One of our Expert Facilitators sent me a teacher’s email recently and it completely made my day. Probably my week.
The teacher works at O’Connor PS in Kalgoorlie. It’s a Year 6 class in a large regional school, with some genuinely tricky behaviours to manage. He’d been working with Candice from our team on shifting his approach – moving away from punishment and toward something more restorative, more focused on building responsibility than just applying consequences.
One student – a serial offender of sorts, particularly around language and classroom disruption – hit the point where the next step, via a negotiated behaviour agreement, was missing inter-school footy on Friday. The teacher held the line. The student missed footy.
Here’s what happened next, in the teacher’s own words: “He was naturally upset, but what was amazing to see after he calmed down was that he sought out Mrs Gallagher to apologise on his own accord for swearing at her and then returned to school the next day and has been amazing ever since.”
He went on to describe the student stopping himself mid-swear, pulling other classmates up for their own disruptions and asking if he could take work home to keep going on it. That’s not a kid who was punished into compliance. That’s a kid who experienced a genuine consequence, processed it, repaired the harm… and grew.
There are consequences in a restorative model. We just assess the need for them based on harm over offence. And we never exclude the restorative option while consequences are applied. That’s really all that happened.
What this teacher did was hold the consequence without adding heat, lectures, shame or self-justifying “I told you so” moments. All that was added was conversation and opportunity to make amends; to learn. In this instance, it’s an opportunity accepted by the student and may just be a breakthrough moment for him.
That last part is what most schools underinvest in. Too often, we apply the consequence and consider the matter closed. But the moment after is often the most important learning opportunity in the whole sequence – and if no adult is paying attention, we’ve left the most valuable learning in the process on the table.
This wonderful teacher ended his email with, “I was keen to share some of the positives.”
Geez, I love that. A teacher in a complex and important school, taking the time to reflect on what went well and why… and wanting to share it.
That’s our profession at its best.
Keep fighting that good fight,
P.S. If you’re looking to create more moments like this in your own school, I think you’ll get a lot from my next online workshop – Suspend Smarter. We’ll explore how to make suspension decisions that are fair, defensible and genuinely lead to better outcomes for students, staff and school culture – not just time away from school.
Suspend Smarter Online Workshop
Tuesday 11 August 2026
2.00pm – 3.30pm AEST
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