabric.

The Power of Relationship-Building Circles

Relationship-building circles are a cornerstone of RP approaches. These circles are safe spaces where students and staff gather to share their thoughts, experiences, and feelings. They nurture empathy, active listening, inclusion, and open communication. Through circles, individuals feel heard, valued, and respected; strengthening the bonds and social capital that hold the school community together.

Students benefit immensely from relationship-building circles. They empower all to find their voice, express themselves, resolve conflicts, and appreciate each other's diverse perspectives. These circles help students develop emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and social skills; all of which are vital for their personal and academic growth and contribute significantly to the overall culture of a community. Furthermore, bringing the principles and architecture of circle practice to our pedagogy enhances the teaching and learning experience within our classrooms so that we don’t see RP as an ‘add on’ to what we have to do but a way to honour the values and relational culture we espouse into what we do already.

It starts with us …

A positive school culture is often challenging to quantify or describe through data, research or evaluation. However, you can feel it when you step into a school that embraces restorative practices. It's the warmth of greetings in the hallway, the respectful dialogue in classrooms, the raising of adult voices only being for reasons of exuberance and enthusiasm and the sense of unity that pervades the entire community.

Most importantly, it starts with us , the adults. This is why we offer Restorative Me workshops and courses. If we become intentional in how we relate to others in our school community, then anything is possible, even in the most difficult and hard-to-reach places. And..the best part is, as Michelle Stowe so aptly puts it in her TEDx , “I like who I am when I’m being restorative!”

In essence, a strong, resilient, and positive school culture, fostered through the Connect RP values-based model, intentional relational practices and relationship-building circles, creates an environment where every member of the community is valued and supported. It's a culture where conflicts are opportunities for growth, and connections are the foundation of success.

Finally, of course it's important to celebrate our successes but it is also vital not to get complacent when we feel our school community is in a great place. School culture and climate are living organisms for every school and we know from the ‘stickability of the negative’ that stress, frustration and pessimism needs very little space to breathe and grow. Therefore, a school culture is something that needs to be cultivated, nurtured, regularly reinforced and renegotiated to ensure it remains and evolves to meet the ever changing needs of everyone in the community. We recommend a Culture Check-in to support our schools with this process and regularly promote such practices through our Connect RP Schools’ Senior Leadership Team Gatherings.

Connect RP gives us a framework and a structure to not only build but also maintain sustainable positive school cultures. It is inherently designed to connect the culture dots. It allows us to cultivate and foster an environment that, when you feel it, you know you're in a place where students and staff can truly thrive!

If you are a principal or deputy principal you would like to know more about The Art of Relational School Culture Leadership join Michelle at one of our new workshops on 29th Nov or 11th April in Dublin West Ed Centre. Or check out our other types of workshops we offer here.

John

Relationships First

michellestowe@connectrp.ie (Michelle Stowe) — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 15:38:38 GMT

Relationships First is the RP model used by one of my mentors and dear friend from Newfound Land, dr. dorothy vaandering. I love the simplicity of this overarching intention. It is a wonderful compass to guide all that we do in schools - from our relationship with learning, the relationship between our school improvement plans and the people they seek to serve, the connection between colleagues, amongst students, and amidst our school communities- Relationships First!

What might this look like in practice?

Connection Before Curriculum in Our Classrooms!

It could be as simple as connection before curriculum, especially important at the start of the school year when we may be trying to hotwire connection and create some safety and belonging with new students. I’m so very proud of our RP Student Mentor - Be Here, Be You, Belong programme that many of our schools began this academic school year with - seeing images on social media of the connection and relational space the senior students built for incoming first years brings me so much joy..

Dorothy also stretched my thinking around Relationships First further when she suggested that we not only connect before but connect through curriculum - I loved this reframe. Facilitating students to identify their personal scripts through stories they encounter in English class, or perhaps allowing students to see themselves in mathematical equations using relatable data, or using academic prompts such as ‘What was your favourite part / the part you struggled with the most in today’s lesson?’ are as important as using relational one-word-whizz check-ins at the beginning of class. (you’ll see our one-word-whizz series if you follow Connect RP on social media). Bringing restorative language and relational thinking into the classroom by inviting students to use the restorative questions to unpack the subtext of a character or to guide an introspective diary entry of a character in English class to explore the past-present-future grammatical tenses in a language classroom, are just a few ways to foster connection through our curriculum. I love learning from teachers about the many other ways they may seek to do this in their classrooms.

Looking at the relationship between what we learn and how we learn - focussing on our relational pedagogy is key! One of my favourite parts of the face to face workshops we deliver is modelling relational pedagogy while learning about RP - but of course we can apply such methodologies while learning about volcanoes or photosynthesis too. It is paramount when nurturing a restorative classroom or indeed school, we look at developing methodologies and whole school preferred relational practices that acknowledge the importance and impact of process - the relationship between how we learn on what we learn. If you would like to know more and engage in an actual experience of this you can check out a list of the workshops, dates and venues on offer this year on our website workshops page here

Modelling ‘Relationships First’ in our Staff Rooms

One of my other wonderful mentors says ‘ if we are not modelling what we teach, we are teaching something else (Belinda Hopkins).

I think this reminds us, in a school growing its commitment to Restorative Practice, we need to live the restorative principles we espouse through staff and team gatherings, through not only what we say but also the processes we use. One of the most memorable staff gatherings I can remember being a part of is one where we as a staff of 70 we had a walking debate around issues we were grappling with as a community, where they were mixed views and opinions on how best to approach discipline issues on the corridors - the opinions ranged from a zero tolerance approach of ‘ 3 strikes and you’re out’ to a more restorative approach of looking at the context and our area of influence as educators, exploring how we best meet issues - ‘Who do I want to be in this situation?’. The walking debate as a process facilitated a safety and equity of voice amongst the community to take a snapshot of the mixed lenses and experiences within the room.

But what’s more, once the differences were acknowledged, it allowed an openness to the second part of the session where we had solution-focussed circles around the identified issues - tapping into the collective wisdom of the community rather than just one or two voices dominating the staff meeting, creating a constructed environment that is hard to speak up in. As members of staff, as humans, we all have a voice, we all have power

but we need to create conditions in our staff rooms, in our classrooms and corridors, where this can emerge. I remember being so nervous before facilitating this staff session, it was out of my comfort zone and indeed a risk but all relationships involve risk. Hand on heart, at

6pm you could visibly see staff actively engaging in the circles and many of whom came up to me to share appreciation about the process we used, even those who would openly say they were not ‘big fans’ of RP but it seemed they appreciated experiencing a restorative process in the staffroom. People always ask about staff ‘buy-in’, in my experience nothing will trump an experience for people than a space , a process where they feel valued, seen and heard. Such staff room cultures are nurtured and built, they happen by design, with intention and practice of using relational practices and processes that honour Relationships First!

School Culture is a living thing and it is about thinking big and acting with consistent small steps… our Restorative Us Plus programme supports a school with just that. Offering a staff CPD and mentoring an RP team within a school to grow their own practice and over time to facilitate your school’s RP Growth Plan by ‘leaning in’ to staff room practices that promote connection, reflection and an equity of voice in small, manageable, time efficient ways that are sustainable, especially with the Connect RP resources and scaffolds we offer to encourage RP to be on the agenda of every staff meeting for 5-10 mins, but as illustrated in the example above, adopting a restorative approach throughout staff gathering, no matter what is on the agenda to discuss, is the goal! I believe this happens by design.

If you are a principal or deputy principal you would like to know more about The Art of Relational School Culture Leadership you can sign up to one of our new workshop on 29th Nov or 11th April in Dublin West Ed Centre.

What is the Difference Between Shame & Guilt?

Wed, 22 Mar 2023 09:31:26 GMT

Shame is ‘I am bad’, guilt is ‘I did something bad’. Shame is ‘I am a mistake’ whereas guilt is ‘I made a mistake’!

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging (Breńe Brown). Guilt, on the other hand, is when we feel bad about something we may or may not have done. We know that guilt, as opposed to shame, occurs when we are connected to our values. It is when we hold what we have done or failed to do, up against who we want to or indeed believe we can be and it doesn’t feel good (Brown 2013). It can be uncomfortable but it is highly adaptive. This is what inspires connection to our true selves, to our values, and to others; this is what motivates authentic apologies and a desire to make amends.Whereas shame corrodes the part of us that believes we can change!

Is it ever helpful for people to feel shame?

In short, No!

Shame is very deep, damaging and can have life-long consequences. It is corrosive to a positive sense of self, which is exactly what we need to know, to live, in order to positively contribute to ourselves and our communities. Shame is highly correlated with violence, addiction, bullying and aggression. Shame is far more likely to cause misbehaviour than to cure it yet the culture and punitive systems that we operate within often dictate and encourage shaming responses to such behaviour by criticising, or imposing punishments TO them that usually just sponsor blind resentment instead of recognition of values; armoured defense instead of open reflection, and shame cycles instead of healing connections.

Sometimes, as loving parents or caring educators, we unconsciously contribute to poor behaviour by shaming people who may have caused harm or done wrong. Our intention, of course, is to support the people in our care to do better, to teach the young people the difference between right and wrong, but to do this we must learn to separate the behaviour from the person, only then can we allow someone who has caused harm the opportunity to connect to their own values and goodness in order to do better.

Children, human beings, will ultimately become what they feel about themselves. Saying ‘you are a disgrace’ may be an obvious shaming declaration but there is also a world of difference between the statements ‘you are bold’ versus ‘that behaviour is bold/not OK”; the former is about the inner self while the latter is about the external action.

In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown, who is a shame and vulnerability researcher, reminds us of what we may intrinsically know already; that shame corrodes the part of us that thinks we can change. S o to shame someone into changing is like saying “you are horrible and worthless and incapable of change….. now get better” (Brown, 2013). We must believe that we are capable of doing better in order to actuate that desire.

What Do People Do When they Feel Shame?

We hide, we attack ourselves or others, we avoid, and most importantly we are disconnected from the part of us that believes we can change. The Compass of Shame, adapted from Nathanson 1992, illustrated here using the restorative animals from Connect RP’s RP for Students programmes, helps us to understand the impact of this feeling and how it may show up in our classrooms, living rooms or boardrooms. It is a helpful frame to consider when understanding misbehaviour.

