Better Than Carrots or Sticks: Restorative Practices for Positive Classroom Management by Dominique Smith & Douglas Fisher & Nancy Frey

Author:Dominique Smith & Douglas Fisher & Nancy Frey [Smith, Dominique]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Education
ISBN: 9781416620631
Publisher: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development
Published: 2015-08-16T22:00:00+00:00

Developing a Restorative Mindset

Developing a restorative mindset is more complex and personal than some might think. Beliefs about discipline are bound in our own experiences as children, educators, and parents. Discipline is informed by our sense of fairness, which we develop at a very early age: studies show that children as young as 15 months old can detect when food is not equally distributed to others (Schmidt & Sommerville, 2011). Although our beliefs about fairness mature over the years, we're never too far removed from the small child who wails, "It's not fair!" When students violate our expectations, we sense unfairness.

As educators, we also bring our own beliefs about control to bear on our approaches to discipline. Whereas some teachers hold that children are inherently good and will behave under the right conditions, others believe that students will naturally avoid work whenever possible and need to be constantly contained and redirected. Restorative practices can challenge such deeply rooted beliefs by asking us to shift our focus from rules to relationships. We must let go of the idea that accountability equals punishment (i.e., "teach him a lesson") and instead help students progress from acting out to remorse and repair (i.e., "I'm sorry, and I want to make amends").

Empowerment is at the center of restorative practices, as evidenced in the principle that all parties involved in a conflict must contribute to its resolution—victims, offenders, and anyone else even indirectly affected by it. Students need to be taught and given opportunities to use their problem-solving skills. It would be a mistake to wait for conflicts to arise before enacting restorative practices—that's what we did early on, and it was a mistake.

The International Institute for Restorative Practices identifies a continuum of practices ranging from informal to formal (Costello et al., 2010). In this chapter, we'll be focusing on the following first four informal practices:

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