Being a Restorative Practitioner

  It has been a hectic term so far, the prelims, the workload and the incessant cries of “Miss, can we watch Elf yet?” have been exacerbated by the additional pressure that I have had to complete my final probationer report.  After 4 long years at university, a year and a half of probation (due to absence) and a lot of CPL, finally I can say I am an NQT. 

With that, I feel I want to take my blog in a new direction. I feel I want to focus more on the different elements of teaching using my own observations and that of others to try to share best practice, put forward a few of my own ideas and in particular focus on my new found love for restorative behaviour management. 

This week, I am going to focus on my newest strategy for dealing with an S1 class (12/13 year olds) whose low level disruptions and behaviours have caused a wider problem overall.  It all started with a bout of tears and a hysterical pupil.  At least that was when I decided I had to be brave and take the big step towards facilitating a restorative circle in class.  I asked the pupils to move tables and put chairs into a circle in the middle of the room.  At this, the uncertainty of change and trying something new was plastered across 25 faces which stared back at me.  Begrudgingly, they arranged themselves in a circle. 

Now came the tricky part – getting them to identify what the problem was with the class that had made it an unpleasant atmosphere.  Each of them thought hard for a second before I asked them to raise their hand if they felt responsible for something that was wrong with the class.  To my great surprise, a lot of the class put their hands up to volunteer to share their guilt.  They each made very valid points – none of which I could have disagreed with at all.  This demonstrated their ability to recognise when they were wrong and how they could go about fixing the issue.  This was the first step. 

Next, we discussed what we would like the classroom to feel like when we were there – me as much as them. We came up with some great adjectives such as safe, respected and happy.  Next we had to work out what needs to be changed in order to create this atmosphere we all wanted.  As a result, we renewed the classroom rules, people apologised to those who they had hurt, disrupted or annoyed and we agreed to work together as a class to make things better. 

Our final objective was to set ourselves personal targets to pin on our new target board.  These are to be reviewed each week and when a pupil meets their target they receive a reward for it such as extra library time or a merit.  These targets require a lot of self-reflection from pupils and are at first understandably lacking in detail or depth.  Gradually, by week two, these started to become more focused. 

There are still a lot of improvements to our class that need to be made, we still have circle time at least once a month and there are still people who haven’t met their targets.  Each week, we have our ups and downs but it is certainly a more positive classroom to be in.  Pupils have a visual reminder of their targets and can update, revisit and change them as often as they like.