How Do We Respond?

School leaders work hard to promote positive behavior and prevent harm.  But our work is complex, often unpredictable, and above all… human.  Harmful incidents are bound to occur at some point in every human community.

So the question is… what do effective leaders do AFTER harm has occurred in their schools?

Mending Relationships

When there has been harm in your community, what steps do you usually take?  In my humble opinion, the ability to respond to harm and to restore relationships is one of the most important skills all school leaders need to develop.

In 2021, I attended a training on restorative practices run by LCCS – a Singaporean organization that partners with the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP).  The training was recommended by a colleague in Hanoi, and it is among the top five most impactful professional learning experiences I have had.  I use what I learned on a near daily basis.

So if your role requires you to build relationships and communities, I very highly recommend you look into restorative practices.  Here’s a 2-minute intro video:

While the field of “restorative practices” includes a range of proactive and reactive tools for strengthening relationships, the tool I have used most often as a secondary principal is the “restorative conference.”

Restorative Conferences?

A restorative conference is a structured conversation used to respond to an incident in which an “offender” has harmed one or more “victims.”  A successful restorative conference results in:

1. mutual understanding,
2. learning for the offender(s),
3. catharsis for the victim(s),
4. agreements intended to prevent harm from recurring, and
5. improved relationships.

Here’s the bottom line…

If facilitated correctly, restorative conferences have powerful positive effects on EVERYONE involved.

So how do you facilitate a restorative conference?  I’ll summarize the process below.

(NB: Before I proceed, I want to emphasize that facilitators need to be professionally trained before facilitating a conference when the harm is severe or the stakes are high.)

Ask the Right Questions

Questions are incredibly, incredibly powerful.  And knowing what questions to ask is the first step towards being able to facilitate a restorative conference.

Here are two sets of restorative questions: one for people who’ve been harmed and one for those who caused harm.  You might want to print them out to keep on hand until you’ve memorized them.  (You can buy business-card-size copies here.)

If someone in my school community has caused harm in some way, the counselor or I will meet with the person to talk through these questions:

• • What happened?
  • What were you thinking about at the time?
  • What have your thoughts been since it happened?
  • Who has been affected by what you did?
  • In what way have they been affected?
  • What do you think needs to happen next?
  • How can you make things right?

This can prompt truly amazing reflection for young people (and for adults, too).  Most of the time a person knows when he or she has caused harm.  If the person is helped to reflect and is directly involved in identifying next steps, it is far more likely that the actions taken to repair harm will be sincere and effective.

The Process & Script

These questions are used frequently in the process of preparing for and facilitating a restorative conference.  In brief:

Step 1: Pre-Meetings

Facilitator meets one-to-one BEFORE the restorative conference with the offender, victim, and people close to them.  In my experience, these one-to-one pre-meetings are crucial and should NEVER be skipped.  These pre-meetings help the facilitator:

• • • understand the incident,
    • assess if the offender has admitted responsibility,
    • build trust with potential conference participants,
    • develop a seating plan for the conference, and
    • predict how the conference may unfold.

Step 2: Conference

The facilitator schedules and leads the restorative conference and follows a script.  The script was developed by Terry O’Connell.  O’Connell is an Australian police officer who pioneered the use of restorative practices within the criminal justice system.  The script for a restorative conference is freely available online:

Script (IIRP)

Script (MTU)

What I LOVE about the process is that it creates a space for voices to be heard that ordinarily would not be heard in a punitive process.  The victim and other community members have the opportunity to explain to the offender how they were harmed by the incident and what they need in order to move forward.

I Wish…

I wish I’d learned how to facilitate restorative conferences much, much earlier in my career.  I believe I would have been able to spare students, families, and colleagues the often unnecessary pain and alienation that can be caused by more punitive approaches to addressing harm.

Training on restorative practices should be part of every principal certification program.  The “traditional” discipline systems still in place at many schools are outdated, harsh, and frankly ineffective.  Issuing demerits, assigning detentions, and suspending students out-of-school do not lead to better relationships or stronger school communities.  And most of us know this.

There is a reason the featured image for this article is a piece of Kintsugi pottery.  Kintsugi is the Japanese art of fixing “broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with … gold, silver, or platinum.”  The result is absolutely beautiful and is an apt metaphor for the work of restoration.

While I would never wish for harm to occur in any community, it was after I began learning about restorative practices that I came to believe not only that broken relationships could be restored, but also that the act of restoration in and of itself could have such value and beauty.