This year we dove into an experiment with Restorative Practice. Now class meetings are one component of SFA’s English Language Arts package, but the format and the questions teachers are supposed to read from are flat, unimaginative, and depressingly naive. My students would roll their eyes at them. I’ve seen Restorative Circles done poorly and I’ve heard of them being done very well. We fell somewhere in the middle.
Most regular public schools rely on Behaviorism as the backbone of their beliefs about education. Detentions, suspensions, and of course grades and GPA’s are all drawn from old ideas about how to best “motivate” people.
But behaviorism is ultimately counter-productive (and yet the trust and relationships built are done despite that regime), and so the idea of adding a restorative circle routine to our classroom was one small attempt to “make this classroom and school a more comfortable place for everyone”.
In this year-long exercise, I wanted to avoid the sometimes shallow nature of poorly-run Circles, and so over the summer I found a decent online playbook to draw from: a free booklet from The Center For Restorative Process. This, along with a few conversations with fellow educators who’ve done this kind of work, helped me to determine what might be effective in my classroom.
The final results, according to the students, were mixed: about half were positive, the other half neutral, with a very few falling into the “this was a waste of time” category. Sometimes it can be tough to gauge who is taking the reflection seriously; who is parroting what they think the teacher wants them to write, who is being honest, and who is thinking about what they want to say to their friend in the hallway, or what’s for lunch today?
We started each circle with a simple check-in to get the mood of the kids, and toward the beginning of the year the questions that each student was required to answer were more on the “getting to know you” side of things. Some kids warmed to this format, but some others I know felt uncomfortable—either because they didn’t want to speak in front of their peers, or they thought, “this isn’t what school is for”. These were valid enough points, and I was also trying to hustle the formal conversations toward more substantive topics.
When we dived into the “problem solving” portion of these meetings, most students became more engaged and their talk felt more authentic; they listened to each other more intensely, and we actually added a sliver of democracy to the otherwise authoritarian structure in place in most schools across the country. One of the tools that we introduced (again thanks to the training manual from The Center For Restorative Process) was the simple idea of consensus—that is, someone creates a proposal for an agreement, and then we vote: thumbs up, down, or sideways. So either, Yes, I like this, this should become an agreement; Eh, this is OK with me and should become an agreement; and No, I don’t think this is a good idea and I’m not allowing it to move forward.
The first proposal was one that I suggested myself, in anticipation of having to be out a few days of the year. When I was student teaching, my mentor taught me to essentially clear the decks when a substitute stood in for me, not knowing how involved or competent that adult would be. I followed the advice, but this past year I also tried an agreement: I would promise to try and assign simple and relevant writing when I wouldn’t be there, and the students would ensure that the classroom would be left in a neat condition.
This seemed to work to an extent—I’d usually return to a classroom that was in the same shape I’d left it in, even if few students completed the assignment I’d left for the substitute. And more importantly, the one time that I found things in disarray, the Circle gave me a format and a formula to address this concern. Rather than berating and threatening, I could point back to our Class Agreement (conspicuously displayed on the classroom wall) and explain how the mess affected myself, the custodial staff, and indeed the students themselves. This lead to a discussion of shared responsibility and unforeseen consequences. I always told the kids that I would take this process as seriously as they would. I could still threaten to fall back on punitive measures.
Punishment without conversation and reflection can oftentimes be counterproductive, though conversation without honesty and genuine ownership can also be a waste of time and a way for both students and teachers to dodge any real thinking and internal work. This is what makes some teachers angry about Restorative Practices: kids (and adults) can be disingenuous and trust cannot be developed. Furthermore, this kind of approach takes time. This is in short supply in our hectic public school schedule.
[And of course this returns to another point that I’ve made previously: we need more competent and caring adults in the building. Without one or two adults whose sole job it is to coordinate and facilitate these kinds of restorative efforts, our small experiment in the classroom doesn’t mean a whole lot to the fabric of the school. This shouldn’t keep us from continuing the process, though.]
After a year of using this playbook, I understand now that the most important part of our “Circles” is that we’re practicing shaping decisions together. Of course, I don’t do this at the beginning of the school year, when I’m busy setting up my own classroom management and establishing routines and order. I still think that routines and order make students more comfortable, as if they can trust the competency of their teacher. And you can’t “do” Restorative Practice without trust. Of course, this is exactly what the best examples of the process are trying to accomplish. And in so doing, hopefully our behavioristic school system can grow into something a bit more human.