Teaching and Learning

Many people who use, or have tried restorative justice in their school are entrenched in the conception that there are no consequences, or that people who do things get away with just having a conversation with someone. Recently I have trialled something more. Three boys had a fight in the classroom. One grabbed the second in a headlock, and the third kicked the first in the head. As restorative justice dictates, we met individually with the boys first. We talked about what had happened, who they had affected, and how they were going to make it right. These boys are pretty good at this kind of stuff now, they decided they would make it right with each other in different ways. Some apologising, some inviting others to join them in projects, and others making promises for the future. We then discussed who else they had affected, and discussed how they had affected The School. "We live by a set of values here, and by fighting in the classroom you have jeopardised those. You...

Life, as a journey of self discovery, has been a main discussion point for me of late with two students, in discussion around bullying and being bullied. Wikipidia explains a journey of self discovery as: "The term "journey of self-discovery" refers to a travel, pilgrimage, or series of events whereby a person attempts to determine how they feel, personally, about spiritual issues or priorities, rather than following the opinions of family, friends, neighborhood or peer pressure."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-discovery We talked about the need to understand yourself, the need to understand how you react to different stimuli and in different situations, and the need to understand why others have decided to react in a certain way. I don't know how much of this the students actually understood, but it's a step in the right direction and if we continue to have these discussions with them, they may see themselves and their lives in a different l...