Child Safe Advocate with Mrs Sally Croker
Restorative Justice at St Mary's
At St Mary’s we always try to take a positive approach to managing student behaviour. We always encourage the students to show care for others, which is one of our Mercy Values.
Occasionally, in the heat of the moment, students can forget our school rules and when that occurs, we try to resolve the situation by practising Restorative Justice.
Restorative Justice aims to help the student recognise how their actions have affected someone else and how that makes the other person feel. In doing this we hope to reduce the inappropriate behaviour and build an understanding that our actions have consequences.
Restorative Justice is a whole school approach to promoting resilience and aims to contribute to the building of positive relationships in school communities. It is focused on helping young people become aware of the impact of their behaviour on others through personal accountability and learning from a conflict situation. An important component of restorative practices is the focus on restoring relationships after harm has been done.
The Principles of Restorative Practice
Foster awareness in the student of how others have been affected.
Involve the student actively. A restorative intervention encourages the student to speak. They face and listen to those who have been affected by their inappropriate behaviour. They help decide how to repair the harm and make a commitment to this. The student is held accountable.
Accept ambiguity. Often fault is unclear and people can agree to accept the ambiguous situation. Separate the deed from the doer. We can recognise a student’s worth, their virtues and accomplishments while disapproving of their wrongdoing.
See every serious instance of wrongdoing and conflict as an opportunity for learning. Negative incidents can be used constructively to build empathy and a sense of community in the hope that there is a reduction of negative incidents in the future.
Affective Questions are provided to students and school staff to assist in managing conflicts or potential conflict situations and to work towards a resolution.
- What did I do?
- Who do you think was affected?
- What was I thinking?
- What am I thinking now?
- What am I going to do to make things right?
Our focus is on the specific behaviour or incident without pointing the finger of blame. The Restorative Justice process is used to draw out who was affected and how they were affected. After discussion and Circle Time with all parties involved in problem-solving what needs to happen to ‘make things right’ an agreement is reached that all will work towards.