One of the reasons I advocate for working restoratively in schools is because it works. Another is the rigour in the research behind it in fields like social psychology and affect theory.
Put simply, I find it useful to look for answers about the way young people, and old ones, are built.
When I’ve got knowledge, understanding and a plan, I find myself not quite so wound up in imperfect people being annoying in my company.
For instance, affect theory research speaks to the emotion of shame and how important it is. Shame has a job in the same way that other negative emotions like fear (to keep us safe) and anger (to let you know something you care about is under threat) have jobs.
Shame’s job, as put by Professor Donald Nathanson, is to be our ‘central social regulator’. Shame lets us know when we’ve fallen short – socially, physically and academically.
However, a bit like fear (lawnmower parenting) and anger (road rage), we’ve learned some bad habits when it comes to responding to shame. There are typically four bad habits and we can see them in all school stakeholders:
| Bad Habit | Students | Staff | Parents |
| Withdrawal Disappearing from the place where I feel shame. | Tearing up a learning task and running from the room after making an error. | Chucking a sickie after a hard day of teaching. | Not showing up to a meeting or returning a call. |
| Attacking others
Blaming others and conveniently distracting myself from the problem. |
“You didn’t explain it to me properly.”
“You’ve always hated me!” |
“It’s that bloody Principal. She’s never been supportive of me.” | “It’s not surprising he snapped given the way you pick on him all the time.” |
| Attacking ourselves
Making the problem about me, rather than my behaviour/ performance. |
“I just suck at maths, OK!” | “I’m too old to learn new technology.” | “You must hate having my family at this school. We’re such a disaster.” |
| Avoidance
Using substances and distractions to numb us from unresolved shame. |
A teenager going on a weekend bender after struggling at school all week. | Getting lost in doomscrolling on our phones over the weekend rather than talking to family. | Unrelenting sadness from a feeling of failing as a parent that can only be soothed by the bottle. |
It’s a tough matrix to read, I know. But the positive is that I now know what the vast majority of poor behaviours are – they’re just a bad habit somebody has learned in response to personal shame.
It’s about them, not me. I don’t need to take it personally.
This knowledge allows me to park my outrage or offence and become solution-focused. In most cases, that enables me to help a student/colleague/parent develop a new, productive, shame-resolving habit.
And that’s how I help.
Keep fighting that good fight,
P.S. If you’re heading to the ACEL 2024 National Conference (30 September – 2 October), we’ll have two of our Expert Facilitators there to talk to you about Real Schools and RP2.0 and our partnership model. And the first 200 people to our stand can pick up a free copy of my book, Restoring Teaching!
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