Sustaining and widening restorative practices in a New Zealand
Secondary school and connecting these practices with the wider
community the school operates in
A Presentation for Restorative Justice AotearoaNational
Restorative Justice Practitioners Conference, Auckland, May
2013
Tena Koutou KatoaKo Aoraki te MaungaKo Waimakariri te awaI
whanau mai au Stratford EnglandKo otautahi toku kainga inaianeiKo
Marie kotu hoa rangatiraKo Sean raua Brianna toku tamarikiTaku
aroha tamarikiTaku aroha akoKo Stephen Walters toku ingoa
No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou tena koutou katoa
I have been a DP at Kaiapoi High School since mid 2000. Here, I
have had many responsibilities, having leadership responsibilties
for E-learning, Student Discipline, Pastoral Care, and Curriculum.
Before that I was HOF of Science & Technology at James Cook
High School in Manurewa, Auckland, and before that I worked at
Otahuhu College, Auckland as a Science Teacher. I have also had a
year working as a lecturer in Science Education for Auckland
University teaching pre-service secondary teachers. My background
is deeply established in Science Education, but I did complete a
Masters of Education in 1996, which introduced me to the rich
educational literature that so much of our educational practice is
based upon, and more that it should be based upon. I am married
with 2 children ages 7 and 14, so I get to experience the education
system from the other side. Our family lives in the Kaiapoi
community, we were out of our house for 10 days after the September
2010 earthquake and our house was red-zoned. We enjoy living in the
Kaiapoi Community and especially the fishing and recreation
opportunities that the area provides.I am a passionate supporter of
Restorative practices. I feel that I would not still be able to do
the job of a DP (and still feel enthusiastic about it) if I had not
become exposed and spread the restorative philosophy in the school.
The concept of looking for a win/win solution in resolving conflict
by restoring relationships and strengthening these to provide high
engagement and therefore allows a safe environment for strong
student achievement to flourish.I dont think I would still be able
to continue to apply punitive punishments that would not resolve
the situation for the offender or the victim.
Kaiapoi after 2010
It is also, a community that has been ravaged by the
earthquakes, with 1/5 of urban Kaiapoi having been red-zoned, and
families having to move of their houses, and have their lives
disrupted. We are also a place in Christchurch that is seeing huge
renewal as several major subdivisions will add over 1000 new
sections to the community.Our school philosophy is Ma Te Aroha Ka
Tutaki - Through Care and concern for others - anything is
possible. An apt saying that in the context of our community change
after the earth quakes as well as the Restorative change occurring
within our school.
Kaiapoi High School
Kaiapoi High is a decile 5, Y9 to Y13 school, 20 minutes north
of Christchurch. It has a roll of 600 students and celebrated its
40th anniversary in 2012. It draws upon the urban town of Kaiapoi
and the wider rural areas of North Canterbury. 30 % of our students
travel on a school bus to get to our school. It is a community
bounded by the Ashley river to the North, farms in the West, the
Waimakariri river to the south and the sea to the East. We draw our
students from our local full Y1-8 primary schools, many of which
have embarked upon using restorative practices in their
schools.
OverviewThe Reason for our Journey &Transforming a Punitive
system to a Restorative systemExpanding from dealing with in-class
incidents to a wider implementationConnecting with our contributing
schools - strengthening our positionEstablishing and maintaining
connections in the wider community & involving them in
Restorative PracticeHaving a shared understanding by the school
community of Indicator behaviour and establishing the reasons
behind peoples actionsSustaining and embedding the change in
culture Statistics keep our finger on the pulse of what is
happening - allows us to respond
1. The Reason for our Journey & Transforming a Punitive
system to a Restorative system
1) Kaiapoi High embarked upon restorative practices as part of
improving student engagement in 2005, staff trained to resolve
conflicts in a restorative way and moved away from using punitive
discipline systems for incidents outside the classroom. The success
that was experienced, made the school look to utilise restorative
practices in the classroom. The school morphed an existing "in
class" discipline system to a restorative based one.
When I arrived at Kaiapoi High School in 2000, I found myself in
a traditional DP role, while I had responsibility for many areas in
the school, one of the major ones was school discipline. Like many
schools at that time in Canterbury, we had an in-class student
management system called Assertive Discipline. This system defined
disruptive behaviours (lateness, not having gear, disruption to
learning, etc) and a graduated 5 step hierarchy of punishment, from
Stage 1 (warning) to Stage 5 referral to another class and should
sufficient referrals accumulate, then time out in a withdrawal room
(to reflect on the error of their ways?). Subsequent transgressions
lead to further time out in a withdrawal class to possibly
eventually being moved out of the school via stand-down or
suspension. Misbehaviour outside the classroom was dealt with via a
lunchtime and/or after-school detention system escalating to
stand-downs and suspensions. We had a high number of recidivist
offending (the consequences were not changing the behaviour,
frustrating students, parents and teachers.) The operating
philosophy within the classrooms was that we had students that were
in class and we needed to develop evidence to remove them from
class and teach the remainder. We knew that the system was not
working, however we were stuck on what to change to.
