Sustaining and widening restorative practices in a New Zealand Secondary school and connecting these practices with the wider community the school operates in

A Presentation for Restorative Justice AotearoaNational Restorative Justice Practitioners Conference, Auckland, May 2013

Tena Koutou KatoaKo Aoraki te MaungaKo Waimakariri te awaI whanau mai au Stratford EnglandKo otautahi toku kainga inaianeiKo Marie kotu hoa rangatiraKo Sean raua Brianna toku tamarikiTaku aroha tamarikiTaku aroha akoKo Stephen Walters toku ingoa

No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou tena koutou katoa

I have been a DP at Kaiapoi High School since mid 2000. Here, I have had many responsibilities, having leadership responsibilties for E-learning, Student Discipline, Pastoral Care, and Curriculum. Before that I was HOF of Science & Technology at James Cook High School in Manurewa, Auckland, and before that I worked at Otahuhu College, Auckland as a Science Teacher. I have also had a year working as a lecturer in Science Education for Auckland University teaching pre-service secondary teachers. My background is deeply established in Science Education, but I did complete a Masters of Education in 1996, which introduced me to the rich educational literature that so much of our educational practice is based upon, and more that it should be based upon. I am married with 2 children ages 7 and 14, so I get to experience the education system from the other side. Our family lives in the Kaiapoi community, we were out of our house for 10 days after the September 2010 earthquake and our house was red-zoned. We enjoy living in the Kaiapoi Community and especially the fishing and recreation opportunities that the area provides.I am a passionate supporter of Restorative practices. I feel that I would not still be able to do the job of a DP (and still feel enthusiastic about it) if I had not become exposed and spread the restorative philosophy in the school. The concept of looking for a win/win solution in resolving conflict by restoring relationships and strengthening these to provide high engagement and therefore allows a safe environment for strong student achievement to flourish.I dont think I would still be able to continue to apply punitive punishments that would not resolve the situation for the offender or the victim.

Kaiapoi after 2010

It is also, a community that has been ravaged by the earthquakes, with 1/5 of urban Kaiapoi having been red-zoned, and families having to move of their houses, and have their lives disrupted. We are also a place in Christchurch that is seeing huge renewal as several major subdivisions will add over 1000 new sections to the community.Our school philosophy is Ma Te Aroha Ka Tutaki - Through Care and concern for others - anything is possible. An apt saying that in the context of our community change after the earth quakes as well as the Restorative change occurring within our school.

Kaiapoi High School

Kaiapoi High is a decile 5, Y9 to Y13 school, 20 minutes north of Christchurch. It has a roll of 600 students and celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2012. It draws upon the urban town of Kaiapoi and the wider rural areas of North Canterbury. 30 % of our students travel on a school bus to get to our school. It is a community bounded by the Ashley river to the North, farms in the West, the Waimakariri river to the south and the sea to the East. We draw our students from our local full Y1-8 primary schools, many of which have embarked upon using restorative practices in their schools.

OverviewThe Reason for our Journey &Transforming a Punitive system to a Restorative systemExpanding from dealing with in-class incidents to a wider implementationConnecting with our contributing schools - strengthening our positionEstablishing and maintaining connections in the wider community & involving them in Restorative PracticeHaving a shared understanding by the school community of Indicator behaviour and establishing the reasons behind peoples actionsSustaining and embedding the change in culture Statistics keep our finger on the pulse of what is happening - allows us to respond

1. The Reason for our Journey & Transforming a Punitive system to a Restorative system

1) Kaiapoi High embarked upon restorative practices as part of improving student engagement in 2005, staff trained to resolve conflicts in a restorative way and moved away from using punitive discipline systems for incidents outside the classroom. The success that was experienced, made the school look to utilise restorative practices in the classroom. The school morphed an existing "in class" discipline system to a restorative based one.

When I arrived at Kaiapoi High School in 2000, I found myself in a traditional DP role, while I had responsibility for many areas in the school, one of the major ones was school discipline. Like many schools at that time in Canterbury, we had an in-class student management system called Assertive Discipline. This system defined disruptive behaviours (lateness, not having gear, disruption to learning, etc) and a graduated 5 step hierarchy of punishment, from Stage 1 (warning) to Stage 5 referral to another class and should sufficient referrals accumulate, then time out in a withdrawal room (to reflect on the error of their ways?). Subsequent transgressions lead to further time out in a withdrawal class to possibly eventually being moved out of the school via stand-down or suspension. Misbehaviour outside the classroom was dealt with via a lunchtime and/or after-school detention system escalating to stand-downs and suspensions. We had a high number of recidivist offending (the consequences were not changing the behaviour, frustrating students, parents and teachers.) The operating philosophy within the classrooms was that we had students that were in class and we needed to develop evidence to remove them from class and teach the remainder. We knew that the system was not working, however we were stuck on what to change to.

