Positive School Communities and Restorative Practices

Guiding Principles

• Everyone deserves to feel valued, safe, cared for, and have a sense of belonging to their school community. All members have something positive to contribute to their school community.
• We are committed to achieving equity and inclusivity throughout our learning communities. Each learner deserves the opportunity to succeed. 
• Culture and diversity are assets for our communities that are to be respected for their multiple perspectives on learning, definitions of success, and pathways for self-determination.  
• Schools teach and facilitate informal and formal processes to proactively build relationships and a strong sense of community 
• Within the school environment, establishing a sense of collaboration rests on genuine respect for the participation of young people in promoting a strong, healthy and safe school community. Children respect adults who, in turn, respect young people’s ability to exercise meaningful choices. 
• Students are supported in the learning process to be positive members of their school community and can be trusted to solve their problems. All children experience lessons on how to safely and peacefully resolve conflict. They are expected to listen and take restorative action when harm is caused.
• Schools promote accountability and responsibility through personal reflection within a collaborative environment. With practice, young people improve skills for careful listening, empathy, perspective-taking and responding to the needs of others.
• Adults model that we make mistakes and have an opportunity to make things right.
• Students are taught to understand and regulate their emotional state, which helps them form stronger relationships and avoid choices that are hurtful to others or the larger school community.
• Harmful actions impact the whole school community. When harm is caused, we address the harm and repair relationships.

All Students

Schools employ a wide range of proactive practices and strategies for all students to experience and participate in building a strong school community. 

• All students participate in school-wide and classroom-based social and emotional learning (SEL) opportunities. The purpose of SEL is to develop skills to understand and regulate one’s emotional state for personal health and strong, safe relationships. We teach lessons from the either Friendzy or Character Strong SEL curriculum across all our schools.
• Schools explicitly define, teach and review behavioral expectations.
• Whole school assemblies promote positive behavior and teach skills for maintaining healthy relationships. For example, a school may hold an assembly to announce “kindness” as the character focus of the month. Children will be encouraged to demonstrate extra amounts of kindness and notice kind actions by peers. Children can share what they have observed and learned through sharing experiences on a monthly project - such as writing what they observe on a paper fish to place in the school’s ‘Ocean of Kindness’.
• Morning Meetings and Community Circles occur regularly in classrooms to teach skills such as empathy, kindness, and careful listening. Circles are designed to create a safe space for all voices and to encourage each participant to step in the direction of their best self.
• School counselors and teachers facilitate lessons in classrooms about personal safety, problem-solving and ways to prevent bullying.

Some Students

• Restorative Circles help build relationships and community. As an example, the “Showing Gratitude and Appreciation Circle” is used to build relationships through positive recognition, increase skills in giving compliments and increase awareness of the strengths of each child. Restorative Circles also provide a structure and process for addressing conflict and harm. A Restorative Circle might involve an entire classroom or a small group of students and/or adults.
• Restorative Dialogue involves a meeting between the person who harmed others, the people directly impacted and a trained facilitator (teacher, counselor, principal, etc.). All participants recount what happened to them at the time of the incident to gain a clear understanding of the full impact of harm. They then collectively decide what to do to repair affected relationships and prevent further problems. Agreements are recorded and followed-up on.
• Social Contracts are an agreement negotiated between students which states a classroom’s principles and expectations.  By establishing them together, students create set expectations that everyone has agreed to uphold.
• In a Restorative Conference, a neutral party (which could include a peer) helps disputing parties identify the problem and arrive at a mutually agreeable approach to resolving the dispute.
• Targeted instruction, behavior support plans are implemented as needed to ensure safe and healthy behaviors are learned and practiced by students.

Few Students
A very small number of students may need more progressive levels of support. Patterns of negative behavior are sometimes the result of a complex array of factors. We work closely with children and families to understand the full context of the child’s experience and identify the most effective strategies to support them. We are careful to note the difference between making a bad choice and being a bad person. We know all children want to do their best and will do well if they can.

• We always maintain a primary focus on learning new skills to replace negative behaviors. 
• We use a restorative approach to discipline. Collaborative meetings between school staff, students and families are sometimes required to solve problems. Disciplinary consequences for actions may result, and, when appropriate, the consequences are linked to repairing harm/relationships and learning new skills to solve similar problems in the future. For example, a certain class or school activities may be limited for a student while they practice new skills necessary to participate appropriately. We also strive to include students' voices in developing appropriate consequences. Students of all ages are very capable of developing plans to repair harm. They are especially invested in creating these plans when they feel listened to and understood by the adults supporting them.
• When negative behaviors persist, school teams may conduct a Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA). An FBA is a comprehensive and individualized strategy to identify the purpose or function of a student’s problem behavior(s), develop and implement a plan to modify variables that maintain the problem behavior, and teach appropriate replacement behaviors using positive interventions. FBAs result in evidence-based behavior intervention plans and strategies to collect data in order to monitor and revise the plan as needed.
• Suspensions occur only in a limited number of instances and are implemented as defined by Oregon law, typically when adults need time to create or revise a plan to ensure school safety.
• Students are welcomed back into the school by adults and other students after restoring relationships with peers and/or the community. An example of a commonly practiced welcome involves the student meeting with school leadership, teacher, and family before the school day begins to emphasize learning new skills, restoring relationships, repairing harm, and moving forward.