As a school principal I had the privilege to work with a large and diverse population. We served students with disabilities from kindergarten to twelfth grade. It was a wonderful experience, but it came with plenty of challenges. Without a doubt, the most challenging aspect in school management is school discipline. Originally, I was a proponent of traditional discipline; this included detentions, suspensions, etc. In other words, a punitive approach. However, I quickly realized that the school ended up losing good students that had an issue behaving. 

I had plenty of meetings with my teachers and staff trying to figure out an effective way to manage discipline. I needed to get my people committed so I was always open to hear what they had to say. Very often the proposals would all involve imposing stricter discipline. However, my gut feelings were telling me that more restrictions and punishments weren’t the answer. So, I kept researching until I came across Restorative Practices. RP in schools, put simply, is a set of practices, formal and informal, that promote a positive school climate by building community, repairing relationships and creating safe learning environments for all students. 

By experience, I knew that students needed meaningful connections with the adults in their lives; and unfortunately, very often, they didn’t have that at home. More importantly, I knew that they would respond better to teachers and administrators if they felt heard. I immediately knew that RP was what I was looking for.

Resources were tight and there were very few training options available in Florida. Fortunately, RP resonated with some of my teachers who wanted to make it happen. We put in the work and used all the training we could find to fully implement RP in our school, eventually even the more skeptical members of the faculty were pleased with the results.

It took us about 4 years to change the school climate, which we expected, but in the meantime we saw immediate change. In future posts I will delve into some more details  about the implementation of Restorative Practices, and if you have any questions or comments please don’t hesitate to reply to this post.