Restorative Practice

Restorative practices are relationship-focused strategies that emphasize community, accountability, empathy, and the repair of harm while helping students remain engaged in learning. As part of the discipline continuum, restorative practices may be used alongside traditional disciplinary responses and do not replace them. These practices are implemented at the discretion of teachers and administrators when students are willing to acknowledge and take responsibility for their actions, and when victims and other impacted individuals voluntarily choose to participate.

How do we use restorative practices at NTPS?

There are a variety of restorative practices tools that our school staff is trained to use:

• Affective language: Supporting staff and students to use language that expresses feelings or emotions related to behaviors or actions. This includes statements and questions that help people develop awareness of how their actions affect others, empathy for others, and a sense of personal responsibility within a community.
• Restorative circles: Used traditionally by African and Native American communities, circles elicit student input and promote strong relationships and a sense of community when used daily as part of the educational routine. Circles can also be used as spaces for healing, places to resolve conflict, and locations where multiple perspectives can be shared to identify contextual problems that gave rise to undesired behaviors.
• Restorative conferences: When relationships have been broken and need repair, conferences provide individuals with an opportunity to meet face-to-face and discuss what happened and why, how each person feels, how to make things right again, and how to prevent future incidents. Keys to success are voluntary participation; responsible students who acknowledge actions before meeting with those harmed; and parties involved discuss how to make things right, commit to a plan, and sign an agreement to avoid future harm.