Restorative Education
Transforming Our Troubled Schools — and Society
by Robert C. Koehler
What happened?
Can the world shift on such a simple question? Imagine yourself sitting eye-to-eye with a kid in trouble and that’s the first thing you ask. No lecture, no sarcasm, no judgment, no explosion of lost patience and a cry of “Why did you do that?†Just: What happened?
And then you wait for an answer. When it comes, however haltingly, you press gently and firmly on, still without judgment, just the need to know:
What were you thinking at the time?
What have you thought about since?
What do you think you need to do to make things right?
These are the four basic questions of restorative practices, a movement slowly transforming troubled schools and troubled communities around the globe — a movement replacing zero tolerance and other punishment-based and wildly ineffective practices that increase people’s feelings of separation and alienation from one another. (more…)