What is restorative practice?
Restorative practice is a way of working with conflict that puts the focus on repairing the harm that has been done. It is an approach to conflict resolution that includes all of the parties involved.
The aim of the restorative approach is to develop our community and to manage conflict and tension by repairing harm and building relationships.
This is shown in our school values which are:
- Engage - We all take responsibility by engaging in restorative conversations
- Encourage - We all can make a fresh start and can support each other in putting things right.
- Enrich - Our lives are better when we value, support and empathise with each other. We can all learn and grow.
For effective teaching and learning to take place, we believe that there should be good relationships within the Academy. The restorative approach puts repairing harm done to relationships at the heart of the school. This allows us to build, nurture and repair relationships.
The restorative approach gives us two main opportunities.
It primarily provides those who have been harmed (victim) with a forum to ‘have their say and be heard’, which is vital to the healing process.
Secondly, it presents the offender (harmer) with an onus of responsibility for their actions, an opportunity to make some form of retributive acknowledgement.
The restorative approach also allows for pupils to repair relationships when they have disagreements by understanding both peoples point of view. We see pupils support each other through this peer support.
The main tool in the restorative approach is the Restorative Conversation. This is the place where the two parties are able to discuss the situation with the intent of restoring things to a good learning environment. The conversation takes the form of 5 questions
In school we use the 5 questions during these conversations:
- What happened?
- What were you thinking about at the time?
- What were you feeling? What are you feeling now?
- Who has been affected?
- What needs to happen to make things fair or better?
The conversations show that actions have consequences to how people are feeling which has an influence on how they are able to learn. Discussing these will encourage people to accept responsibility and repair relationships. It supports young people to move on and to try something different next time.
This approach is being adopted across the whole school. We will provide updates as we embed the Restorative Approach at Hollis Academy.
For more details, please contact the Academy and speak to Tom Maitland.