2. Expanding from dealing with in-class incidents to a wider implementation

2) Over time, the efficacy of restorative practice has immersed itself into the operating philosophy of the school, and is used to deal with all matters of conflict between all members of the school community - students, parents, and staff.

All members of the community including ERO reviews recognised that we needed to change the culture of the school. The school was involved in a number of change processes to look at raising student achievement. One of the more significant programmes was the implementation of the MOE Te Mana programme, which focussed on the learning relationships between teachers and Maori students in particular. The spinoff from this initiative was that learning relationships between all students and teachers were improved. and students became more engaged and the need to utilise Assertive Discipline systems was reduced. The most powerful aspect of this programme was the use of student voice that broke done the assumptions that teachers had about what students were thinking and why they behaved the way they did and that made a conducive learning environment (I now in reflection see the synergy with restorative practice). It also was not difficult to discover that when learning relationships were strong between teachers and students that misbehaviour in class reduced and student engagement and achievement improved.At the same time, the local MOE office was supporting Canterbury High Schools through on a stand-down and suspension reduction initiative (and therefore improving student achievement) by supporting schools to improve student engagement One of these initiatives was to send staff on 3 day Restorative Practice course run by Marg Thorsborne. This was where I found myself along with a couple of my colleagues in 2005. The course had made a paradigm shift in the way we were thinking we had about our school. It was the missing piece of the puzzle and brought together the thinking we had that we were unhappy with our in-class and out of class discipline systems, along with the work stemming from Te Mana about improving learning relationships in classrooms thereby improving student engagement and student achievement.

We identified that we needed to transform our in-class assertive discipline system to a restorative one (our operating philosophy that we needed to do this as the current system was broken and that all stakeholders were ready for change).Key to this process was identifying middle leaders in the school, two of our pastoral deans to be the face of the change, thereby making it seem less like a top-down change implementation. This also was in tune with our philosophy of encouraging leadership throughout the school. We chose a Year 9 class and the teachers that taught this class as the pilot scheme. We provided professional development to these teachers, spoke to the students, and informed the parents of utilising a new approach to managing behaviour in the class. Our two identified leaders were empowered and supported in managing this project. The class was selected as the range of teachers represented in this class represented the range of teachers in the rest of the school. If we achieved success with this diverse group of teachers, we felt it would be better accepted by the wider staff. The experiment was a resounding success. In fact, the model was sold to the wider staff by the feedback made by the teachers of the class. The teachers of this pilot class were genuinely excited by the change in the learning environment that had occurred. We were now ready to expand the system across the school. This involved an examination of the resources needed to support such an expansion, documentation, and professional development and the investment to make sure the new referral system was implemented consistently and correctly. We created in-class posters, forms, brought in Marg Thorsborne to provide the outside expertise to make a whole teacher group change in culture. We utilised data to keep us on track and tweak the systems, changing where necessary and have been continuously evolving the systems as well as accommodating changes in teaching staff over time.Our current belief is that the restorative conversation is key to the success or failure of resolving conflict so we are focussed on this key aspect of the restorative systems

3. Connecting with our contributing schools - strengthening our position

We are also seeing more and more our contributing schools adopt restorative practices, bringing students and parents to our school with expectations of dealing with conflict a certain way.

Once restorative practice was embedded in classroom routines, and staff were comfortable in looking at using this philosophy for managing conflict outside the classroom, we have had more use of restorative practice in dealing with student/student, staff/student, parent/student, staff/staff, and community/student. The Board has fully adopted this philosophy and whenever a student is referred to them, a restorative component is included in the disciplinary outcome. When we advertise teaching positions in the school, we do so by indicating to potential applicants need to be supportive of restorative practice.The widening of restorative practice outside the classroom to all aspects of the school, has had a significant change in the calmness of the school and gives much better modelling to all in the school about how conflicts are resolved. I believe that having restorative practices in our contributing schools has been had the most impact throughout the school, as it has now been used to restore relationships. We are also seeing a much better acceptance from the students and parents as they move from our contributing schools. Our contributing schools have adopted a restorative philosophy and so the language and conceptual understanding is well understood and able to be built upon as the students arrive at the school.