Reflecting on behaviours through the Compass of Shame really allowed the teachers in my action research study to not take students’ misbehaviour personally, to understand that it may very well be about the student’s sense of self. It allowed us to separate the act from the actor, the deed from the doer, and to open up new capacities of understanding and empathy which create a more fertile ground for connection and change.

So, rather than perhaps limiting our understanding of a person by cementing them to a label by saying ‘They/He/She is such an X’ or ‘They/She/He is just Y’, this new consideration of the effects of shame allowed us to now refer to and explore their actions instead, emphatically considering what the unmet need might be, and then focussing on our circle of influence instead of a tiresome circle of concern (Covey 2004)

It is essential to understand that the antidote to shame is empathy and connection not detention & punishment! Marg Thorsborne, author, consultant and keynote speaker at our 2023 e-Conference (you can see highlights on our e-Conference page here) reminded us of the following:

So What Can Move Us from Shame to Empathy?

Brené Brown’s extensive research in this area outlines that it is the power of vulnerability that moves us from each end of this spectrum (Brown 2013). The vulnerability to share authentically when feeling the shame gremlins creep in and instead of lashing out or withdrawing, saying:

‘I’m worried that I won’t be able to do this and people will laugh at me’ as opposed to ‘I couldn’t give a sh*t about this test anyway’,

but what conditions would be necessary to allow such an honest share?

As educators, it’s the vulnerability of holding the intention to connect instead of raging against destructive behaviours driven from the Compass of Shame, even though we may be no longer guarantee the outcome,

‘I feel frustrated about what happened in class as I was revising the lesson because you were absent, now I am thinking maybe you were frustrated too because you were missing the 1st time, what happened from your perspective?’ as opposed to ‘How dare you mess when I was going over the key elements for you, you’re irresponsible and a distraction for others in the class’

Here we are moving away from the certainty of a punishment – after all what does this guarantee anyway? We will never punish shame out of someone, there are not enough detentions in the world to help us feel less inherently flawed or inherently worthy of love and belonging.

The vulnerability is about the risk of seeking the best in others rather than being comfortably certain of their limiting label. We need to, when dealing with shame, be vulnerable enough to treat people with their potential and not just their past in mind. This is where the light gets in!

What Do You See in the Picture?

A parrot?

How do you know? The colour, the beak, the tail….?

But what if I invited you to see the dancer? Can you now see the arm wrapped around the white face and the outstretched leg? The point is that once we have decided that it is a parrot, this is all that we see. RP invites us to challenge our assumptions, to look closely at the destructive behaviours we witness, and at times demonstrate ourselves; and instead try to seek and then find the best within ourselves and others. The parrot is a reminder that if we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change and RP can offer this transformative power.

We recommend that you print our Compass of Shame image off and have it to hand as a visual reminder when reflecting on the students we find the most difficult to connect or engage positively with (perhaps placing a copy in your teacher diary / at your care team, year head or Bee RP Hive gatherings).

One thing that allowed teachers in my research to maintain their empathic bond when reflecting on their Student X, the students most ‘in struggle’, was to reflect on the invitation to consider what they might say if they could express themselves in a healthier way…

… I’m never going to succeed anyway so why bother, I feel lost?

… I’ll get you before you get me because I am afraid to be undepended…

… I can’t read well so I will do anything I can not to be exposed..

… I feel so hurt and crap about myself, I just pass that on/shut down to numb the pain…

… I have to be perfect at this or I’m not good enough so I’ll stay up until 2am just make sure…

… I scream, shout and laugh at others as I’ve yet to learn another way to communicate and I am afraid what will happen if I lose power over them

…What might the student you find the most difficult to connect with and that springs to mind when reflecting on our Compass of Shame, say if they knew how…. if they had the words, knowing, safety or opportunity to do so?

If you are in a Connect RP School please look at Lesson 6 of Restorative Me ‘Shame Gremlins’ to explore this further. Otherwise, you may be interested in our RP Mentor Belonging Programme for schools to proactively promote connection in schools or if you are interested in developing your own skills and processes that move us away from shaming approaches and cultivate empathy you may be interested in our one of our Saturday Hybrid upcoming workshops .

Guest Blog by Dr. Belinda Hopkins- “RP – Reimagining a ‘Tough’ Approach”

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 18:00:00 GMT

There is another way to respond to charges that restorative practice is soft – and that is in the context of more serious disciplinary issues – including interpersonal conflict involving verbal or physical violence, bullying, harm to property etc.

Years of experience of peer mediation in school has shown that when two or more people fall out and engage in verbal or physical violence then punishing all involved does nothing to repair the relationships and indeed can make things worse – and harm the relationships those people may have with the adults punishing them.

Is it being soft to invite people to sit down together and, with the help of mediators, acknowledge their own role in a conflict and work together to put things right? I would suggest that it requires courage, humility, patience and creativity. It is an educational way to address problems whereas punishment may simply teach young people that when they get something wrong those with more power will make them suffer. If anything this teaches a bullying response and paves the way for authoritarian parenting in the future. It requires the mediators to learn how to listen in a non-judgmental active way and refrain from giving advice but support people to explore their own ways forward. These are not easy skills to learn. As an experience then, the process is tough to take part in and tough to facilitate.

What about more serious misdemeanors – when someone has caused harm to others or to school property through their behaviour? Punishment might be the ‘tough’ response but I would argue that it is a lazy one that is not educational. A child punished for such behaviour may learn nothing except not to get caught next time. Where on earth did we as adults learn that when a bad thing has happened the best response is to do more bad things? An eye for an eye, as it were. And let us admit that making a child suffer for their actions may well have an element of revenge in it – and that is not, or should not be, part of our professional toolbox.

The punitive response is part of the paradigm that states that when someone has done something wrong they should be punished for it. This way of thinking takes its lead from the domain of criminal justice. Schools can find themselves using witness statements, interviews and interrogation techniques to get to the bottom of what has happened. They need the evidence to prove who is responsible so that they can administer the appropriate sanction – despite the fact that there is little evidence that sanctions do in fact change behaviour.

Sanctions may suppress or prevent certain behaviours because people fear the punishment, but this can lead to behaviour moving beyond the school gate where people will not get caught or encourage children to evade capture by lying. It does not lead to people really thinking about what they have done and the impact their actions have had on others. (And in the absence of a strong commitment to relationship building in a school using activities like Circles it is possible that children really do not care about the impact of what they have done so this is a parallel pro-active activity we need to adopt alongside our restorative response.)

The hardest thing a child may be asked to do in a school is acknowledge that they have made a harmful choice, accept responsibility, sit down with those affected by their actions and work with them to put things right. The hardest thing school personnel may have to do is to sit down with a student and take some responsibility for a conflict that happened in a classroom. Maybe a teacher have to take on board for the first time that this young person was triggered by something that the teacher said, and was in fact acting out from a state of dysregulation and past trauma. The hardest thing for parents who have been invited to a restorative meeting involving their child may be to face up to the realisation that their own behaviour has somehow been influential in causing their child to act the way they did.

Restorative meetings are far from soft – they are tough for the young people involved, tough for the teachers and tough for the parents/carers.

I am not sure that the word ‘soft’ is actually useful and appropriate when it comes to talking about relational and restorative skills.

Personally, I find staying in the relational and restorative zone all the time extremely demanding. There is nothing soft about being vigilant to what people are saying, and what they may be trying to tell us with their behaviour. There is nothing soft modulating our responses in order to stay in connection with another person and move to a point where we can both work together and find mutually acceptable ways forward. There is nothing soft about being threatened by an angry or upset person and yet staying calm and empathic, doing ones best to help the other person to regulate themselves and calm down. There is nothing soft in avoiding the temptation to fight back and use the power that we could so easily assume, that has been given to us by the institution we work in, to ‘pull rank’ and use threats and reprimands ourselves.

Perhaps what I am saying is that we need to reclaim the word ‘tough’ – that to be tough in a restorative, relational way is what we aspire to. And that is tough to do!

Our Connect RP Gift is a Restorative Support Agreement aims to guide a restorative approach when harm has occurred. You can download it here .

If you are interested in developing skills to facilitate such Restorative Meetings, you can sign up to our Hybrid Saturday Course on Restorative Meetings in DWEC on 6 ^th May here !

Our Connect RP Site Licence Schools will explore facilitating Restorative Meetings in Year 3 but if anyone from one of our Connect RP Site Licence schools fancies a face to face day on this topic they will receive a 50% discount, so get in touch hello@connectrp.ie if this relates to you!

Discipline – To Teach, Not to Punish!

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 12:30:00 GMT

Our theme for February is all about exploring the idea that discipline is about teaching, and not about punishing.

Natural & Imposed Consequence:

Of course, when things happen or go wrong there are natural consequences. For example, if someone doesn’t study or do homework, they may not do well in their exams; or if someone is unkind to someone else, their friends mightn’t want to spend time with them etc. This is different to imposed consequences, where an adult or someone else imposes a consequence with the supposed intention of changing behaviour. The problem is this rarely addresses the need or solve the problem that was driving the behaviour in the first place, it is non-adaptive; if and when we do see a change in behaviour, it will most likely last as long as the imposed punishment is in place.

Punishment does not build skills and capacities that many of our young people in struggle in school need to acquire, those who may have what Dr Ross Green describes as ‘lagging skills; due to trauma, circumstance or simply because many skills are developmental and require time, support and practice – all of which a detention does not offer!

The Problem-Solving Wheel

This month's Connect RP Gift is our Problem-Solving Wheel, which In this month’s Connect RP Gift, our Problem-Solving Wheel, we can see the focus here is on being adaptive, developing skills, and identify ways forward that heal or contribute.

When working restoratively, the idea is that if you are in the problem, you are in the solution . The Problem-Solving Wheel aims to enable students to find the solutions themselves the scaffolded suggestions offer the opportunity to:

Regulate when in challenge (walk away / talk time/ go to another activity/wise owl calming techniques) which our students/we often need before we can even access our executive functions in the pre-frontal cortex of our brain (language, reason etc.);

Reconnect and build relationships again (play a game, write a card, share a positive before talking about the issue/ look at what’s going well?/ share and take turns/ share a ‘sparkle’);

Express ourselves using positive communication tools (‘I feel’ not ‘You did’/ apology from the heart /boundaries with a ‘stop’);

Plan adaptive strategies (ask for support/ create reminders/ Ignore);

Identify ways to make amends and contribute in some meaningful way! (contribute using gifts / sincere apology).

