Restorative Practices
At Northam SHS we care about ourselves, others, our learning and our school; we create an environment where we can grow and learn; we connect our actions with outcomes which helps us make good decisions
The goal is to create and maintain a positive and safe learning environment that enhances our school culture and our community. Our approach aligns academic and behavioural systems to create an emphasis on priming for positive behaviour, monitoring, and acknowledging appropriate behaviour.
Our Restorative Practices 2.0 approach is supported by our partnership with Real Schools and is comprised of relational practices and interventions that can be implemented by staff to effectively address and support the socially and educationally important behavioural needs of students and their families.
Restorative Practice is a way of thinking and being that cultivates community and supports well-being and achievement. This approach creates school communities that move beyond compliance to giving back the harm or wrongdoing to the community most affected.
It also provides for a process for the community to address the harm, through nurturing the human capacity for restitution, resolution, and reconciliation.
Through restitution the harm is repaired; through resolution the community reduces the risk of the harm reoccurring; through reconciliation comes emotional healing.
Restorative Practice fosters the conditions that promote a positive sense of self, spirit and belonging.
Restorative Practice embodies fair process, recognising that all people want to feel respected and valued.
We have begun our Restorative Practices 2.0 journey by using an Affective Statements strategy where we use the lanugaue of emotion to to further develop empathy and to build an understanding of how our actions influence other people.
We have also started preparing Stored Responses as a strategy to condition ourselves in knowing how to react in a specific moment – we are preparing the right responses for when moments are tough, giving urselves the best chance to maintain positive relationships with others we interact with.
We are working from the understanding that the brains of our students are continually developing and that in order to get postive outputs we need to ensure there are enough positive inputs.