2. Expanding from dealing with in-class incidents to a wider
implementation
2) Over time, the efficacy of restorative practice has immersed
itself into the operating philosophy of the school, and is used to
deal with all matters of conflict between all members of the school
community - students, parents, and staff.
All members of the community including ERO reviews recognised
that we needed to change the culture of the school. The school was
involved in a number of change processes to look at raising student
achievement. One of the more significant programmes was the
implementation of the MOE Te Mana programme, which focussed on the
learning relationships between teachers and Maori students in
particular. The spinoff from this initiative was that learning
relationships between all students and teachers were improved. and
students became more engaged and the need to utilise Assertive
Discipline systems was reduced. The most powerful aspect of this
programme was the use of student voice that broke done the
assumptions that teachers had about what students were thinking and
why they behaved the way they did and that made a conducive
learning environment (I now in reflection see the synergy with
restorative practice). It also was not difficult to discover that
when learning relationships were strong between teachers and
students that misbehaviour in class reduced and student engagement
and achievement improved.At the same time, the local MOE office was
supporting Canterbury High Schools through on a stand-down and
suspension reduction initiative (and therefore improving student
achievement) by supporting schools to improve student engagement
One of these initiatives was to send staff on 3 day Restorative
Practice course run by Marg Thorsborne. This was where I found
myself along with a couple of my colleagues in 2005. The course had
made a paradigm shift in the way we were thinking we had about our
school. It was the missing piece of the puzzle and brought together
the thinking we had that we were unhappy with our in-class and out
of class discipline systems, along with the work stemming from Te
Mana about improving learning relationships in classrooms thereby
improving student engagement and student achievement.
We identified that we needed to transform our in-class assertive
discipline system to a restorative one (our operating philosophy
that we needed to do this as the current system was broken and that
all stakeholders were ready for change).Key to this process was
identifying middle leaders in the school, two of our pastoral deans
to be the face of the change, thereby making it seem less like a
top-down change implementation. This also was in tune with our
philosophy of encouraging leadership throughout the school. We
chose a Year 9 class and the teachers that taught this class as the
pilot scheme. We provided professional development to these
teachers, spoke to the students, and informed the parents of
utilising a new approach to managing behaviour in the class. Our
two identified leaders were empowered and supported in managing
this project. The class was selected as the range of teachers
represented in this class represented the range of teachers in the
rest of the school. If we achieved success with this diverse group
of teachers, we felt it would be better accepted by the wider
staff. The experiment was a resounding success. In fact, the model
was sold to the wider staff by the feedback made by the teachers of
the class. The teachers of this pilot class were genuinely excited
by the change in the learning environment that had occurred. We
were now ready to expand the system across the school. This
involved an examination of the resources needed to support such an
expansion, documentation, and professional development and the
investment to make sure the new referral system was implemented
consistently and correctly. We created in-class posters, forms,
brought in Marg Thorsborne to provide the outside expertise to make
a whole teacher group change in culture. We utilised data to keep
us on track and tweak the systems, changing where necessary and
have been continuously evolving the systems as well as
accommodating changes in teaching staff over time.Our current
belief is that the restorative conversation is key to the success
or failure of resolving conflict so we are focussed on this key
aspect of the restorative systems
3. Connecting with our contributing schools - strengthening our
position
We are also seeing more and more our contributing schools adopt
restorative practices, bringing students and parents to our school
with expectations of dealing with conflict a certain way.
Once restorative practice was embedded in classroom routines,
and staff were comfortable in looking at using this philosophy for
managing conflict outside the classroom, we have had more use of
restorative practice in dealing with student/student,
staff/student, parent/student, staff/staff, and community/student.
The Board has fully adopted this philosophy and whenever a student
is referred to them, a restorative component is included in the
disciplinary outcome. When we advertise teaching positions in the
school, we do so by indicating to potential applicants need to be
supportive of restorative practice.The widening of restorative
practice outside the classroom to all aspects of the school, has
had a significant change in the calmness of the school and gives
much better modelling to all in the school about how conflicts are
resolved. I believe that having restorative practices in our
contributing schools has been had the most impact throughout the
school, as it has now been used to restore relationships. We are
also seeing a much better acceptance from the students and parents
as they move from our contributing schools. Our contributing
schools have adopted a restorative philosophy and so the language
and conceptual understanding is well understood and able to be
built upon as the students arrive at the school.
