The challenge of thinking innovatively & restoratively . . . Helen Kinsey-Wightman Our CoL achievement challenges are approved and we have appointed our within school teachers – we have named them ‘manutaki’ after the lead birds in a formation. Their task is to mentor and support teachers in our school to refine their teaching practice and achieve our school goals. When we met as school leaders to develop our CoL achievement challenges we identified wellbeing, effective teaching & learning and innovation as key areas for us all. At the time, I have to be honest, I didn’t really see how innovation could be a goal in itself. More recently, as I look at all the really challenging goals we are setting ourselves as a school I am coming to see that we cannot achieve any of them without innovation. The challenge of innovating in education is that, as teachers, we are the successful products of an education system that we are seeking to change. Over the last 2 years we have begun implementing restorative practice in our school. We began by training our Deans and Senior Leaders in running restorative conferences and then began to incorporate this into our existing behaviour management system which also featured a red card to remove students from class followed by a restorative conversation with the teacher who issued the red card as well as an automatic detention for the student receiving the red card. At the beginning of this year our whole staff spent 2 days with Marg Thorsborne who is an internationally recognised expert in this field. As an intro to Marg her TED Talk entitled ‘The healing power of dialogue’ is a great starting point – although do bear in mind that in person she possesses a killer sense of humour. It was interesting to watch Marg at work with our staff – she spent 8 hours with them over 2 days and the first 4 of those were entirely about building relationships. Her justification for this emphasis on relationship building was that if you don’t have a relationship with someone you cannot be restorative because you have to restore to something. She spent a lot of time getting staff into groups of 3 to talk together and listen to each other. During those 2 days I am aware of at least two staff members who were prompted to restore relationships with colleagues that had broken down and many others who talk in glowing terms about the value of this professional development in starting their year positively. In tandem with Restorative practice our overarching goal for professional learning is Culturally Responsive & Relational Pedagogy. Working with Hine Waitere, the Director (Te Āwheonui) of The Centre for Professional Learning and Development at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi in Whakatane, has caused me to rethink my view of effective
professional development in schools. Hine and I have talked about the importance of new initiatives being woven through every aspect of school life and as someone we are working with in an ongoing way, we invited her to take part in the restorative workshops so that she could think through and talk with Marg about how the two ideas fit together and ensure that both pieces of work complement each other. When we bring together 90 staff for 8 hours each that commitment of time demands a considerable return on investment for them and for our students. The benefit must be ongoing and staff must be supported in order to be innovative. In our Deans’ meeting today the team were asked what they had thought about since the Restorative Practice PLD and all of them said it has caused them to think that our use of detentions is out of step with the restorative and culturally responsive work we are doing as well as failing to make a difference for the small number of students who are frequent visitors to the detention room. I am aware this is a decision other schools have made much earlier. Here Gerard Tully, ex-Rector of St Patrick’s Silverstream, talks about his own change in thinking: ‘It makes more sense to prepare young people to be adults by tackling their problems. I used to be a real detention man: “If a student does things wrong there must be consequences.” But it’s a waste of time. What do you achieve by making kids, if they’ve done something wrong on a Monday, come back on Friday afternoon and write out something out of a dictionary? It doesn’t actually address the behaviour. This way, the student can think about what they’ve done wrong and who they’ve affected, and how we can resolve it in the future.’ Restorative justice goes to school, Feb 18 2012 Dominion Post The challenge for us is to move away from the systems that existed when we were at high school to think about how we can be innovative and replace detentions with a process which ensures that students think about the harm they have done, restore the relationships they have affected and behave differently next time . . . References Thorsborne, M. The healing power of dialogue. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=9z6mUNk1N9E
The Genesis School-gen Trust gifts equipment to schools to help grow student understanding and interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) and renewable energy.
$ , of STEM & solar equipment to be gifted to schools
The Trust is one way Genesis and its customers can support schools and help students get the skills they need for the future.
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Genesis’ involvement in the Trust flows out of their School-gen initiative. This programme has been inspiring the next generation of energy innovators since 2007.
www.genesisschoolgentrust.co.nz Applications close 12 April 2019