Is Our Focus on Taking Away or Giving Back?

One of the key shifts for us when thinking about Discipline within a restorative lens is to consider if we are we focussed on taking things away to seek conformity, or scaffolding ways for our students to learn, to take responsibility and to contribute to the community – to identify and use their gifts to give back, to capture positive moments of connection or reconnection.

Some examples that spring to mind over the years as a teacher involved two boys who loved football and had been in a fight over a ball which was visible to others in the year group. During a restorative meeting , after we looked at who had been affected / harmed, we considered ways they could make amends using the restorative questions- What’s needed now? The boys came up with the idea to develop and come together to organise a lunch time football tournament for their year group to show they had repaired the harm of the fight, to establish clear expectation around taking turns so there was less chance for the friction that had led to their initial fight, and as a way to contribute to the community their fight had harmed – A wonderful example of discipline that promotes connection and growth! I’m also remembering students staying after school to help me with organising the salsa routine we were performing as part of our TY show – a lovely opportunity emerged to support each other. One of my fab Connect RP schools told me recently about one of the students, a talented artist, who agreed to stay after school to paint / decorate the new bench the school had invested in for their courtyard, this was a way he could use his gifts to contribute to the community he had harmed and also for the community to offer him the opportunities for success that he needed outside of the academic classroom.

I think it’s important to remember that this can require us to get creative, to get to know each other, and to remember it is key to invite those that cause harm to identify what they need to move forward or indeed how they can give back – What does a detention offer the community? How does it create change? Adopting a restorative approach isn’t always easy or convenient, and indeed it may be inappropriate in some cases when a school is dealing with a serious issue and has not yet gone of their journey that will become reflected in their policies and whole-school preferred practices! But this may begin with small steps such as printing off and using our Problem-Solving Wheel the next time you are supporting a student to address an issue.

If you would like to see and hear from other schools on such a long-term restorative journey sign up to our upcoming E-Conference March 4 ^th :

RP; What’s Need Now?

Nurture, Motivation and Participation!

Our Keynote speaker, Margaret Thorsborne, will also explore a Restorative Lens and Approach to Bullying – seeking to repair harm and restore relationships.

Bringin’ in the Good Vibes!

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 09:00:01 GMT

Bringin’ in the Good Vibes!

When I was thinking about creating this blog and indeed the themes for our upcoming E-Conference March 4th , I was reflecting upon the restorative question:

What’s Needed Now?

…in our school, in our homes and in our daily lives. Based on my conversations / experiences with practitioners in Connect RP schools, some school leaders who are my very valued critical friends (Rachel McGrath, Claire Matthews, & Daithí O’Murchú to name a few) and the awesome Connect RP Team, I landed on:

Nurture, Motivation and Participation!

As it’s January, we will focus on the theme of ‘Motivation’ and holding the intention to bring in the good vibes. Many of the educators I get to work and learn with talk about noticing a lack of energy, a lull in enthusiasm, an overwhelm in the staffroom due to the giving nature of our profession and the ever-growing list of jobs to complete, and maybe following the very challenging times that Covid has created for us in schools. This can impact how we show up in our roles, in our relationships and within our communities.

I’m reminded of Kay Pranis’s (an elder in the restorative international field) share at last year’s E-conference when she spoke about collective accountability and invites us to consider, ‘What needs to change in each of us to take care of all of us?’! Last month we spoke about ways we could contribute rather than criticise which roll’s on to this month’s theme of collectively ‘Bringing’ in the Good Vibes’!

‘Love Bomb Week’ is one of the whole-school initiatives that we explore in our Connect RP Schools to achieve this. We often link this to February’s Valentine’s Day which was an accidental tradition created when working as a teacher in my own school many years ago. It was a response to the implementation dip of RP within our school at the time when staff were a little weary, needed an injection of positivity, and needed reminding that RP was also about consciously cultivating positive relationships, not just replacing a punitive code of behaviour. I was first introduced to the term ‘love-bomb’ by one of my lovely colleagues at the time, Kevin, when he suggested during a staff Fishbowl (a structured solution-focussed circle) that we ‘love-bomb’ the student that was perceived at the centre of the chaos we were trying to find solutions for. The term and idea made me smile and it channelled our energies in a proactive direction.

Recently I have heard the term ‘Love-Bomb’ used to describe ways that abusive partners seek to control and harm those they are in relationship with. I am still thinking about this – I currently conclude that this term and intention, as I understand it, can create endless opportunities for healing and connection in the schools that I get to work within – as with everything restorative context and intention are paramount. The context of a school will be different to the context of a women’s shelter for example. It reminded me how language can be ‘messy’, especially when considering restorative language – is my intention when using it to control and seek compliance or to connect and contribute? Are we seeking to harm or to heal?

I am open to changing my mind about the term, I think flexibility is important when working restoratively and my compass will be the values we espouse to embody and the impact on the community we work within! I have experienced, heard and witnessed nothing but love and connection from our Love-Bomb Week in schools - SNAs, teachers , students continue to inspire me through their endless and creative ways to bring the idea of ‘Love-Bomb Week’ to life. Our video here offers some such examples, and we will share more about this and many other school initiatives (Look Up Day; RP Celebration Walks; Daily Dedications; Drop Everything and Be Kind; and On a Bright Note) to cultivate motivation at our upcoming E-conference on 4 ^th March . We’d love to see you there - All profit generated go to charity which is another motivation for us to invite you to spread the word wide and far!

This blog is about the theme of ‘Motivation’ but of course, all of the three themes of our E-conference - Nurture, Motivation & Participation - feed into one another, there is a symbiotic relationship between them! When we feel motivated, we participate. When I participate, I can feel more motivated. Equally, it’s hard to participate or feel motivated when we are empty and have unmet needs that require nurturing. So where do we begin? When we think about this, as we always try to remember when working with schools on our long-term restorative journey, we remember the importance of smaller steps – what one thing can I do today to bring in the good vibes and be the change I wish to see and feel within my community.

This month’s gift of our 5:1 Love Bomb Tips seek to illustrate such small steps, potentially offering reminders of what so many of you do already and, no doubt, you will have many more tips to add to this list!

What small step can you take today to feel motivated and bring in the good vibes within your classrooms, staffrooms and beyond?

Did I Contribute More than I Criticised

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 16:43:41 GMT

Did I Contribute More than I Criticised?

December can be a tough time in schools - lots going on, many demands and some very tired bodies (and souls)!!

It’s so important to acknowledge and pause to take stock of all the ways we have contributed within our communities, to our colleagues, our students and their families! I can’t tell you the amount of time fun school activities or teachers’ passing kind comments get spoken about around the kitchen table in my sister’s house. The little things that we do can make such a big difference and create far-reaching ripples of chat, community and connection! We can forget the many ways we contribute to so many spaces and how what we do in education make a difference to heads, hearts and capacities!

We can have a tendency to criticise others too, especially when we are tired, overwhelmed and weary. We can find ourselves giving out a little more than usual, or caught up in the negative loop, well I know I can anyway! When I get like this, I can get ‘tight’ and inflexible! I also pass it on….in smaller ways like when I might highlight the time my student missed using a capital letter, instead of using the times that they did use them successfully to illustrate the importance of them! If you have ever seen Rita Pierson’s inspiring TED talk Every Kid Deserves a Champion , you will remember smiling at her anecdote where her student scored 2/20 and she puts + 2 and a big smiley face on the student’s paper reminding us that “minus 18 sucks the life out of ya, but plus 2 says ‘I ain’t all bad’!” !

The tendency to criticise can show up in bigger ways too, like when we spiral into the absolutes ‘ nothing is going well’, ‘everybody is letting me down’, ‘I am always the one doing it’, ‘They never do what they say they are doing to do’ etc. We can lose perspective here and such absolutes – ‘never/always’ are often inaccurate and very corrosive to communication, they hinder adaptation and collaboration.

RP can offer us a different pathway, a relational lens and language to support connection. A question that cab facilitate this is:

‘Have I contributed today more than I criticised? (Brené Brown)

It can refocus our rumination on what is going wrong, offer us a softer thinking routine that is more grounding. Indeed we may have many valid reasons to feel frustrated and to give out, but how is the practice of giving out working for us and the communities within which we work?

Balancing the need to acknowledge harm and wrongdoing in a way that others can receive it, while also focusing on seeking and being part of the solution is a huge part of being restorative. This question supports me with this intention. Is this good for the communities within which we work? - Absolutely! But it is also good for our own health, to mind our own head space, to not take things as personally and instead focus on the things we can influence.

I’d like to offer two invitations to support us with positive contributions, with engagement. The first is a proactive strategy or practice where we notice the good. Our On a Bright Note Resource Post Primary / Primary in school aims to support us with noticing what we do want to see, feel, hear, linking this to our restorative values – celebrating values in action. A responsive strategy to prevent us from disengaging in times of challenge is to practise healthier thinking routines when we are on the loop, giving out in the car or lying in bed replaying the day, ask yourself:

Have I contributed today more than I criticised?

It’s a practice and what we practise grows stronger! I hope you all really contribute to yourselves over the holidays, and I’d like to take the opportunity to the communities that I get to work with to thank you so much for all the ways you contribute to me professionally through your inspiring ideas but also on a personally through the school communities you invite me to be a part of. I am so grateful.

Happy Christmas and holidays to you all,

Michelle (& the Connect RP Team :-))!

All Behaviour is Communication, So What's Needed Now?

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 13:36:48 GMT

All Behaviour is Communication, So What's Needed Now?

