What Are Restorative Practices?
What Are Restorative Practices in Schools?
Understanding Restorative Practices
It’s no secret: schools feel like pressure cookers right now. Trying to ensure that students meet academic benchmarks while navigating serious behavioral challenges with limited resources is a setup for major stress. More and more, teachers are leaving the profession and students’ behavioral health concerns are much higher than in prior years.
With things the way they are, it’s easy for relationship-building to fall by the wayside. But here’s the truth: when relationships aren’t prioritized, the cracks show—misbehavior escalates, staff morale plummets, and students feel disconnected.
Restorative Practices (RP) are a proactive approach to building relationships, fostering community, and addressing conflict. Restorative Practices Training give educators, students, and families the very necessary tools and methods needed to do just that: create community, resolve conflicts, and build strong, positive relationships.
Core Philosophy of Restorative Practices
At its core, Restorative Practices (RP) are all about relationships. The philosophy is simple: people thrive when they feel connected, valued, and heard. In schools, this means intentionally creating a culture where students and staff build trust, resolve conflicts together, and take ownership and accountability in building their community. While many think of Restorative Practices as simply a way to address harm—like Restorative Justice—its true power lies in prevention. In fact, 80% of RP is focused on proactive strategies like circles and affective language that build social capital, while 20% is focused on repairing harm and working to repair relationships. It’s not just about what to do when things go wrong—it’s about building the kind of healthy relationships that make things go right.
The Importance of Building Relationships and School Community
Build Social Capital: Ever notice how much easier it is to resolve a conflict with someone you trust? Restorative Practices bake in proactive relationship-building through both formal and informal practices like circles, quick check-ins, and shared experiences. This foundation of trust prevents conflicts from escalating and makes repair easier when harm occurs.
Repair Harm Instead of Just Punishing: When a student disrupts class or breaks a rule, traditional discipline might simply suspend them without much, if any, discussion between the teacher and student about what happened, the impact on others, and what’s needed to make things right. Does this alone change behavior or resolve things for the people harmed? Restorative Practices don’t necessarily remove the disciplinary measures the school already has in place. Instead, it adds an element needed for real change by focusing on accountability through reflection, perspective-taking empathy, and actions to make amends. The result? Actual conflict resolution. The outcomes from Chicago Public Schools demonstrate that this approach is much more effective than traditional discipline, significantly improving the school climate. We recommend taking a look at a study conducted by The University of Chicago’s Education Lab on the implementation of Restorative Practices or Restorative Justice in Chicago Public Schools. https://educationlab.uchicago.edu/projects/restorative-practices/
How to Integrate Restorative Practices and Conflict Resolution in Schools
So often, schools try to adopt a new Restorative Practices program, believing that restorative practices work as a comprehensive teaching and learning approach, and just a year or two later, it’s dead. Not only is this a waste of time and money, but it causes staff to lose trust in any new program that is adopted. CSC meets you where you are..so if you just want to start with training, we’ll begin there, and move on to the next steps as both time and knowledge base widen. We’ll also help you assess how to begin, by looking at various components, including restorative approaches:
Assessing Organizational Readiness for Change:
We want to look at your systems and data with you to better understand what your most important next steps are.
Building Buy-In, Including Nay-Sayers, and Building Momentum:
We help you start with structured ways to build buy-in and engagement.
Engaging Leaders and Choosing RP Champions:
If your leaders aren’t on board, chances are, integrating RP will not be a priority. Change takes greater attention and a team of RP champions who will be the designers and multipliers who do the deep learning, modeling, and spreading of RP across their teams. We’re here to assist them in harnessing their power to lead.
High Quality Training, Coaching, Weaving into Procedures, and Monitoring:
A fantastic training on its own can change the mindset and some behaviors, but if not supported by designing restorative practices to live in your day-to-day routines, supported by coaching, monitoring data, and staff feedback loops, it’s not likely to go deep or stick. CSC provides you with the support and resources you need to do all of this, slowly and over time. We help you build capacity from within so that you can eventually take over all training and support.
What Are Examples Of Restorative Practices in Schools?
