Independent Thinking on Restorative Practice

Building relationships, improving behaviour and creating stronger communities

Mark Finnis

• Publisher: Independent Thinking Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781781353387
• eBook ISBN: 9781781353905
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In Independent Thinking on Restorative Practice: Building relationships, improving behaviour and creating stronger communities, Mark Finnis shares a practical and inspiring introduction to the use of restorative practice in educational settings. For those educators who are uncomfortable with the punitive world of zero tolerance, isolation booths and school exclusions, Mark Finnis - one of the UK's leading restorative practice experts - is here to show you that there is another way. Drawing on his many years' experience working with schools, social services and local governments across the country, Mark shares all you need to know about what restorative practice is, how it works, where to start and the many benefits of embedding a relational approach into any educational organisation that genuinely has people at its heart. Covering coaching circles and the power of doing things with (and not to) children and young people, to moving your values off lanyards and posters and into the lived experience of every member of the school community, this book sets out how restorative practice - when done well - can transform every aspect of school life. The book shares advice on how to put behaviour right when it goes wrong in a more positive, less punitive way, and, more importantly, on how to get it right and keep it right in the first place. Furthermore, it advocates an approach that is collaborative, empowering and positive - and ultimately geared to improve motivation, engagement and independent learning in even the hardest-to-reach young people. Suitable for school leaders, educators and anyone working with young people.

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CHAPTER 1

DEVELOPING A RESTORATIVE MINDSET

All behaviour is nothing more than an unmet need – the story of David

David arrived at school 15 minutes late and wearing white trainers. He was greeted with a pointy finger to the chest.

‘Why are you late and where are your black shoes?’

‘F@*$ off,’ was the response.

David was sent to his head of year and along the way told three more people to do the same.

David was excluded that day.

Let me tell you about David (this is a lesson in knowing your students well).

He is 11 years old and lives with his mum and his younger brother and sister.

The reason he arrived late to school was because he was dropping his brother and sister off at primary school. Those white trainers, he isn’t wearing them to look cool. It’s the only footwear he has and, if you look closely, you’ll see that they are in pretty poor condition. In fact, he is embarrassed by them. 16

If you knew David well, you’d know that David’s house hasn’t got carpet on the floor in any of the rooms, not that there are that many. David hasn’t got his own bedroom; in fact, he hasn’t even got his own bed. He has a mattress on the kitchen floor.

If you knew David well, you’d know David is on a child protection plan, and maybe you’d question how good an idea it is to send him home for three days. If you knew David well, you’d know that we need him in school to know he is safe while we work closely with other agencies and, more importantly, his family.

He is on free school meals and we’re not sure he gets regular meals when he isn’t at school. Maybe he does (I was on free school meals at school and did get fed well at home), but we don’t know that for sure.

David doesn’t go to sleep until his mum does as only then does he know his mum is safe. This is because there is domestic violence and abuse in David’s house.

But then you’d know all this, if you knew David well.

There is a phrase that has been around in our work with children and families for a long time and it’s ‘all behaviour is nothing more than a display of unmet needs’. If that is the case – and there are many who choose to disagree – then the simplest way to change the behaviour is to address the child’s unmet needs. Or, to put it another way, children who are loved at home come into school to learn; those who aren’t loved at home come into school to be loved.

You will have had a David in your school. Knowing what you know now, how would you react to his behaviour – his unmet need – differently? The desire to jab your finger at his chest and overreact at his reaction may still be strong but, remember, relational approaches are what count. 17

Such a response will do damage, both now and in the longer term. A knee-jerk act is not in your interests and is certainly not in David’s. So, what do you do?

What would I do? Well, of course, I would have corrected the issue over school uniform. Rules are rules after all. But note the verb. Correcting is different from correction.

But first, above everything else, I would have greeted David that morning with the biggest smile I could give him and told him how pleased I was to see him. I would have asked if he had had breakfast, placed a hand on his shoulder, shaken his hand, looked into his eyes and said, ‘I’m here for you.’

You have no idea what students are dealing with in their own life. So just be nice – it’s that simple.

Connect before content

Without relatedness, no work can occur. […] Connect before content.

PETER BLOCK1

Never underestimate the power of this simple premise. Do you connect with students, their families and colleagues at the outset, before you go anywhere near the content? If so, how?

If we aren’t careful, we put our focus on the content and forget to simply connect. Our students need connection 18as well as the important content. The connection creates the space to then be able to explore the content. Connections can happen by themselves, but wouldn’t you want them to happen intentionally?

Meaningful learning takes place when we have meaningful relationships. What we are seeking to do is to positively affect the mindset of our students as they come into lessons, our visitors as they come into school and our colleagues as they come into meetings. We do this through the look on our faces, the way we greet each other, our tone of voice and our body language, as much as through things we actually say. It’s about how we talk among ourselves, how we act among ourselves, how we are there for each other. It’s about the weather we create around us.

Remember the old joke about the pub on the moon that shut down because there was no atmosphere? How does your classroom compare? If your office was a coffee shop, would you be a regular? Having people leave your presence feeling better than when they arrived is one thing, but what about helping people feel better just by coming through the door?