4. Establishing and maintaining connections in the wider community & involving them in Restorative Practice

Kaiapoi High actively maintains strong connections to Non Government community organisations such as Community support, YDA and other Government organisations such as CYFPS, Truancy, and Police. These organisations are involved in restorative practices run by the school, or the school participates in restorative practices run by the Police. These connections strengthen the effectiveness of restorative practices in the school.

Kaiapoi High School is well connected in the community, it works closely with all community organisations and makes sure that they are involved in solutions in dealing with the problems that the students face. We have also been asked by other organisations to facilitate restorative conferences for a conflict between people in our community but not directly connected to our school. We are a community school, we value and support the interactions with the organisations in the community. This includes, police youth aid, YDA counsellors, CYPS, Youth counsellors, 24/7 youth workers, District Truancy, strengthening families and other specialist counsellors and agencies. The school welcomes these people into our school, and it is not unusual to have one or more of these agencies represented in the school everyday, as well as weekly liaison meetings with one of our senior staff. When we are dealing with an issue or a conflict that involves a students, we will always try to involve the appropriate agencies to look at resolving the problem in a no-blame conference, and if needed involvement in a restorative meeting. We find that agencies like to be involved i these as we are looking at solutions and resolution rather than to identify problems.

5. Having a shared understanding by the school community of Indicator behaviour and establishing the reasons behind peoples actions

The underlying philosophy that the school works from is that conflict is indicator behaviour, and that to resolve the resulting damage that stems from that conflict is to utilise all of the resources available to determine the underlying cause(s) of the conflict and provide a structure to resolve not just the indicator behaviour but the reasons and the causes underpinning the conflict aiming for long term resolution of the problem(s).

Once restorative philosophy is embedded in a school, a maturity within the school starts to take place, and it affects other matters in the school. A clear way of seeing this is in our approach to Truancy, where we use our systems to identify truancy, but recognise that this is just the indicator behaviour, so involve social services, along with police youth aid to work with the family to support the student in attending school. If we examine the way that a truancy problem is resolved, we can see that we start with identification of the truancy, we arrange a meeting with the family, the school and other agencies to examine the reasons behind the truancy and genuinely look to solve these underlying issues and support the student and the family to overcome them. We do review progress and will initiate further meetings should they be necessary.In the classroom, we monitor the referrals from class, and if a student is referred by a teacher for a second time, it may indicate that the teacher and student needs support in restoring the relationship, so we assign a support person to the subsequent restorative meeting so that we can be assured that the process runs smoothly, and any roadblocks are dealt with.We also, will run class conferences in the junior school, to assists students and teachers with problems related to class culture. The opportunity to give a voice to staff and students is very successful in calming conflict and rebuilding relationships and in some cases getting bullies sorted in a class.When major incidents occur say a conflict involving physical violence or serious bullying, our Guidance Counsellor, will arrange a large conference of sometimes up to 20 participants.Resourcing our restorative meetings, facilitating staff training and making sure quality control so that consistency occurs across the school is challenging and does involve constant monitoring.We have realised that while we have a good understanding of restorative practices in the staff and student community and the agencies we work with, and good outcomes from participants of restorative conferences, we still have work to do to educate the wider parent community (who have not been involved directly with restorative conferences) about the principles behind restorative practice and the benefits of dealing with conflict this way and it not being a soft alternative to a punitive approach.

6. Sustaining and embedding the change in culture

Introducing new things into Education is something that is a common (perhaps too common!) practice in New Zealand. Identifying and sustaining a successful innovation and embedding it into the culture of the school and the wider community while dealing with staff change, student change and the changing nature of society is a challenge.

As a senior leadership team we are constantly bombarded by new initiatives and opportunities. It is important to make sure that any changes to a school are thought through thoroughly (but not for too long) and trialled, ind if successful adopted by the staff with their support. Resourcing is crucial as many initiatives suffer from this. and a sustainability plan and succession plan of key personnel make sure that changes are bedded in and become part of the permanent culture of the school. At all stages of the implementation of restorative practices we have monitored.We believe it is important that staff are trained documents to support staff are available, relief is provided for staff who need to attend/facilitate restorative conferences.