Restorative Practices thrive when they move beyond being a philosophy or a set of ideals and are integrated into the everyday procedures of a school. RP’s real power lies in operationalizing these values into concrete, actionable strategies that educators can use consistently. That’s why at CSC, we focus on a menu of Restorative Practice examples that can be used across the school and in the classroom. CSC can help you embed Restorative Practice tools into your existing PBIS system, disciplinary system, classroom management protocol staff meetings, and staff communication procedures to ensure that they’re easily adopted and sticky. For further reading on restorative practices, consider resources from Living Justice Press.
Some Examples of Restorative Practices in Schools and Classrooms
Community-Building Circles for Students and Staff: Whether a quick prompt or a fuller circle lesson with a topic, these can be incorporated into morning meetings, staff meetings, or core classes.
Affective Statements: Simple, emotion-based statements that express feelings about a behavior, these can be woven into 4:1 reinforcement to redirection or wider communication strategies.
Curbside Conversations: On-the-spot, quick effective conversations to reset a situation before it escalates, these can be used staff-to-student and perhaps even more importantly, between colleagues to promote open communication and early conflict resolution and prevent larger rifts.
Restorative Conversations: Slightly more formal conversations for conflict resolution using the set of restorative questions.
Restorative Justice Conferencing: A formal process involving all parties impacted by a conflict to collaboratively repair harm.
Classroom Re-Entry Conversations: Short, scripted discussions to reintegrate students after being removed from class or returning from a suspension.
Peer Mediation Program: A student-led conflict resolution process where trained peers guide their peers to collaboratively address and resolve disputes.
Restorative Tier 2 Interventions: A menu of Restorative student supports and interventions.
Grade Team Reflection Exercises for Staff: Popular exercises such as the Engagement Window, the Compass of Shame, the Regulate-Relate-Reason Toolkits, and the Pre-Referral Menus are used to support reflection on current practice.
Family and Community Restorative Practices Training: Workshops to teach families the same RP strategies used in schools.
Fair Process Decision Making: Explicit structures to gather input and communicate decisions are shaped for upcoming decisions or design for future programming.
This list is not exhaustive or fixed but gives you an idea of examples of restorative practices in the classroom and in the school at large.
How to Access Restorative Practices and Social-Emotional Learning Resources and Training
Importance of Talking to Experts for Reliable Resources Teachers are truly sick and tired of new initiatives and professional development. The reason they adore CSC’s training is two-fold:
The content resonates with them. They find it immediately relevant, thought-provoking, and useful.
They love hearing the stories we share about our work with Restorative Practices in schools; whether the mistakes and missteps or the meaningful wins. Restorative Practices are not just a toolkit but can be a transformative culture shift within the community if initiated in just the right way.
Focus on In-Person Training Benefits
While online training has its conveniences, in-person training sessions hold a unique and unparalleled advantage, especially when introducing new frameworks like Restorative Practices. In-person interactions allow for immediate feedback, rich discussions, and dynamic role-playing activities that can deeply embed learning. These sessions provide a safe space for educators to discuss challenges, practice new techniques, and receive direct, actionable advice from trainers.
In-person training sessions also facilitate community building among participants. Educators are likely to share their experiences and form professional networks that extend beyond the training room. This sense of shared journey fosters buy-in collaboration and peer support, which are critical during the implementation phase.
Take a look at CSC’s survey results to get a sense of how participants feel after our in-person training!
In a recent district-wide training with over 300 staff attending 13 different sessions, our Restorative Practices Training received the following results:
100% of over 300 attendees stated that their trainer was very or extremely knowledgeable and effective.
97% of over 300 attendees indicated that the strategies used by their trainer were very or extremely effective at helping them learn, discuss, and practice the concepts presented.
95% of over 300 attendees indicated that they were highly and actively engaged and contributed to a sense of community in the session.
Let Collaborative School Culture Facilitate Your Training and Guide Your Transition
At Collaborative School Culture, we understand the complexities and nuances involved in implementing Restorative Practices. With our comprehensive training and coaching programs, we can tailor to meet your specific needs. We’ll help you design a clear roadmap to integrate Restorative Practices effectively, ensuring a positive and lasting impact on your school culture. Contact us today to learn how we can support your school in a more harmonious environment.