I came back from morning tea and, through my office window, spotted Frank sunk into the green armchair.
Frank was that kid. The one I’d spent hours extracting from toilets, coaxing off the roof and chasing across a six-lane road because someone had “looked at him funny,” or a teacher had dared to ask him to open a book. Teachers can be so cruel sometimes.
I walked in and asked who’d sent him my way.
“Nobody,” he said, matter-of-fact.
“I’ll play along,” I replied. “Then what are you doing here?”
“Well, I f***ed up, didn’t I?”
I was well past being shocked by Frank’s language, so I continued to play along. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I swore at Mrs Jeffries. I was having a bad day, and Matt wound me up again at four-square. Mrs J turned up when I was yelling, and I kinda yelled some bad words at her too. I could tell she was sad and she’s always so nice to me in Music. Anyway, I’m here so we can do one of those talk things with her, ’cos I need to fix this up. Can we start now?”
It’s taken time, but Frank’s finally realised that his old, destructive responses to failure don’t serve him. He’s starting to trust a new, restorative way – and trusting it enough to self-report and picture what fixing it looks like.
When it comes to the Franks in your school, I’ve got one question:
What the f*** else do you want?
Keep fighting that good fight,
P.S. Our Black Friday Culture Fix Bundle closes at midnight tonight! It includes four of the best tools a school leader can get their hands on, including a copy of my book, Restoring Teaching, as well as an awesome GPT tool to help you write newsletters people actually want to read, and a couple more restorative goodies.
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