7. Statistics keep our finger on the pulse of what is happening - allows us to respond

Since restorative practices were introduced there has been a revolution in the way that student "discipline" and "management" has been managed throughout the school and consequently how education is delivered at the school. Statistics show that the high-end measures of student misbehaviour (stand downs and suspensions) have reduced, but more detailed analysis of minor student misbehaviour has shown a calmer educational environment for learning. Restorative practices are at the heart of " the way we do things here at Kaiapoi High".

The test of any philosophy is how it survives over time, this is a recognition of the sustainable nature of the change, especially as we turn over key pastoral teaching staff, other teaching and non-teaching staff and even a new Principal. We do actively make sure that all new staff to the school are supported in understanding the philosophy of restorative practices. One concept we have been thinking about is the concept of currency, similar to the first aid qualification, where a staff member id refreshed in restorative practices after a period of time. We make suer that the larger restorative conferences have co-facilitators as they are not that frequent so we need to make sure the skill base and experience to run those conferences is maintained. A little over a year ago, the school appointed a new Principal, who by his own admission had had little contact with restorative practice and was use to a punitive environment. By participating in a number of restorative conferences, he was able to see that a win/win solution to conflict was preferable to his previous experiences, and is a solid supporter to this philosophy. I feel that if this approach can survive a transition to a new Principal who was not necessarily disposed to restorative practice - then we are doing something right.We know this by looking at the data.

Summary - Seven Strategies for Success

Make sure the environment is right, there has to be a reason for a change Identify leaders to take the school through the change process and resource the change process adequately Connect with contributing schools, so that a common language and framework is established before the students arrive at your school ( a good project for primary and secondary schools to collaborate on) Including community organisations in your restorative practices, especially police as they operate a similar approach in dealing with young offenders When ready, develop a maturing philosophy that separates indicator behavior from underlying reasons and a willingness to listen to others views on an equal basis. Sustaining an educational change - Resourcing for succession planning and sustainability Keeping tabs on restorative practice by keeping an eye on the data and responding to keep the philosophy alive.

Recommended Reading

Fullan, M.G, (1993). The complexity of the change process (Chapter 3). Change Forces: Probing the Depth of Educational Reform (pp.19-41) Farmer Press.

Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D., (2006) Sustainable Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Magrain, V., & MacFarlane, A.H., (2011) Responsive Pedagogy: Engaging Restoratively with Challenging Behavior, Wellington: NZCER Press.

Ministry Of Education, http://tetereauraki.tki.org.nz/Te-Mana-Korero.

Thorsborne, M., & Vinegrad, D., (2006) Restorative Practices in School: Rethinking Behaviour Management. Buderhim, QLD: Inyahead Press.

Zehr, H., (2002). The little book of Restorative Justice. Intercourse, PA: Good Books

FullaThis chapter in Fullans book that interests me as it challenges the view that sometimes we need to take a leap of faith to act, then clarify our reasoning as we move through the change. The traditional way of operating : Ready Aim Fire is one that often paralyses change in schools. His suggestion is to Ready Fire & Aim. Get started and while in the change process, clarify and focus your purpose. He has developed this idea further in the last 20 years.

Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D., (2006) Sustainable Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass This book challenges all educators to behave in an ethical way as it essentially analogies the Educational Community to the Environment, and challenges us to think of sustainable practices that do not exhaust natural resources within and outside the school. This has affected my thinking on Educational Change, as I always am thinking beyond the novelty that often starts and fuels educational change, to embedding it and sustaining change

Magrain, V., & MacFarlane, A.H., (2011) Responsive Pedagogy: Engaging Restoratively with Challenging Behavior, Wellington: NZCER Press. This collection of papers gives good detailed information for the theoretical background for the use of Restorative practices in schools.

Thorsborne, M., & Vinegrad, D., (2006) Restorative Practices in School: Rethinking Behaviour Management. Buderhim, QLD: Inyahead Press.This book, contains very practical and useful practical scripts, checklists, and advice to make a great starting point for setting up restorative systems in schools. This book, has essentially become the default manual of reference for the running of restorative conferences in our school.

Zehr, H., (2002). The little book of Restorative Justice. Intercourse, PA: Good BooksThis delightful book, is a great starter to share with people who you would like to introduce Restorative practice to in a gentle and simple way.