Restorative Practice Resources Tagged With: practices

'IIRP Continuing Education brings together leading research, theory and practice. We offer a growing array of online professional development events to teach you concepts and soft skills needed to stand out in your professional environment. Our experienced instructors are skilled practitioners, adept at helping you learn and implement restorative practices in your setting. For more than 10 years, the IIRP Graduate School has pioneered master's-level online learning in the social science of relationships and community. Our faculty bring their wealth of knowledge to support the design and structure of our online offerings.'

'It seems like a herculean task to ask every single person in a school to contribute to your schoolwide expectations. However, the Restorative Practice of the community circle is an excellent way to intentionally work together to establish community values and behavioral expectations. Restorative Practices ideals emphasize that “rules” established by authority figures are less likely to create the positive community we are seeking. Instead, our standards for how we interact should be co-created (WITH) so everyone feels like they contributed. When we adults show respect for students' needs and listen to their voice, we are modeling to them how to respect the needs of others. As students help in creating schoolwide and classroom expectations, they get to experience mutual respect and shared power.'

'A new policing paradigm is called for as an integral part of policing, and not just an interjection of restorative justice processes into current policing practice. Restorative practices should underpin all policing and be guided by restorative justice values of respect, dialogue and relationships, and not focused on crime, but broadly on harmful wrongdoing and conflict and support for victims and affected communities. Restorative policing is a relational paradigm of policing that focuses on creating safer, more connected communities through restorative justice practices underpinned by restorative principles of safety, accountability, sustainability, relationship building and constructive engagement.'

'Around this time, I was attending a principals’ conference and heard Adam Voigt (Real Schools) speak about this very issue. Adam’s philosophy is very much built around establishing and maintaining effective relationships in the school setting, not only student to student, but also student to teacher. A key part of this is encouraging students to actually understand the damage they may have done to their relationships with others, due to incorrect behaviour and to then help them through the process of being better at ‘getting it right’ i.e. restoring the relationship. This resonated strongly with me and shortly afterwards Yarra Hills Secondary College embarked on a partnership with Real Schools to start the process of creating a restorative environment and embedding it in school practices'

'How are restorative practices and community health related? Restorative practices strengthens relationships between individuals as well as social connections within communities. Restorative practices can also help to increase people's personal and collective efficacy. These positive outcomes influence sense of community. People with greater sense of community are more likely to act in healthy ways and work with others to promote well-being for all.'

'Giovanni Grandi is a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Trieste. As he is currently working on a book: he had planned to spend period in retreat, but not exactly in the way as it is happening right now… What do you think a restorative culture can do, once the pandemic will be soothed? What could be helpful steps or attitude at that point? The good use of words is one of the main issues in restorative practices, and I think this could be an important resource, still in this period, that is characterised – this is my impression, of course – by a distortion of narratives. I mean: on one side, on social-media, we can notice a huge amount of “story-telling” about ordinary life during pandemic. Generally, we find here good narratives. People prefer not to show their pain, and when they do it, very often I notice also a resentment towards other people who continue saying “it will be all right” (“#andràtuttobene” was an unfortunate hashtag in Italy during the very beginning of the troubles). On the other side, in public speaking we can observe a strong use of heavy metaphors: the one of “war” first of all, Covid-19 as “enemy”… I’m not so sure that this is a good choice in language: in Italy also countries that seem to not “fight” with us against the pandemic quickly became “enemies” (particularly in the narrative of some politicians). I mean we have to learn how to use proper words, moreover how to tell publicly the suffering that affected a great part of the population, with respect and without rhetoric, in order to share feelings deeply and to transform suffering not into revenge but into a new power to build positive things, particularly as European citizens. The European Forum has a great challenge, but has a great experience that will be very precious!'

'From Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice: As restorative practices spread around the world, scholars and practitioners have begun to ask very important questions: How should restorative practices be taught? What educational structures and methods are in alignment with restorative values and principles? The Little Book of Restorative Teaching Tools introduces games as an effective and dynamic tool to teach restorative justice practices. Grounded in an understanding of restorative pedagogy and experiential learning strategies, the games included in this book provide a way for learners to experience and more deeply understand restorative practices while building relationships and improving skills.'

'While the coronavirus is a medical issue, a large part of what we are experiencing is a social crisis. Therefore, the relevance of consciously being relational becomes even more important. As many restorative practitioners understand, restorative thinking and practice isn’t just reserved for the workplace. We take restorative practices wherever we go. Now that so many of us are confined closely with our nuclear families, we can really focus on how to interact with our loved ones using a restorative lens, as we navigate this crisis together.'

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'Fairholme College in Toowoomba has been using restorative practices for 15 years. It's used to build strong and respectful relationships within the school. This is the first in a series of case studies being produced by restorative justice researcher Dr Kristin Reimer at Monash Education. The idea is to foster a national network of leaders who use these practices.'

'Melissa Ugarte is an expert in Restorative Practices—I had been using the term “restorative justice” and she rightly reminded me that Restorative Justice and Restorative Practices are often used interchangeably but are actually quite different. Restorative Justice takes place in the criminal justice system in response to a crime. Restorative Practice is used in schools for climate and culture enhancement. The distinction is an important one.'

'Restorative Practices are key to building and maintaining healthy relationships in communities, including your work community. When relationships are prioritized through equal voice and empathy, the capacity of the team to work effectively and creatively grows. In many ways, this finding is intuitive. We all know from experience that when we are part of teams where we feel safe, heard and understood, we are capable of producing our best work. But it is cool that Google’s very extensive study confirmed it!'

'Applying restorative practices in a restrictive context may seem like a contradictory one. However, people in secure environments often find themselves there due to a range of issues which may be related to the absence of healthy relationships & communities.Two new Qld projects have stepped into this space: The Restorative Practices Project at The Prince Charles Hospital Secure Mental Health Rehabilitation Unit; & The Restorative Expansion Project at the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre.'

'Restorative practices include teachers and staff working more collaboratively with students and encouraging them to express their feelings in different ways and to understand and respect others. A focus is on healing the hurt associated with negative behaviors. Opponents characterize restorative approaches as anti-discipline and claim these approaches don’t hold students sufficiently accountable for their actions. That is not true: Restorative approaches, by definition, provide high levels of accountability. They are emerging as an alternative to zero-tolerance approaches that see students who’ve committed wrongful actions be suspended without hearing about the impacts of their actions — directly from their victims — and without explicitly focusing on repairing the harm done.'