Restorative Practises

What is Restorative Practice?

Restorative practice is a value based philosophy rooted in fairness and respect for human beings. It aims to build relationships and promote empathy. Taking a restorative approach place high expectations on the community, but also offers high levels of support to ensure those expectations are reachable. A particular set of skills are taught to ensure the restorative approach is actively used in our school. Those skills include; the ability to listen, develop empathy between people, being fair and problem-solving skills. Such skills, alongside our emphasis on respect, allow us to build relationships which will reduce the possibility of conflict, however if conflict is to occur, restorative practice offers a way to resolve conflict and hold those responsible accountable, while allowing them to rejoin into the school in a restorative manner.

What Restorative Practice looks like in our school?

Scoil Aoife CNS provides training each year for returning and new staff. We have two qualified Restorative Practice Trainers on staff who, each year will train new teachers to ensure there is an environment of respect and understanding for all. Our staff like
to model this approach to pupils, who are educated on Restorative Practice and supported in using an RP approach when dealing with conflict.

The Restorative Questions:

These five questions help a facilitator work from past to present, while giving participants a chance to take ownership of their behaviours and actions and drawing on empathy, in attempt to ensure the behaviours and actions are not repeated. Participants are
encouraged to use ‘I’ statements.

1. What happened? (past; factual account)

2. What were you thinking about at the time? (past)

3. What have you thought about since? (present)

4. Who has been affected by your actions? (present; encourages empathy)

5. What do you think you need to do to make things right? (future)