I love this reminder from Andy Hargreaves

It brings to mind an incident last week when I was being very grumpy and short with my sister, we're very close and of course we can argue sometimes. She says she's the only one that really knows how truly 'un-restorative' I can be :-)!! She'd also probably agree that she can be a little confrontational at times and might often have reacted badly to my clipped tone which would have escalated the conflict. As human beings our emotions are so contagious! But she didn't react that way at all that day, she just genuinely turned to look at me, put her hand on my arm and in a concerned tone asked 'Shelly, are you OK?'. When she responded like this, I could suddenly feel the 'ugly-trying-not-to-cry-face' coming on :-)! It softened everything, I shed a few tears and she gave me a hug. She made it an opportunity for connection through her response. Her genuine concern melted my armoured charge, and I could share, even realise myself, what was really going on underneath the anger mask. I wasn't OK at all.

This is why a restorative approach and lens is so nurturing for relationships and also for awareness, reflection and the addressing of unmet needs. Look at the behaviour feeling-needs iceberg.

Download PDF version of the Needs Prompt Sheet here .

I was being impatient and being short in my reply but it was nothing to do with her or what she was asking at all. I always say to my nieces and nephews that when our hearts are full of love and we feel good, we pass it on; and when our hearts are feeling prickly and heavy we can also pass that on - true when you are 7, 17 or 70! I was feeling angry at something else that was going on in my life that week and underneath that anger was a deep sadness, a disappointment, and an old weariness. What I needed at that time was compassion, understanding and reassurance that everything will be okay, that 'this too shall pass'. Luckily, my lovely sis could recognise that my behaviour was communicating something beyond that I was a 'moany you-know-what' that day, all behaviour is communication!

Have a think about your students, your colleagues or even perhaps a loved one at home that may have been engaging with destructive behaviour, that we can so often take personally. I wonder what feelings may be underneath their actions? What might be going on inside? What is the unmet need and therefore how should we respond?

In our work, we can't always meet all our students' needs all of the time, but this relational lens allows us to move away from blame and towards solutions; whatever the capacity we may or may not have, it allows us to maintain our empathic bond. This is key to relationships which are the heart of RP.

Words Can Be Windows or Walls (Rosenberg)

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 08:00:00 GMT

Words Can Be Windows or Walls (Rosenberg)

I remember hearing the idea that the words more likely to soak into your ear are ones that are whispered and not yelled!! This really resonated with me...I try to pay attention to what I say but also to notice how I say it.

The way we speak and the language we use really influences our culture. Language is a tool of our operational culture - when our values and words/actions match! If we value respect and empathy, if someone is shouting, do we seek to shout louder because others are watching to fulfil the need of 'power-over' or do we tap into our internal power and chose to respond in a way that isn't triggered by others' 'misbehaviour' but by our own values; seeking to model calm and to find / illustrate words that are windows.

So many of us are familiar with the restorative questions which can offer opportunities to live the values of empathy and accountability. Of course, we breathe intention into the language we use with our tone, pitch, energy, pace and body language. The way we talk will affect how our students listen and what's equally true is that the way they listen so often affects how we talk!!!!

I notice that if I use a softer tone when asking the restorative questions, if I allow the pitch of my voice to go down and use a slower pace, it seems to create more safety, it communicates a genuine curiosity in understanding the person's perspective as opposed to what can be misunderstood as an attack or interrogation about what happened. This can really impact how someone engages with me. I invite you to notice what you say but also how you say things, how others say things. The impact of the tone, pitch, pace..., we'll do so much of this instinctively anyway, as educators we communicate for a living and will often of course have immense skills in this area, but it is interesting when we pay attention, when we observe ourselves and others what we can notice.

In the restorative work that I get to do, I am so often asked about what to do if a student doesn't engage or shuts down or seems disinterested etc. This inspired me to create a Restorative Sound Bites resource that I link with the Connect RP RESPECT acronym I created to support us to explicitly link language with values - illustrating how our language creates our operational culture.

But remember the restorative language, the questions, the words, are just a compass or a scaffold, a potential opening. they are not a magic formula, there is none because RP isn't about tips and tricks to get the kids to behave, there is no list to tick to ensure 'success'. This is about relationships, it's about nurturing connection, empathy, safety and accountability and we can never underestimate the power of planting such seeds.

For me, as I illustrate well in my TEDx , 'success' lies in being who we want to be in the situation. It lies in liking yourself, modelling a way of communicating that we hope someone will mirror.

I always try to remember that the way we talk to our students will one day be the way they speak about themselves...

to appreciate how many affirmations it may take to erase one sarcastic or unkind throw away comment. I've wounded many students with my words over the years, I know I have. I didn't mean to, I hate to acknowledge it, but I am human. Being restorative isn't about being perfect or robotic, we'll make mistakes, we'll have bad days, we won't always get it right but RP offers a compass and the more we grow our relational literacy and emotional language the better equipped we are. After all, we need to remember that the only thing we can control about our students' behaviour is our own behaviour!

The Power of Intention

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 08:00:00 GMT

The Power of Intention

‘INTENTION’ is a concept that plays a big part in my own personal life, alongside the RP work that I get to do. I try to use it as a compass to get clarity on decisions or best next steps by asking myself, ‘What is my intention here?’; or to help me to understand the motivation of others, ‘What was their intention when they did that?’. It made me laugh one day when I heard someone say that we judge ourselves by our intentions, ‘sure I didn’t mean to hurt them’, while we often judge others by their actions, ‘they really hurt me’! I find that being curious about my own or someone else’s intention can soften communication, especially when things get a little prickly.

Intention is so important when we think about our restorative approach. Is my intention to control or rebuke or is my intention to connect and repair? The answer to this question informs my body language, tone of voice, commitment to the restorative philosophy even when it is hard, and it can get hard as many of you will know! I find that one of the most powerful ways to achieve the intention to connect and repair, to de-escalate potential conflicts in the classroom or the corridors is to say my intention out loud:

…My intention is to support you to have success here which is why I’m hoping we can work together to improve the homework situation…

My intention is to have a chat and see if we can move this in a better direction together, are you open to that yourself?…

My intention is to keep us all safe in the class which is why I am asking you to keep the legs of the chair on the ground please, good man…

I’d invite you to practise this in times of challenge, when you can feel the urge to engage in a power struggle emerge.

I believe that living the intention to be restorative with yourself and others requires us to nurture our own restorative journey, seeking opportunities to practise on purpose. It’s like everything else, what we practise grows stronger – we need to do those ‘RP squats’ to build capacity and resilience in times of challenge.

If you are in a Connect RP School there are so many opportunities to expand your practice on the UBUNTU Learning Platform or in community with your school’s Bee RP Hive! If you are not in a Connect RP school you can see what we have on offer here or even simply begin with an RP reflective journal or with finding an RP buddy to chat with. You may also like this month’s Connect RP Gift – Top Tips to Respond to Classroom Conflict.

My own personal intention is to create more balance this year and this will inform my decisions and priorities – one way I have done this is to expand the gorgeous Connect RP Team whom you can meet here.

What is your intention for yourself this year?

What is your intention for advancing your own RP practice this year?

With much giraffe-love,

Michelle

Calm is a Superpower (Connect RP Gift - Connect In Regulation Zone)

Mon, 30 May 2022 14:13:21 GMT

In this month’s theme, Calm is a Superpower , we are expanding on last month where we explored ways to protect our peace.

People are not just born calm – it’s a practice and what we practise grows stronger! When working restoratively in a consistent and conscious way, we are nurturing pathways to move from this state to trait. There may be many barriers to accessing this for us and the people within the communities with whom we work. The more I learn about the impact of trauma and stress on the brain, and in turn on our behaviours and capacities to connect relationally, the more compassion I feel, for myself and others when we find ourselves midst the chaos or charge of conflict. As the indigenous wisdom that RP is rooted within reminds us…

and all relationships involve risk. Risk which can be tough to tolerate when we are wounded – we need those therapeutic moments of connection, relational experiences of healing only available once we have regulated.. cultivated within the calm.

In this video extract from our self-paced certified course ‘Restorative Me’ we explore how Calm is a Superpower and how calm people practise two things before they respond – they breathe and they ask questions.

As many of you know, the restorative questions are can often be a big attraction to RP – the fact that it offers an explicit language, developing our conflict literacy skills can be appealing!

Last month we gifted a PDF of the restorative questions:

In addition to these, one of my personal favourite questions to consider and that helps me to regulate myself, rather than get lost in a narrative or fear-driven story I can create is …

It allows me to access an inner pause, to challenge my instinct to self-protect by considering the worst possible motivations or outcomes which are so often untrue and regularly inaccurate.

The restorative questions are helpful for our inner narrative and indeed to support us with our dialogue with our students.

But at times, we can jump to trying to reason with our students too quickly. We have yet to allow space and time for regulation for ourselves or indeed for our students whose brain may be offline. We need space to breathe, so our brains are functioning from our pre-frontal cortex (our wise owl) - where we can access our reason, our language centre and executive functions. Breathing is essential for regulation.

Without regulation we may have by-passed the conditions that nurture such an empathic enquiry. Bruce Perry reminds us that there are 3Rs – Regulate , Relate and then Reason . He offers a very insightful short series for educators on the neuro-sequential model of the brain, and the impact of stress and trauma that you may find transformative for your own practice- I know I have! You can check this out here .

We explore the idea and mechanics of Bruce Perry’s 3xRS in more detail in our RP and Additional Educational Needs individual certified self-paced course that all our Connect RP schools have access to or that can find individually here . Our RP for Students programmes also seek to grow the awareness and capacity of our young people to identify, regulate and respond to our emotions in healthy, relational ways; and to recognise the compassion response needed when this is not available to us.

This month’s Connect RP gift offers a ‘Connect In Zone’ resource that was inspired by so many others doing this important work (from Mind Up Programme, Zones of Regulation, to Bruce Perry and to Daniel Siegal) and we hope that you may find the collective wisdom offered here helpful when working with your students.

I have also been lucky enough to be in dialogue and learn with Joe Brummer, a restorative author, colleague and friend. I was invited to offer a testimonial for the publication of his powerful book, Building a Trauma-Informed Restorative School which I highly recommend. I am so grateful that I get to co-create a workshop with Joe this month for my Connect RP Schools and I am looking forward to bringing this offering in one of our CPD sessions next year, supporting them on their whole school restorative journey.

In the meantime, I highly recommend his book for an awesome RP summer read…or you might even be inspired to join us on our Connect RP EPV Summer Course.

