Every school wants to improve and many are planning now for that ambition in 2023.
However, I’d contend that restorative school cultures have a better chance at improvement across multiple ambitions than schools that choose control-based cultures.
Which one is your school? Run your school’s tendencies against these ambitions and ask which column your school would default to:
| Ambition | Restorative approach | Control approach |
| Improve student language | Make adjustments to the conditions in which conversations happen. | Look to “stop kids swearing” with a Term 1 focus on a zero-tolerance approach to swearing. |
| Improve uniform compliance | Involve the students in messaging to the community about identity, belonging and connection. | Stamp out non-compliance through an unsustainable crackdown based on immediate consequences. |
| Improve student engagement | Use classroom architecture that reduces teacher talk in favour of mobilising students in their learning. | Focus on teacher performance at the front of the room and judgement of that performance by leaders who rarely teach. |
| Improve student responsibility for their actions and self-regulation | Approach wrongdoing with an intention for the student to be thanked quickly for taking the responsibility to repair relational harm. | Increase the length of student punishments, resulting in longer periods of shame and removing any opportunity to take personal responsibility. |
| Improve teacher capacity | Provide skills/training, ensure the psychological safety to fail and provide opportunity to practice. | Remove supports by insisting that teachers handle fractious students themselves and judge them on whether it worked or not. |
| Improve parental buy-in and support | Drip feed parents with your expertise, progress and successful case studies about learning and citizen building. | Communicate about events and recognise only high achievers instead of progress. |
| Improve student voice | Create classroom experiences where students are asked more questions and are in constant discussion. | Buy a Student Leadership Program and task an emerging leader to run it with a miniscule percentage of your student population. |
| Improve anything | Focus on small changes to context with the potential for impact and progress. | Aim for perfection, absolutes, miracles and eradication. |
So, which one is your school? No, really?
And for some bonus provocation … which column reeks of hard work and the misery of unrealised ambitions for your staff?
Keep fighting that good fight,
PS. There’s still time to discuss what a restorative Real Schools Partnership can do for your school in 2023 and well beyond. Here’s some schools who’ve done just that:
Reply to this email if you wouldn’t mind a chat about your school being next.
Want to subscribe to Adam’s Home Truths? Simply subscribe here.