The start of the day as students arrive can often be the busiest and most unsettled part of the school day. Getting involved earlier in the life of any problems can often help you have fewer problems later. Be more proactive and less reactive. I often think that when I’m reactive, it’s emotional and not thought through; when I’m responsive, it’s regulated and thought through. If I’m not regulated with my own emotions, I’ll never be able to help regulate a student’s.

Greeting students at the school gate with a smile (remember, smiling at students is good for you both), a ‘good morning’, or a ‘How are you?’, will give you a quick 19temperature check to see how their day might work out. Most of all, it’s important that we start the day on a positive note. Waiting for students at the classroom door gives us another opportunity to connect, saying their name correctly – that’s the subtle difference – and remembering things about them. Not only do smiles make us feel good, they have the tendency of getting passed on to others. A simple positive greeting can have an impact on all the things we want to improve: learning, behaviour and, most of all, belonging.

There are many examples in schools around the world of handshakes, hugs and high fives at the classroom door (and post-COVID these will become more elaborate and creative I’m sure). Some colleagues even develop complex, personalised handshakes that are unique to each child. These are all utterly brilliant examples of connecting before tackling the content and show how simple acts like this can create a different culture and different behaviours from the off.

In our post-COVID world, maybe you are more wary of human contact than you were before. How about a smile, a ‘nice one’, a ‘good morning’, an ‘it’s great to see you’, a ‘have a great day’, an ‘enjoy your next lesson’ and, at the end of the day, a simple ‘goodbye, have a great evening, see you in the morning’. Who knows, they may even reciprocate!

Of course, such positivity and high fivery might not suit everyone all of the time. If we really know our students well, we know the ones who will need to be greeted in a different way. For students for whom this type of welcome might create disconnection, allow them to develop their own way of arriving into the classroom. This is important for you as the teacher too. Your needs are also important, don’t 20forget. That said, there are few people for whom a smile, even if it is not returned, does not go a long, long way.

Your success in creating a positive and productive school depends more than anything else on the quality of the relationships within it, especially those that the adults build with the children. When students feel liked, respected and trusted by their teachers, they find more success in school, academically and behaviourally. Those staff–student relationships influence everything and, while this might sound obvious, it’s obvious when you visit schools in which this is not the priority. You can see it in the time they spend on behavioural issues, chasing achievements rather than celebrating them.

If you’re not modelling what you’re teaching, you’re teaching something different

Modelling is like breathing. You can’t not do it. You are modelling behaviour for your students, whether you mean to or not. So, if you’re not modelling what you’re teaching, then you’re not really teaching what you think you’re teaching. Students see whether you’re showing warmth and respect towards them and to the other students and adults in your school. Often, they will model their own behaviour after your behaviour, albeit subconsciously.

Take, for example, the manner in which you manage your emotions. Students notice the methods you use to manage how you’re feeling. They notice the positive strategies you employ, such as taking a deep breath or talking about your frustrations. Likewise, they notice your 21negative strategies, such as shouting or making disrespectful jokes about colleagues. Be aware that students will often copy the strategies you use, just like they might emulate parents’ or carers’ behaviours.

So, the behaviours you want? You’ve got to give them to get them.

The 1% principle

Through reading about the great success of the British Cycling team and the inspiring work of Sir Dave Brailsford around marginal gains and the 1% principle,2 it really got me thinking connecting this to my work around relationships. Small ripples create big waves and that’s where the 1% principle comes in. The small stuff often becomes the big stuff. It can be frustrating when we focus on big changes as they can become overwhelming, they don’t get done or we wonder how we’ll find the time. Small acts quickly mount up, and that’s where we get continuous improvements. 1% at a time can work brilliantly.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

What are the small wins that you could find, the tweaks to a policy or process you currently do? What minor thing could you do differently as you walk to your classroom? When you phone a parent or carer, a 1% marginal gain might be the difference between getting a polite response and genuinely getting them on side. Compare ‘Good morning, class’ with ‘Good morning! It’s nice to see you all 22and I’m so excited to be sharing X, Y and Z with you today.’ Add a smile and that’s another 1%.

I have a friend who runs marathons and when I ask how he does it, he says one mile at a time. This idea runs contrary to the premise that for big results, you need big changes. Instead, it suggests that big results are the result of little changes, lots of them. It’s the same when we look at building better relationships in our schools. If you want to improve relationships across the school, focus on the many mini daily relational actions. In other words, don’t worry about doing the principles of restorative practice 100% better. Just do 100 restorative things 1% better.

Empathy vs sympathy

Empathy is a great way of building connection. Sharing with students how you feel – and exploring how they feel – can open up really useful conversations about how everyone can work together better. Contrary to popular belief, teachers aren’t kept in the store cupboard overnight; they aren’t machines (not yet anyway). They are, in fact, humans with human feelings.

It’s easy to leave our human side at home and see sharing those feelings as a sign of weakness, but a teacher’s human side can be used as a way to build compassion and connection with students and across school communities. Real reconciliation in relationships can occur when we are able to talk about what happened, what bothered ...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• First Thoughts
• Chapter 1: Developing a Restorative Mindset
• Chapter 2: Culture, Community and Relationships
• Chapter 3: Restorative Conversations and Language
• Chapter 4: Restorative Circles
• Chapter 5: Restorative Meetings and Conferences
• Chapter 6: Practice Sustainability
• Final Thoughts
• References and Further Reading
• Copyright
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