Yours with much giraffe love,

Michelle

Protect Your Peace (Connect RP Gift - Restorative Questions PDF)

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 14:33:21 GMT

This month’s theme is around protecting your peace and seeking ways to be restorative with ourselves.

…Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle… (Plato)

This is true! I also believe that we need to extend this to ourselves, acknowledging the hard time we are having in education right now, in our world right now – making sure to be kind with ourselves. I don’t always find this easy, I can be much tougher on myself that anyone else that’s for sure!

Practising restorative inquiry and using the restorative questions to think relationally really supports me, in my conversations and relationships with others (I illustrate this in my TEDx ) but also for my response to my inner critic, nurturing my relationship with myself. Restorative inquiry can allow me to soften that voice that gives out to me, that has unreasonable expectations, that can forget that I am just doing my best right now!!! I try to remember to go easy, be gentle, to notice ‘What’s happening for me?’, to consider, ‘What’s the hardest thing for me about the situation?’ and to reflect upon ‘What do I need right now?

In this last term, with all that schools are experiencing, and in the midst of what is happening in our world, I offer this video extract from Lesson 4 of the certified self-paced course ‘Restorative Me’ about Protecting our Peace - as much as we can and in our daily interactions, perhaps we need this now more than ever.

I wish you all the very best of luck for this term and hope the brighter evenings usher in some of the light we all need right now.

Yours in nurturing giraffe :-),

Michelle

Connect RP Gift from Our Head, Heart and Hand to Yours...and Back Again!!

This month’s gift of the Poster PDF of RP Questions to download, is an offering that you can print and pin up on your wall as a reminder to protect your peace and to be restorative, not only with others, but also with ourselves by thinking relationally and identifying our inner landscape and our own needs!

Founding Principle 3 - We are Interconnected (Connect RP Gift - THEO Circle Template)

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 14:28:55 GMT

Connect RP Founding Principle 3 – We are Interconnected - (THEO Circles – Teachers Helping Each Other)

UBUNTU – I am because we are, and we are because I am…

From the 'I' to 'We'

UBUNTU is a South African word relating to our interconnectedness, our shared humanity – I am because you are! I chose this word to describe our online learning platform as I wanted everything that I offered and represented to honour this understanding; the roots and ancient wisdom of the philosophy Restorative Practice is rooted in.

Our schools and communities need to abandon the ethos of hyper-individualism, abandoning the “I” way of thinking for more “we” in our thinking. In African wisdom, this is named Ubuntu. It means that “I am because we are, and we are because I am” (Davis 2019, p.17).

I love this reminder from Davis to focus and honour the ‘we’, to see ourselves in one another.

A huge enabler of developing a holistic restorative model is when we live and practice RP amongst us all as a community, developing whole-school preferred practices that model RP, that offer relational experiences that lean into the ‘we’ paradigm.

I am often asked about how to get ‘buy-in’ from staff that are not aligned with the restorative approach. RP needs to be implemented in a restorative way of course, moving away from ‘buy-in’ and towards invitations to engage and reflect. I propose that offering relational experiences to staff is the most powerful way, in my experience, to encourage capacity and commitment amongst a staff.

Reflection 1 - THEO Circles (*Teachers (*SNAs) Helping Each Other)

I have so many examples, stories and teachable moments from circles that I have had the opportunity to be part of. Sometimes in schools, we can tend to associate and limit circle process to when we work with our students, and indeed I offer many opportunities for learning and scaffold this in our RP for Students curriculum programmes. But my very first experience of RP was sitting in a staff circle with colleagues – laughing and tapping into all of the collective wisdom, and we loved it!

It was the start of my own formal RP journey. When I reflected upon what I could offer schools here as an introduction to the power of staff circles, I remembered a very impactful circle that I had the chance to facilitate during a Croke Park hour. This involved a community of teachers, all of whom taught this one particular class that had received the reputation as perhaps the most ‘difficult’ one in our school to teach at that time. We know that effective teaching and learning is built upon relationships and this class seemed to have a very negative dynamic amongst themselves which was causing huge challenges for us all as teachers. There was much discourse around such challenges but this usually orientated around the blame of two students in particular, both of whom had complicated unmet needs and were no doubt struggling themselves. Our response was understandable but un-adaptative and kept us locked into a feeling of frustration for everyone, including many of the students in the class that were continuously impacted by this cycle of negativity.

We decided to try something different as a group. Circles with students had been gaining some traction and our RP team felt it may be a good idea to invite the teachers of this class together to try a problem-solving, solution-focussed circle. I remember being very nervous about this, even inviting the teachers, worried about their reluctance/perception, worried that it was my responsibility as the facilitator for it to go well. Of course, this is never the case, as a circle keeper we simply invite the group to gather and share the responsibility of the space we create.

When we gathered, we focussed on us as a community, we acknowledged the harm and how difficult we were finding it. We reflected on how we could support one another and shared anything that had gone well with this class, tapping into our collective wisdom. We considered what the unmet needs of the group may be and identified targets that moved beyond the focus on one or two students that seemed to dominate all discourse and instead expanded our reflections on the community. It went so well, teachers seemed to genuinely enjoy the relational space and the solution-focussed lens, even ones that were more aligned with a punitive than restorative approach seemed to appreciate the restorative experience we co-created.

I genuinely think we felt empowered by the process that day –accessing our agency which made a change from endlessly giving out about the class. Noticing the shift in dynamic as a community of teachers taught me the important of braving new spaces, not waiting until we are ‘bulletproof or perfect’ at things to give them a go. I first heard the term THEO (Teachers Helping Each Other) from one of my Connect RP schools, Kingswood CC, so I have gratefully adopted the term here to describe such a circle and created this month’s Connect RP Head-Heart-Hand gift to outline a model to give a THEO circle a try :-)! Access it here .

Reflection 2 – Nothing for us without us..

We had the follow-on opportunity to practise another guiding principle, ‘Nothing for us, without us’ following our staff circle. One of our identified targets was to facilitate low-risk community-building circles with this class (to fulfil the identified need for connection and belonging) and a listening circle with the class (to fulfil the need for a listening ear / empathy/ agency). We aimed to acknowledge the harm the group was experiencing, seek to identify the needs of the community from their perspective and share the voice within the class. In my experience this can be such a wonderful agent of change and a way to authentically share the power as a group, moving beyond the focus on the (‘often perceived as problematic’) individual and towards the WE – seeing ourselves in one another, identifying feelings and needs under behaviour, and celebrating our interconnectedness!

There were no magic wands or quick fixes that day but there were shifts in perception, people were heard and the power dynamic, the ability to affect change was more in balance. We created a target based on our identified needs, on what we could influence individually and as a community and checked in about this regularly as the days/weeks unfolded. Kay Pranis offered a wonderful keynote on individual and collective accountability at our Connect RP 2022 e-conference and you can read her profound article here .

This was not our only circle, it is not a one and done thing, but as a group we began to work together and mind one another to enable effective teaching and learning to take place. One concern often expressed is where is the time for this? In my experience, either we…

Reflection 3 – Connect RP’s ‘We’/’Circle’ Implementation Model

The partnerships of the Connect RP implementation model seek to bring this to life. The internal UBUNTU teams and our Bee RP Hive (guided Professional Learning Community) as unpacked and outlined in a previous blog that you can access here; the connection of the UBUNTU team leaders in each monthly gatherings where schools join together to co-learn and co-mentor are powerful ways to bring forth our interconnectedness, implementing RP in community!

The shift from ‘I’ to ‘We’ is scaffolded further for those of you who are exploring year two of your whole school journey via our Connect RP Site Licence as the focus moved from growing our capacities of becoming a restorative practitioner to becoming a restorative facilitator through developing our Circles, structured via our RP for Students curriculum programmes and Lead Facilitator Training Days.

You can watch our Connect RP schools sharing their experience of their RP journey on our website here .

Founding Principle 2 - We Are Inherently Good (Connect RP Gift - Student Pos. Comm. Circle Template)

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 16:27:24 GMT

…It is only in an un-condemned state can anyone change…

(Margaret-Love Denman).

Reflection 1 - Power – the Ability to Affect Change (Martin Luther King)

I’m so often inspired by my students and the young people I get to work with. I learn so much for their openness, their wisdom, their capacity for this relational work. One of my critical friends for my research was one of my beloved students, I want to share real names to honour them here but I am not sure if that’s OK so I will call him ‘Terence’. What a kid!! He had gotten into some trouble in his earlier school years and when we learned about the restorative approach, when he had the opportunity to receive training he was such a natural ‘Relationship Keeper’. I wonder did his varied experiences offer him deep insights into the isolation and damage that a punitive system can create and the need for an alternative opening that allows for empathy, growth and healing. His emotional intelligence and conflict literacy skills were an example to us all. He often co-facilitated circles with the teachers in my research study and sometimes coached us on how maybe best to frame something to foster community over compliance!

If I had had the chance to do RP in first year I can guarantee you I wouldn’t have got in so much trouble, it would have had a bigger effect on my life than it has already. It works so well and I have helped kids with their problems and it makes me feel good when I help them.”

Terence, 5th Relationship Keeper

Reflection 2 – Cultivating ‘Ways we Move through the World… (Leaf Seligman)

Another student of mine, again we will call him ‘Andy’ was also a huge agent of change and peace (and fun!!!) in our class. This young man, like us all, was a sum of all his parts – he could be aggressive if met confrontationally, he could be a ‘lil messer’ that drove me mad at times too, and he could be such a compassionate source of wisdom when the space was created to channel this through our circles. Of course, our students are far greater than the sum of their behavioural parts and I learned so much from him. We co-facilitated some circles around issues that I am genuinely unsure how we could have dealt with effectively as a community without building the capacity for such a process. This doesn’t happen in a day but is nurtured over time accompanied by an on-going commitment. Our Connect RP Gift this month offers a circle template and target sheet that you can download here , with an outline of Covid variations, that you may find helpful to support your practice.

You can also watch, this example of a problem solving circles in the early days, far from perfect but full of connection.

