Restorative Practices
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At Prairie Middle School, we use something called Restorative Practices (RP) to help students build strong relationships and solve problems when someone gets hurt or upset. When students go through the restorative process, they work together to come up with ideas on how to avoid causing harm in the future.
While any adult can help you with a conflict, there are specific staff members chosen to support this process. The RP Team has nine coaches—two in each grade level, plus three additional coaches who help students talk things out and resolve conflicts. There is also an RP Coordinator who is here to help you work through conflicts with adults in the building.
Restorative Practices are used along with school rules and expectations. Our RP Coaches work closely with the deans to support students, but they do not give out punishments. Instead, they provide students with the chance to take responsibility for their actions and work respectfully to fix the situation.
Restorative Practice Coaches:
- Facilitate formal restorative conversations and facilitate proactive circles
- Support students and teachers through modeling restorative language and debriefing with both teachers and individual students
- Monitor individual student behavior by checking in with students throughout the school day
- Follow-up with students after mediations to ensure the harm was repaired and agreements were honored
- Develop creative interventions for students as part of the restorative resolution
- Inform families, educators, deans, and administrators about incidents in school as needed
Teachers and Prairie Staff:
- Facilitate informal restorative conversations
- Co-facilitate and/or lead proactive circles
- Engage in mediations with students, other staff members, and families
- Use restorative dialogue throughout the school building and expect students to do the same
- Maintain a growth mindset that emphasizes improvement over accomplishment and views students’ and staff members’ behavior as amenable to change
- Work to build and repair relationships through the use of restorative language and proactive circles
The Five R’s of Restorative Practices
Relationships
Strong relationships are key to creating communities and leading a fulfilling life. At the heart of every restorative process is a damaged relationship. The RP process focuses on mending relationships. Once the person who caused harm becomes accountable for their actions and begins to make amends, the relationship can start to heal.
Respect
Respect keeps the RP process safe. All involved parties are trusted to show respect for themselves and for others. Deep listening is employed so the focus is on what is being said, instead of our assumptions or the stories we make up that may or may not be true. Even when we disagree with someone’s thinking, we respect their perspective.
Responsibility
In order for restorative justice to be effective, everyone must grapple with their own personal responsibility. We ask that everyone is honest with themselves and searches deeply in their hearts to discover how they might have had a hand in the matter. Even if the harm was unintentional, the person who caused harm needs to take responsibility for their actions. Taking responsibility needs to be a personal choice and cannot be imposed on someone unwillingly.
Repair
The person who caused harm is expected to repair the harm that they did to the fullest extent possible, knowing well that not all of the harm can be repaired. It is through working to repair the situation that the person who caused harm is able to regain their self-respect and respect for and from others.
Reintegration
Reintegration encourages collaboration of the community and the person who caused harm rather than turning toward coercion and isolation. This process recognizes the assets the person who caused harm brings to the table and what they have learned through the process. By accepting responsibility and agreeing to repair the harm, the person who caused harm creates space and trust to be reintegrated into the community.
Restorative practices is a culture of people who have caused harm, acknowledge wrongdoing, take responsibility, repair harm to the extent possible to those whom they have caused harm, and are welcomed back into the community.
~ The Conflict Center of Denver
Restorative Practice is:
- Building relationships that are central to community
- Addressing misbehavior and harm in ways that strengthen relationships
- Focused on the harm done rather than the rule broken
- Giving voice to the person harmed
- Engaging in collaborative problem solving
- Empowering change and growth
- Fostering responsibility and accountability
Restorative Practice is NOT:
- Primarily about forgiveness
- “Having to” or forcing friendship
- A rigid set of rules or steps
- An easy fix
- A guaranteed fix
- Community service
- A replacement for discipline system