4. Establishing and maintaining connections in the wider
community & involving them in Restorative Practice
Kaiapoi High actively maintains strong connections to Non
Government community organisations such as Community support, YDA
and other Government organisations such as CYFPS, Truancy, and
Police. These organisations are involved in restorative practices
run by the school, or the school participates in restorative
practices run by the Police. These connections strengthen the
effectiveness of restorative practices in the school.
Kaiapoi High School is well connected in the community, it works
closely with all community organisations and makes sure that they
are involved in solutions in dealing with the problems that the
students face. We have also been asked by other organisations to
facilitate restorative conferences for a conflict between people in
our community but not directly connected to our school. We are a
community school, we value and support the interactions with the
organisations in the community. This includes, police youth aid,
YDA counsellors, CYPS, Youth counsellors, 24/7 youth workers,
District Truancy, strengthening families and other specialist
counsellors and agencies. The school welcomes these people into our
school, and it is not unusual to have one or more of these agencies
represented in the school everyday, as well as weekly liaison
meetings with one of our senior staff. When we are dealing with an
issue or a conflict that involves a students, we will always try to
involve the appropriate agencies to look at resolving the problem
in a no-blame conference, and if needed involvement in a
restorative meeting. We find that agencies like to be involved i
these as we are looking at solutions and resolution rather than to
identify problems.
5. Having a shared understanding by the school community of
Indicator behaviour and establishing the reasons behind peoples
actions
The underlying philosophy that the school works from is that
conflict is indicator behaviour, and that to resolve the resulting
damage that stems from that conflict is to utilise all of the
resources available to determine the underlying cause(s) of the
conflict and provide a structure to resolve not just the indicator
behaviour but the reasons and the causes underpinning the conflict
aiming for long term resolution of the problem(s).
Once restorative philosophy is embedded in a school, a maturity
within the school starts to take place, and it affects other
matters in the school. A clear way of seeing this is in our
approach to Truancy, where we use our systems to identify truancy,
but recognise that this is just the indicator behaviour, so involve
social services, along with police youth aid to work with the
family to support the student in attending school. If we examine
the way that a truancy problem is resolved, we can see that we
start with identification of the truancy, we arrange a meeting with
the family, the school and other agencies to examine the reasons
behind the truancy and genuinely look to solve these underlying
issues and support the student and the family to overcome them. We
do review progress and will initiate further meetings should they
be necessary.In the classroom, we monitor the referrals from class,
and if a student is referred by a teacher for a second time, it may
indicate that the teacher and student needs support in restoring
the relationship, so we assign a support person to the subsequent
restorative meeting so that we can be assured that the process runs
smoothly, and any roadblocks are dealt with.We also, will run class
conferences in the junior school, to assists students and teachers
with problems related to class culture. The opportunity to give a
voice to staff and students is very successful in calming conflict
and rebuilding relationships and in some cases getting bullies
sorted in a class.When major incidents occur say a conflict
involving physical violence or serious bullying, our Guidance
Counsellor, will arrange a large conference of sometimes up to 20
participants.Resourcing our restorative meetings, facilitating
staff training and making sure quality control so that consistency
occurs across the school is challenging and does involve constant
monitoring.We have realised that while we have a good understanding
of restorative practices in the staff and student community and the
agencies we work with, and good outcomes from participants of
restorative conferences, we still have work to do to educate the
wider parent community (who have not been involved directly with
restorative conferences) about the principles behind restorative
practice and the benefits of dealing with conflict this way and it
not being a soft alternative to a punitive approach.
6. Sustaining and embedding the change in culture
Introducing new things into Education is something that is a
common (perhaps too common!) practice in New Zealand. Identifying
and sustaining a successful innovation and embedding it into the
culture of the school and the wider community while dealing with
staff change, student change and the changing nature of society is
a challenge.
As a senior leadership team we are constantly bombarded by new
initiatives and opportunities. It is important to make sure that
any changes to a school are thought through thoroughly (but not for
too long) and trialled, ind if successful adopted by the staff with
their support. Resourcing is crucial as many initiatives suffer
from this. and a sustainability plan and succession plan of key
personnel make sure that changes are bedded in and become part of
the permanent culture of the school. At all stages of the
implementation of restorative practices we have monitored.We
believe it is important that staff are trained documents to support
staff are available, relief is provided for staff who need to
attend/facilitate restorative conferences.