I truly miss my connection with young people a lot, if I’m being honest, my work feels lonelier in some ways than it used to. When I feel this way, I bring to my heart a letter that ‘Andy’ wrote to me on my departure from school, (truth be told…probably the longest piece of writing he offered me in the five years I was lucky enough to teach him J!). Within it he wishes me well, he tells me he’ll miss me but that he thinks I am doing the right thing, how what we did together taught him about our world and how he wishes to reside within it, it taught him how he wants to live his life. His words give me a little reassuring nudge when I need it and a reminder that I am doing what I am meant to do in the world.

I hand-on-heart have witnessed and experienced the impact of growing such a culture and capacity among our students in and out of school. Students often share about bringing this way of thinking and being into their own homes too.

The questions really work ... it can be hard for people to sit in the same room as the person they have hurt or been hurt by, then listening to what they have to say about how they feel about you. This is why it works really well though. I think it could work for life, I even try them with my mam!

‘Raquel’, 5th Year Relationship Keeper

I actually bumped into one of my gorgeous ex-student Relationship Keepers, ‘Sarah’, a few weeks ago who had a tough time when she became pregnant at a very young age. I wasn’t at all surprised to see her thriving now and her warmth as a mam but I was genuinely taken aback when she said to her little fella,

‘Here ‘Nathan’, tell the Miss, don’t we use the wooden spoon as a talking piece around the table at home’

I couldn’t believe it, I remember other uses and threats of the wooden spoon when I was a kid. I really needed to hear that that day – a joyful reminder that we are modelling ways to move through the world!

Reflection 3 …It is only in an un-condemned state can anyone change…

(Margaret-Love Denman)

My final share is from another young man I got to connect with in one of the youth leadership groups I got to work with called ‘Jake’. He told me about the Babemba Tribe in South Africa and how our workshops reminded him of what he knew of their philosophy, living the principle that we are inherently good through their community practice. When someone is born in their tribe, each individual is gifted their own song. If a member of their tribe does something ‘wrong’, they gather around them in a circle and take turns to remind the ‘wrongdoer’(person who has caused harm) of something good they have done; a reason why they like/love/value them. They understand that the correction of poor behaviour is not punishment, but love and the remembrance of identity. They believe a teacher or role model, is someone who knows their song and sings it to them when they have forgotten it. Imagine a world like that!

I’m inspired by such a vision, a classroom that honours the worthiness of all who learn within it, without needing to hustle for it. It’s a beauty-full way to revere, to call forth the very best of who we are, especially when life may have smudged our capacity to reflect it. As teachers, we are honoured with the opportunity to remind our students of their inner loveliness so that they consciously choose to behave and engage in a way that reflects their true being; or identify, understand or seek to meet the underlying unmet needs that may be a barrier to this. After all,

….It is only in an un-condemned state can anyone can change ….

(Margaret-Love Denman).

Reflection 4 - Being Restorative with Ourselves

This is as true for our students as it is for us as educators…. when I lash out as a teacher, when I don’t have the time or energy to connect as an SNA, when I am just doing my best in this moment as a school leader feeling the pressure to ‘not let him/her away with it’ my best advice is to practise being restorative with ourselves and identify what our own needs may be at that time. To reconnect to our own song, sometimes just sleep it off, and maybe try again tomorrow when our capacity may be greater –it’s just a practice and what we practise grows stronger!

My hope is the offerings on the UBUNTU Learning Platform nurture this intention through the language, processes, approaches and practices of Restorative Practice. Our RP for Students curriculum programmes (Friendship Keeper for primary or Relationship Keeper for post-primary) and our upcoming Connect Out Circles courses (Upcoming in March/April – more info here) seek to support the implementation of RP in practical and achievable ways within our classrooms and beyond.

Remembering….…

Founding Principle 1 - We are Profoundly Relational! (Connect RP Gift - Our BEE RP Hive template)

Mon, 17 Jan 2022 13:32:38 GMT

One of the guiding principles of the restorative philosophy is that we are profoundly relational. This is of course as true for us as educators as it is for our students! It is why I believe so much in the capacity of Connect RP’s Bee RP Hive (Guided Professional Learning Community) to foster the connection we all crave and need, now more than ever. It de-privatises what we do in our classrooms, taps into our collective wisdom as a staff, and explicitly honours community and collaboration!

In my opinion and experience of implementing RP in schools, the Bee RP Hive has the biggest impact on navigating restorative cultural change than anything else I promote in the work that I get to do around co-creating a relational school community - Implementing Restorative Practice in, through and around community! The Bee RP Hive has its roots in the Professional Learning Community (PLC) that I was lucky enough to start up in 2011 in my lovely school as part of my action research project. The intention was to implement and maximise the use of RP in my school.

Eight teachers initially agreed to join our weekly meetings. The intention was for us to plan, implement and evaluate the impact of RP in our classes. As a trainer at the time, I would teach/share an aspect of RP with this group which I now do via the video lessons of the self-paced course called Restorative Me in Pillar 1 below. I would then invite them to implement a task relating to this knowledge with their Case X, a class or students in need to improved relationships which is now articulated via our Restorative Me Quests. Teachers would then journal on this process and the impact on their own self, their Case X, and the class community on a weekly basis which is now represented in Restorative Me Connect & Reflect invitations. We would then share back with the group at the next Bee RP Hive (guided PLC) meeting encouraging one another by sharing our success, and supporting one another by addressing the live needs of any problems that emerged. This is the heart of the Bee RP Hive (guided PLC)! It is the second, and in my opinion, most important pillar of growing a restorative team through the Restorative Us Plus Package and essential for sustainable restorative leadership and growth.

The definition of a PLC is a group of people who meet in an organised, structured space that is agenda and solution-focused. The community gathering promotes supportive relationships and develops shared norms and values. Connect RP created and promotes the FRIENDS (primary) & RESPECT (post primary) acronyms to build a literacy around the restorative values. As in any restorative process, using these as a compass to establish norms and protocols, a sharing process is recommended.

The focus on ‘professional’ in our Be RP Hive is towards the acquisition of knowledge and skills as represented in the 14 Restorative Me Video Lessons – the heart of this is cultivating relational thinking! The Be RP Hive (guided PLC) is a wonderful way to build community, promote reflection and to share our strengths and skills. There are two important factors to sustaining a PLC. Firstly, physical conditions such as time, space and

such as time, space and funding; and secondly, human conditions, including a culture of trust and supportive leadership. The fact that our PLC ran weekly for three years is a huge testament to its success. There was a core group of committed teachers that attended our weekly Monday lunchtime PLCs but post research, it grew into a space that everyone was very welcome to attend and so the composition of the group changed quite regularly. Some yummy bread and tea were essential ingredients to foster the warm, supportive atmosphere and we usually began by sharing the highlights of our weekend which ensured that we are modelling the restorative intention of proactively building positive relationships among ourselves – offering a relational experience.

After sharing our highlights in the PLC, we would then reflect on the progress of our previously determined targets which are now represented in the Lesson Quest in each lesson of Restorative Me and/or share anything that we are currently seeking advice about. Our solution-focused lens promoted positive energy that ensured we left with a number of great ideas, tapping into our collective wisdom. In the outset we only had group targets but as our Bee RP Hive evolved, each teacher often had individual targets/goals that they planned to implement with their Case X. This did not offer any magic wands or unicorns but it had a big impact on our own stress levels and self-efficacy to meet the challenges we were still facing, but now in community and with the support of our growing conflict literacy skills. My research found that we found the meetings cathartic and supportive.

Peer support was a big part of what we cultivated, I remember one month we set up an ARK (Acts of Random Kindness) initiative where we took a name from a jar to target our kindness intentions. This generated some lovely energy, bonding and undoubtedly some needed pick me ups during the week! I highly recommend this, it is such a simple way to positively impact one another’s daily life and lift the spirit. It also generates that feel good ‘helpers high’ for the giver of the act. Our world could do with a little more of this energy, all it takes is a good intention and a few names in a jar!

When I began this in 2011 I had limited formal knowledge of RP or indeed no awareness of the trajectory of my own journey but I had in my heart the intention to be part of the change I wanted to see. If we wait until we are bulletproof and perfect at things, they may never begin. I wholeheartedly believe in Connect RP’s Bee RP Hive to support schools (available as a Restorative Us Plus package and a whole school Connect RP Site licence), I’ve lived this personally but we didn’t have such formal supports available to us in 2011 and we did great things together as a community! You can sign up to either of the above or indeed simply use our Bee RP Hive Guide attached to support your organic journey – what is essential is to just show up together with the shared intention of co-learning, co-reflecting and co-mentoring – an open community and a warm cuppa helps :-)!

Our Story - Our Logo

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 14:05:03 GMT

Our Story - Our Logo

Hi all,

I've been on quite a journey these past couple of months. You may have noticed that we have a brand new look for Connect RP, which we're very excited about, and I suppose the purpose of today's blog is to tell you more about this change and the meaning behind the elements of this logo which I'm so passionate about.

Intention

I can find change hard!

I don't always embrace it, but in this case, I have (mostly!) loved the journey of creating my new logo with the amazing team at MX3 (special shout out to the wonderful Christina Clarkin and our designer James Walsh), alongside the support of generous mentors and dear friends. As I continue this work, I learn, I grow, and I grapple. As my clarity around Connect RP's mission;

…to co-create relational school communities by aligning values and actions that honour a culture of empathy and connection…

continues to emerge, I wanted to visually align my logo and messaging with the work that is close to my heart, a logo that told the story of Connect RP!

The Sun – Lighting the Way Together!

The beautiful bright Sun of my new logo represents all the partnerships that are fostered within the work that I get to do, seeking to co-create a relational school community through community, within community, for the communities we serve. The multiple inner rays represent the internal partnerships within each school, the UBUNTU Leadership teams and the Be RP Hive (guided professional learning community), where staff come together to share, reflect and support one another. This is the heart of growing a sustainable approach to enable the culture of change, whereby the team guides the students, parents and the BOM to engage with, experience and understand Restorative Practice and they, in turn, guide the team.

The outer rays illustrate the external partnerships between all the UBUNTU Team leaders of each school that gather in our online monthly cafés to offer ongoing support and guidance to share their school-directed individual journey with one another.

Then one of my favourite elements, the circle rings connecting the rays, portray the mentor partnerships between Connect RP and the teams and schools where we co-learn and co-create, lighting the way for each other in the community!

