How Do You Teach Restorative Practices: Steps, Examples, and the Teacher’s Role
Using The 5 Steps Of Restorative Practices
Restorative Practices Training isn’t just about introducing tools or strategies—it’s about embracing a mindset that prioritizes relationships, community, and accountability at every level of a school. It calls for a shift from simply reacting to misbehavior to proactively fostering empathy, connection, and open communication. To create an equitable learning environment, it is essential to implement restorative practices, which focus on building relationships and understanding students' individual needs. Restorative Practices aren’t just for the students either; given the number of educators leaving the field from burnout, our adult relationships need the same kind of attention and communication skills. When staff members proactively build relationships and also communicate about the hard stuff, it sets the tone for the entire community.
In this blog, we’ll talk about the foundational 5 Steps of Restorative Practices, practical strategies for teaching Restorative Practices in schools, the pivotal role teachers play, and real-life examples that showcase the transformative power of this approach.
What Are the 5 Steps of Restorative Practices?
At the heart of Restorative Practices are five clear, actionable steps that guide how educators and students can build and repair relationships. These restorative steps—Calm Self, Calm Other, Reflect, Repair, and Plan—create a framework with menu options that make it easy to teach and integrate into school systems.
Calm Self: Pause.. and breathe. The first step is to manage your own emotions. When we’re upset, our ability to think clearly is compromised. Which means the decisions we make in those moments are less than stellar. That’s not a good ripple effect, either.
Calm Other: Help the other person de-escalate using bottom-up brain strategies.
Reflect: Consider the lagging skills, the root causes of behavior, and the impact your non-verbal actions are having on the other. Tools like the Compass of Shame and Engagement Window are useful in this stage.
Repair: Collaborate with all parties involved to address harm and decide how to make amends. Options might include restorative conversations or natural consequences.
Plan: Create a clear path forward to prevent future issues and provide necessary support.
These restorative steps form the backbone of teaching Restorative Practices, making them accessible for educators to integrate into their daily routines.
How To Teach Restorative Practices In School Discipline
Teaching Restorative Practices in schools requires a balance of training, modeling, practice, feedback, and embedding the practices into everyday procedures. To build community, it is essential to create a supportive environment that fosters relationships and engages students effectively. Here are some ways we make the process meaningful and sustainable:
Comprehensive Training: Educators need foundational training that covers both the philosophy and tools of Restorative Practices. This includes concepts like Affect Psychology and the Engagement Window as well as strategies like circles, affective statements, curbside and restorative conversations, and conferencing. These practices are crucial for fostering a positive classroom and school community.
Phased Implementation: Start small, with a focus on a small set of core strategies for year one. Deliberately incorporate more explicit strategies in subsequent years in a way that’s calendared and predictable. Additionally, teaching conflict resolution skills helps students repair relationships and handle disagreements effectively.
Modeling Practices: Teachers and leaders must model restorative behaviors themselves—using affective language, checking their balance of accountability & support, and taking the time to build relationships and social capital with both students and colleagues. This modeling is vital for cultivating healthy school climates.
Ongoing Coaching and Support: Effective training doesn’t stop after the training. Schools need coaching, feedback loops, self-reflection, and time for staff to practice applying Restorative Practices. Many educators are actively seeking to implement these practices but may feel intimidated by the lack of training.
Embedding Practices into Systems: Operationalize the core components and strategies in a way that makes it easy for staff to access and use. Weave the restorative steps into classroom management strategies, your PBIS system, or behavioral flowcharts to ensure consistency across the school. Build capacity at the student level by building peer-led restorative initiatives. Ultimately, you want to build sustainability by integrating Restorative Practices into your everyday practices. Training programs and resources should focus on the school setting to enhance relationships, culture, and conflict resolution among students, staff, and parents.
What Is The Role Of The Teacher In Restorative Practices In The Classroom And School Community?
A teacher’s role in implementing Restorative Practices is integral—not just for students but also for shaping a restorative culture among colleagues. Through these interactions, students can practice empathy along with self-reflection and accountability.
Teachers have the job of fostering a safe but demanding environment and preventing and resolving conflicts. Traditional punitive discipline often disproportionately affects marginalized students, leading to negative outcomes, while restorative approaches seek to foster positive relationships and heal the school community. And yet, if you look at adults in any workplace, we don’t have go-to strategies for creating environments like this or communication strategies to have important or tough conversations. Restorative Practices provides a set of options to help teachers cultivate a restorative community:
Building Relationships: Teachers set the tone by using tools like community-building circles and affective statements to create trust and connection, not just with students but also with colleagues. When staff feel supported, this sense of community trickles down to the students. Strong relationship building is crucial for creating a positive school culture and effective learning atmosphere.
Modeling High Accountability & Support: We’re all more likely to engage and make positive changes in our behavior when others hold a high bar for accountability but also provide us with lots of support. Teachers can use this framework with students to maximize their ownership.
Facilitating Reflection: With restorative questions, teachers help students pause and consider the root causes of their actions, the impact on others, and what steps are needed to make things right.
Creating Safe Spaces: Whether in a classroom or staff meeting, teachers foster environments where people feel safe to share their thoughts, collaborate on solutions, and repair broken relationships.
Ultimately, teachers are both guides and participants in the restorative process. By modeling the empathy, accountability, and collaboration they wish to instill in their students, they help create a school culture where people actually build up relationships and are able to resolve conflicts more readily. This shift in school discipline from traditional punitive measures to restorative justice practices emphasizes the benefits of reducing exclusionary discipline and addressing racial disparities.
What Are Some Examples Of Restorative Justice Practices?
Restorative Practices stick when they are woven into the fabric of daily school life. Restorative justice practices are essential methods used in educational settings to promote positive behavior, community building, and conflict resolution. Here are some practical examples to illustrate how your school can adopt restorative practice:
Community-Building Circles: Regular check-ins or discussions in circles to build trust and connection among students and staff.
Affective Statements: Using “I” statements to express emotions constructively (e.g., “I feel upset when…”).
Curbside Conversations: Impromptu discussions that use restorative statements and questions to address a low-lying issue.
Restorative Conversations: A semi-structured meeting using the Restorative Questions.
Restorative Justice Conferencing: A highly structured meeting for major events where everyone affected by a conflict collaborates to repair harm.
Classroom Re-Entry Plans: Short, restorative conversations when a student returns from suspension or removal.
Peer Mediation Programs: Students trained to mediate conflicts among their peers, guided by restorative principles.
Staff Reflection Tools: Exercises like the Engagement Window or Compass of Shame help staff reflect on their responses to student behavior.
These examples show how Restorative Practices can make a real difference in both classroom management and school culture. Building a strong school community is integral to the success of these practices. If you’d like to learn more, take a look at some examples on our website, or feel free to reach out to us directly!