Just one of the aspects of Restorative Practices that I’m a fan of is that it embodies a very old truism about teachers – that the best ones are both Firm and Fair.
Think about the best teacher you ever had and it’s likely that they didn’t sacrifice firmness for fairness or vice versa. There was no 50/50 on this equation. In fact it was more like 100/100.
It’s that maximum balance of boundaries, expectations and limits with support, love, encouragement and nurturing that made the teacher in your mind’s eye so memorable and positively impactful.
This all stands to reason to most even-minded teachers, but sometimes the circumstances of the day can make the firm/fair ambition problematic. As a result, some teachers become conditional about being firm/fair when it should be unequivocally unconditional.
Typically, although not without exception, challenging students start to cop too much firmness and students with challenges can receive too much fairness.
I once played this video to my staff (it was a little hard to find but I spotted it on the DailyMotion website) about a student called Kayla Montgomery and her athletics coach, Patrick Cromwell.
It helped us discuss this unconditional ambition through a case study where it would be easy to lower the expectations unnecessarily. I thought you’d like it too.
Keep fighting that good fight,
P.S. In case we needed more evidence that restorative practices works, one of our partners, St Patrick’s Technical School in South Australia, recently contacted me about some pretty phenomenal improvements in their student wellbeing data. If you want to find out more about partnering with us at Real Schools, I’d love to hear from you!
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