7. Statistics keep our finger on the pulse of what is happening
- allows us to respond
Since restorative practices were introduced there has been a
revolution in the way that student "discipline" and "management"
has been managed throughout the school and consequently how
education is delivered at the school. Statistics show that the
high-end measures of student misbehaviour (stand downs and
suspensions) have reduced, but more detailed analysis of minor
student misbehaviour has shown a calmer educational environment for
learning. Restorative practices are at the heart of " the way we do
things here at Kaiapoi High".
The test of any philosophy is how it survives over time, this is
a recognition of the sustainable nature of the change, especially
as we turn over key pastoral teaching staff, other teaching and
non-teaching staff and even a new Principal. We do actively make
sure that all new staff to the school are supported in
understanding the philosophy of restorative practices. One concept
we have been thinking about is the concept of currency, similar to
the first aid qualification, where a staff member id refreshed in
restorative practices after a period of time. We make suer that the
larger restorative conferences have co-facilitators as they are not
that frequent so we need to make sure the skill base and experience
to run those conferences is maintained. A little over a year ago,
the school appointed a new Principal, who by his own admission had
had little contact with restorative practice and was use to a
punitive environment. By participating in a number of restorative
conferences, he was able to see that a win/win solution to conflict
was preferable to his previous experiences, and is a solid
supporter to this philosophy. I feel that if this approach can
survive a transition to a new Principal who was not necessarily
disposed to restorative practice - then we are doing something
right.We know this by looking at the data.
Summary - Seven Strategies for Success
Make sure the environment is right, there has to be a reason for
a change Identify leaders to take the school through the change
process and resource the change process adequately Connect with
contributing schools, so that a common language and framework is
established before the students arrive at your school ( a good
project for primary and secondary schools to collaborate on)
Including community organisations in your restorative practices,
especially police as they operate a similar approach in dealing
with young offenders When ready, develop a maturing philosophy that
separates indicator behavior from underlying reasons and a
willingness to listen to others views on an equal basis. Sustaining
an educational change - Resourcing for succession planning and
sustainability Keeping tabs on restorative practice by keeping an
eye on the data and responding to keep the philosophy alive.
Recommended Reading
Fullan, M.G, (1993). The complexity of the change process
(Chapter 3). Change Forces: Probing the Depth of Educational Reform
(pp.19-41) Farmer Press.
Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D., (2006) Sustainable Leadership.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Magrain, V., & MacFarlane, A.H., (2011) Responsive Pedagogy:
Engaging Restoratively with Challenging Behavior, Wellington: NZCER
Press.
Ministry Of Education,
http://tetereauraki.tki.org.nz/Te-Mana-Korero.
Thorsborne, M., & Vinegrad, D., (2006) Restorative Practices
in School: Rethinking Behaviour Management. Buderhim, QLD: Inyahead
Press.
Zehr, H., (2002). The little book of Restorative Justice.
Intercourse, PA: Good Books
FullaThis chapter in Fullans book that interests me as it
challenges the view that sometimes we need to take a leap of faith
to act, then clarify our reasoning as we move through the change.
The traditional way of operating : Ready Aim Fire is one that often
paralyses change in schools. His suggestion is to Ready Fire &
Aim. Get started and while in the change process, clarify and focus
your purpose. He has developed this idea further in the last 20
years.
Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D., (2006) Sustainable Leadership.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass This book challenges all educators to
behave in an ethical way as it essentially analogies the
Educational Community to the Environment, and challenges us to
think of sustainable practices that do not exhaust natural
resources within and outside the school. This has affected my
thinking on Educational Change, as I always am thinking beyond the
novelty that often starts and fuels educational change, to
embedding it and sustaining change
Magrain, V., & MacFarlane, A.H., (2011) Responsive Pedagogy:
Engaging Restoratively with Challenging Behavior, Wellington: NZCER
Press. This collection of papers gives good detailed information
for the theoretical background for the use of Restorative practices
in schools.
Thorsborne, M., & Vinegrad, D., (2006) Restorative Practices
in School: Rethinking Behaviour Management. Buderhim, QLD: Inyahead
Press.This book, contains very practical and useful practical
scripts, checklists, and advice to make a great starting point for
setting up restorative systems in schools. This book, has
essentially become the default manual of reference for the running
of restorative conferences in our school.
Zehr, H., (2002). The little book of Restorative Justice.
Intercourse, PA: Good BooksThis delightful book, is a great starter
to share with people who you would like to introduce Restorative
practice to in a gentle and simple way.