The Giraffe – Guiding Our Practice!

The beautiful silhouette of the Giraffe is at the heart of our circle here. This was an essential feature for me, as Sophie, my giraffe sharing piece, accompanies me when I am facilitating circles.

The Giraffe, inspired by Marshal Rosenberg's NVC, is known as the restorative animal and offers the compass of its big heart and long neck. I have a very long history of connection to giraffes which began as a very-tall-long-necked-kid with siblings who thought they were hilarious. This evolved into a deep appreciation of the gifts of empathy and nurture represented by the Giraffe and of which Restorative Practice has offered me and my life's work. I am so grateful for this.

You can find out more about why we LOVE LOVE LOVE giraffes in this short video extract from our On Safari with our RP Buddies oral language development module for junior primary.

Patterning – Seeking to Honour the Philosophy!

The gorgeous patterning has an African expression and a link to my UBUNTU Learning Platform . UBUNTU is a South African word that relates to our interconnectedness, our shared humanity. This choice was inspired by my desire to embed Connect RP’s work within the heart of the philosophy, to honour the understanding that the work I get to do has its roots in indigenous communities. It is not something new and shiny with tips, techniques and tricks to get the kids to behave but a way of being, informing how we move through the world. I wanted to illustrate that deep ancient wisdom is attached to these processes and beliefs that seek to honour, model and practice the understanding that we are profoundly relational – UBUNTU!

Colour – Courage, Hope and Perspective-Taking.

I love the bright oranges and yellows of the Sun, conjuring up the image of illumination and hope. I don't wish to promote the thinking that RP offers unicorns and magic wands, but I do believe it can offer us the hope of connection and transformation - the potential to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud (Maya Angelou), to find a brighter view within my own internal landscape, and to also appreciate the beauty in the range of colours of different perspectives around me.

For me, the pop of colour of the RP represents these intentions and beliefs, which inspire me to continue this work. This pop of colour also acknowledges my previous logo that has served me very well and got me to this point of the journey where I am today.

Font – Strong Back, Soft Belly (Brené Brown)!

I wanted the font to be warm, approachable, inviting and strong – adjectives I associate with this work. Sometimes people can misunderstand or dismiss RP as a ‘soft approach’, whereas it is often about having the courage and capacity to have brave conversations that can be messy and hard at times but that offer the potential to heal, CONNECT and transform. RP supports us to develop the conflict literacy skills to do this and, most importantly, the relational thinking needed to believe it is a worthy investment. The openness and warmth of the bold, strong font represent my wish that the work that we do as a community allows us to develop a strong back of skills, beliefs and intentional experiences so we can have the courage to risk sharing and showing our soft bellies. This is where connection lives, the journey from fear to love. I love the fact that RP is tucked under the embrace of CONNECT, which represents my intention as the director of Connect RP to continuously nurture, model and seek an authentic understanding of RP for me personally and to cultivate this within our Connect RP schools….

Co-Creating Relational School Communities

…If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together!...

(African Proverb)

RP and AEN

support@eazi-sites.com (Eazi Business) — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 09:53:01 GMT

RP and AEN

In this short video, Aisling Kelly from Bishop Galvin National School, shares her powerful story of RP as a SET teacher.

Restorative Problem Solving Circle in School

support@eazi-sites.com (Eazi Business) — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 09:53:00 GMT

Restorative Problem Solving Circle in School

In this video, Michelle facilitates a homework problem-solving circle in the early days with her tutor group in the wonderful St. Mark's Community School where she began her formal RP journey. It's far from 'perfect', she was (and is) still learning about circle keeping but the heart of honouring relationships and promoting accountability through the support and community of circle process is full!

Why we Love Love love Giraffes!

support@eazi-sites.com (Eazi Business) — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 09:52:59 GMT

Why We Love, Love, Love Giraffes (Video)

Learn all about why the giraffe is known as the restorative animal in my new 'On Safari with out RP Buddies' (An Oral Language Development Module in Restorative Practice for Junior Primary School)

The 5:1 Relationship SCALE

support@eazi-sites.com (Eazi Business) — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 14:54:29 GMT

The Relationship SCALE (Smile, Connect, Ask, Listen, Engage) is a helpful frame to remind us to focus and scaffold how to actively create positive interactions. It represents simple but powerful intentions and practices to consciously build flourishing relationships, so that we are not just leaving them to chance. Maureen Gaffney’s research outlines that, due to the stickability of the negative, an average relationship needs a ratio of 3:1 positive to negative interactions; a flourishing one that we hope to foster needs 5:1. Check out Maureen Gaffney’s TED for her reflections on how powerful our inner dialogue can be and how important it is to focus on the positive.

The Relationship SCALE helps us to facilitate the 5:1 ratio and reminds us to be proactive, to focus on and create what we want instead of constantly noticing the negative impact of what we don’t want! It reminds us of the action required to follow through on what we already know, that relationships are at the heart of teaching and learning.

Top Tips 5:1

Set your intention at the beginning of each day/class - how do you want to feel/be?
Seek opportunities to smile with a specific student/colleague.
Send a colleague a thank you email/post it note.
Share two positives before you share a negative - invite students to do the same.
Ask "what happened?" instead of "why?".
If you have a problem - invite the person with the problem to consider/share if they have any ideas about how they/you/we can solve it.
Take a mindful minute at the beginning of every class/day (begin with a focussing activity to enable this).
Tap into and share your own personal scripts.
Introduce a talking piece and do an energy check in/out.
'Love Bomb' someone that you are having problems with.
Send home a good note/call.
Express gratitude at the end of every school day.
Give yourself a compliment/celebrate and acknowledge something that is going well each day.
When in conflict, consider and share your intention to connect/find a solution/work together etc.
Listen with your ears/body/heart - active and deep listening enables us to be present for others.

When using the Relationship SCALE, the intention is always to turn towards one another, to CONNECT, to move towards love instead of fear when faced with challenge as illustrated in this image called ‘Love,’ by Ukrainian sculptor Alexander Milov at Burning Man illustrates.

Wishing you all the very best for this school year and remember, as the amazing Rita Pierson tells us in her TED talk Every Kid Needs a Champion !

Accountability is not an ‘I caught ya’ but more of an ‘I see you’!

support@eazi-sites.com (Eazi Business) — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 12:41:17 GMT

‘How do we make people be accountable?’ is a question I get asked a lot. We can’t ‘make’ others be accountable, this is rooted in a conformity paradigm we are seeking to transform when working restoratively. We grow spaces where accountability can live.

Accountability and community are important restorative values and they are inextricably linked.

One of the key principles of RP in education is that accountability exists within a supportive environment. When I feel like I belong, when I feel ‘seen with love’, when I am embraced by the community…. I contribute, I feel safe, I flourish. This is why I am passionate about moving RP understanding in schools beyond behaviour management and towards relational learning communities; why my RP for Students curriculum programme seeks to prioritise the building of relationships and belonging through community circle process and my RP at Home programme supports parents/guardians to understand the restorative values of community, empathy. nurture and accountability that replace a punitive approach before there is a serious harm. We build goodwill in good times!

‘Can we have a list of ways to practise accountability?’ is another frequent request I receive from people genuinely seeking to be restorative but perhaps still basing this request on an old paradigm that is outcome and not process or needs driven. Accountability seeks to heal the harm caused and identify ways to meet the needs of the community affected, it’s not a list that an ‘perceived external expert’ can offer anyone. The restorative philosophy can offer guiding principles and processes that we can use as a compass. But those that have caused / been impacted by the harm are best placed to find ways to move forward. The process of active accountability is needs led and driven, with community and healing at its heart.

It’s essential to understand that….

This involves a restorative paradigm shift in schools that I am passionate about cultivating in the work I get to do. In a restorative approach that promotes accountability, when I make mistakes, it is understood that ‘misbehaviour is a tragic expression of an unmet need’ (Rosenberg) and that I am greater than the sum of my behavioural parts, in this context I am supported to make amends.

Relational thinking is at the heart of such a commitment and what I seek to cultivate in my Restorative Me; Connect, Reflect & Model self-paced course (available individually or to everyone in a Connect RP school) offering lessons, reflections and quests such as the 3 x As of Accountability and the restorative switches needed to practise it.

The truth is it can be really difficult to work in spaces where there are complicated or unmet needs and there are no easy answers. I think it’s hard… it’s hard when you are restorative and it’s hard when you are punitive.. for me it’s just ‘pick your hard’. I know the restorative approach is who I want to be. There are no unicorns or magic wand here but a restorative approach offers the possibility for connection, for healing and for love.. and this is what our lovely world needs more of!

What I know for sure is that such relational practice, culture and policy reform doesn’t happen in a training day or week, it requires an ongoing commitment, support and mentorship. My Connect RP Implementation model seeks to facilitate this through the individual Restorative Me and RP & AEN courses, whole staff CPD sessions, the essential regular Relational Learning Community gatherings amongst staff to reflect in community, the RP for Students curriculum programme promoting belonging, RP at Home for Parents, RP for BOM, and the co-mentoring partnerships with other Connect RP schools – living and practising in community and being accountable to one another along our journeys.

Before you go, I invite you to check out our upcoming workshops .

With much giraffe-love,

Michelle

Navigating a Restorative Year in School and Beyond

support@eazi-sites.com (Eazi Business) — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 12:40:28 GMT

Restorative Practice (RP) is a values-based philosophy; it aims to consciously build relationships, respond to harm / conflict in a way that honours relationships, and CONNECT us to our best selves and to one another (Stowe 2017)

In this time of uncertainly for educators there are so many unknown variables that we cannot control. This is challenging and especially so for those who are lighting the way for others! This piece seeks to draw attention to what we can perhaps plan for and to scaffold some reflections that may serve us when navigating a restorative return to school.

RESTORE is a helpful acronym to use when considering a restorative return to school. It was co-created by Dr. Belinda Hopkins, along with her restorative colleagues. You can check out their RESTORE our Schools website here . Some of you may remember Belinda as our inspiring keynote speaker at Connect RP’s National Conference for Restorative Practice in Education, and again in our Connect RP 2021 and 2022 e-Conference gathering. You can see her shares on our website here .

REST ORE:

Recognition – acknowledging the variety of people’s experiences.

Empathy – cultivating empathic spaces while also practising self-care.

Safety – considering ways to respond as opposed to react.

Trauma – recognising individual and collective trauma and fostering therapeutic moments.

Opportunity - reconnecting to our core values and school’s mission statement.

Relationships – fostering connection before curriculum / Maslow before Bloom!

Engagement – involving others to cultivate our collective wisdom and wellbeing.

Recognition:

Restorative Practice is all about our interconnectedness as human beings. It is not a behaviour management strategy but instead, about cultivating relational learning communities. When things go wrong and challenges arise, it’s about honouring relationships and finding a way forward in community.

The opportunity to perspective-take and understand one another’s experiences and needs will be an important consideration on a restorative return to school. Finding the balance between the need to be positive and yet also acknowledging the varied and sometime painful experiences of our school community will be essential to sponsor the connection we need, now more than ever.

Empathy:

We know from the neuroplasticity of our brain that we can grow empathy! It’s probably why I am most passionate about the work I get to do. As educators, you will no doubt observe the need to perspective-take, the importance of making generous assumptions, and the power of being able to communicate emotion in a way that others can respond with compassion. These are teachable restorative skills!

Growing and practising such skills can be very challenging during times of stress when we are over-whelmed and tired. Being restorative with ourselves is key - we can’t give what we do not have…something I am fantastic at teaching but find harder to practise !! Brené Brown, an empathy researcher, proposes that the most compassionate people are also the most boundaried, important considerations for us all, especially at this time when we may need to continue working with and from home.

Safety:

Safety is on everyone’s mind and priority list at this time. Restorative Practice is a values-based philosophy and in my workshops, I have always proposed that I believe safety is the most important of all the values because without it the others, such as empathy, do not show up! It is hard to feel WITH others when we are armoured up. As educators, we know we need to feel safe in order to be able to learn and thrive which will take significant intention and focus at this time– the Maslow before Bloom idea! Routines will be key but also prioritising the creation of spaces where we can disarm and connect relationally again.

Calm is a superpower! It supports us to create safe spaces and approaches where we respond instead of reacting. Calm people practise two things before they respond – they breathe & they ask questions. A helpful one to ask, model and promote the value of safety might be; ‘What’s the most generous assumption I can make in this situation?

Trauma:

Trauma may now be an individual as well as a collective experience and as a school community, we need to acknowledge and address this. Restorative Practice is not necessarily inherently trauma-informed or at least the practices themselves are not. However, the critical theory and values that underpin the practices are which is why I am so passionate about the importance of not seeing Restorative Practice as another behaviour management strategy or tool but as a philosophy that holds relationships and our interconnectedness at its core. I unpack this in detail on my Restorative Me online programme.

Trauma is like an atom. It cannot be destroyed but it can be transformed. How it shows up and lives in us can change. We have a wonderful opportunity in schools to offer therapeutic moments all day, every day. It can be as simple as exchanging a smile, or a quick relational one-word-whizz check-in circle at a staff meeting or beginning of a lesson. This facilitates relationships on purpose; we know the name of each other’s dog, or favourite place to spend our time. These therapeutic moments are key to connection, offer a strong foundation for teaching and learning, and build a reservoir to navigate the challenging times. You may be familiar with the ACE model (Adverse Childhood Experiences) which helps us to recognise that the symptoms we see as ‘disruptive behaviour’ may be as a result of trauma or hugely out of balance nervous systems. We won’t punish these away. Where did we ever get the crazy idea that to make people do better, we first have to make them feel worse? (Nelsen, Lott and Glenn).

We need to create spaces in our staffrooms and classrooms where we can disarm and teach competence over compliance. I saw a lovely example of this in a school that promoted meditation over detention. We need to engage in exchanges where our ultimate intention is connection as opposed to correction. Bruce Perry’s 3 x Rs – Regulate, Relate & Respond offer a powerful and practical compass for this process. We see the importance of calm and relationships to inform a rational restorative exchange. When the symptoms of trauma show up in our schools, we will need to resist the urge to be punitive and to consider the damage of a zero-tolerance approach which will undoubtedly affect our most vulnerable students and educators, locking us into negative cycles of engagement and compounding isolation.

Opportunity:

When dealt with restoratively, conflict can be a wonderful opportunity for connection. My 2017 TEDx Empathy; the Heart of Difficult Conversations illustrates this and may serve as a helpful staff introduction / reminder of Restorative Practice. The Chinese character for crisis means both danger and opportunity and although this is an undoubtedly uncertain and challenging time, it also offers an opportunity to reconnect with what truly matters to us as educators and it is imperative that we connect to our inner compass now and whole-heartedly embrace our school’s mission statement to inform our way forward. Considering what we really care about as a school and how we can make sure to practise will take considerable focus and intention when there are so many competing considerations as school leaders.

I have created a Connect RP Site Licence as a way to support schools on their journey to growing a restorative school in policy and practice; offering infrastructure through Ubuntu Learning online platform, a pathway which involves sharing Restorative Practice with all stakeholders, and ongoing support from me as a guide.

Relationships:

As educators we have always known the value and importance of relationships which has perhaps become even more apparent during this time of remote learning than ever. Relationships are at the heart of any restorative approach and of effective teaching and learning. I am passionate about moving conversations in schools that orientate around Restorative Practice beyond behaviour management and towards relational learning environments and pedagogy.

Relationships will need to be intentional and purposeful now more than ever, and leaders will need to inspire and model permission to do this. Creating time to connect and share as a staff, despite the many demands of protocols and procedures; inviting staff to consider ways to foster connection before curriculum will be paramount to honour a restorative return to school. Leadership is modelling, and as Dr. Belinda Hopkins reminds us, if we are not modelling what we teach, we are teaching something else.

Engagement:

When working restoratively, the idea is that those that hold or are affected by the harm are best placed to know what is needed to move forward. It is essential that we work WITH people as Dorothy Vaandering’s (2017) Relationship Window illustrates.

Restorative Practice is always needs-led. Working WITH those who have experienced trauma, identifying unmet needs and ways to meet those needs are key to any restorative approach.

The widow of tolerance for risk may be small at this time of uncertainty but we need to remember that all relationships involve risks. It may be important to take risks and allow others to lead, tapping into the collective wisdom and community insights which is reflective of any restorative approach.

Creating a restorative return to school needs to be done in community. It needs to be guided relationally and informed by the understanding that we will need to be restorative with ourselves, especially important for those in such a caring profession as education - meeting individual and collective trauma within their school community and the homes and families that their school serves. I invite you in those moments of over-whelm and uncertainty, to simply ask the restorative question of yourself, ‘What’s needed now / what do I need now?’ as a reminder to take care of yourself as a way of caring for others!

Key Recommendation Summary for Educators on their Restorative Return to School:

Recognise cultivate spaces where we can remove our armour - 'What's the best/hardest thing...?'

Empathy identify, articulate and honour your personal boundaries as a way to care for others.

Safe share information where possible and in challenging moments ask, ‘What’s the most generous assumption I can make in this situation?’

Trauma consider ‘What happened to X?’ as opposed to ‘What’s wrong with X?

Opportunity welcome new opportunities such as staff circles (virtual) on Being Restorative with Ourselves

Relationships model and give permission for ‘connection before curriculum’.

Engage take small risks & allow others to lead.

Invitations for Next Steps to Develop Your Own Practice

Click on https://www.connectrp.ie/workshops for upcoming workshop options & watch my TEDX .

Read The Little Book of Restorative Justice in Education (Evans & Vaandering).

Subscribe to Relationships First – Dorothy Vaandering’s Blog .

Check out RESTORE Our Schools and download the free RESTORE poster.

Complete Restorative Me online programme (as an individual or access it as part of the Connect RP Site Licence) to develop your own restorative practice or join/create a Restorative Us / Ubuntu Team to do this in community.

connect-rp

How Creativity & Crank the Croc Create Moments of Connection in the Classroom

A Powerless Connection

Individual and Collective Accountability in a Restorative Framework

Individual and Collective Accountability in a Restorative Framework

Restorative Practice Myth Buster Series Part 2

Restorative Practice Myth Buster Series Part 2

Restorative Practice Myth Buster Series Part 1

Restorative Practice Myth Buster Series Part 1

A year older...and far wiser

A year older...and far wiser

Building Strong, Resilient and Positive School Cultures with Restorative Practice

Building Strong, Resilient and Positive School Cultures with Restorative Practices - John Madigan

Relationships First

What is the Difference Between Shame & Guilt?

Guest Blog by Dr. Belinda Hopkins- “RP – Reimagining a ‘Tough’ Approach”

Discipline – To Teach, Not to Punish!

Bringin’ in the Good Vibes!

Bringin’ in the Good Vibes!

Did I Contribute More than I Criticised

Did I Contribute More than I Criticised?

All Behaviour is Communication, So What's Needed Now?

All Behaviour is Communication, So What's Needed Now?

Words Can Be Windows or Walls (Rosenberg)

Words Can Be Windows or Walls (Rosenberg)

The Power of Intention

The Power of Intention

Calm is a Superpower (Connect RP Gift - Connect In Regulation Zone)

Protect Your Peace (Connect RP Gift - Restorative Questions PDF)

Founding Principle 3 - We are Interconnected (Connect RP Gift - THEO Circle Template)

Connect RP Founding Principle 3 – We are Interconnected - (*THEO Circles – *Teachers Helping Each Other)

UBUNTU – I am because we are, and we are because I am…

Founding Principle 2 - We Are Inherently Good (Connect RP Gift - Student Pos. Comm. Circle Template)

Founding Principle 1 - We are Profoundly Relational! (Connect RP Gift - Our BEE RP Hive template)

Our Story - Our Logo

Our Story - Our Logo

RP and AEN

RP and AEN

Restorative Problem Solving Circle in School

Restorative Problem Solving Circle in School

Why we Love Love love Giraffes!

Why We Love, Love, Love Giraffes (Video)

The 5:1 Relationship SCALE

Accountability is not an ‘I caught ya’ but more of an ‘I see you’!

Navigating a Restorative Year in School and Beyond

Connect RP Founding Principle 3 – We are Interconnected - (THEO Circles – Teachers Helping Each Other)