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From the Principal

.... Restorative Practices at Lumen

In my last edition of Shining Lights I wrote about the development of our pastoral care framework, Its foundational concepts and the virtues we strive to develop with our students. In order for us to bring students to the endevours to build community, develop relationships and show resect, we are renewing our focus for Restorative Justice through Restorative practices.

https://www.rpforschools.net/whats-rp.html

Traditional approaches to school discipline tend to pose questions about blame and punishment, so we might have asked, What happened, Who’s to blame? and, What do they deserve?

Restorative Practices take another direction. The focus shifts to the affect on people and situations when something goes wrong. We require that students focus on the harms done and the emotial responses involved. We now ask, What happened?, Who’s been harmed? and, What needs to happen to repair some of that harm?

The aim here is to make restoration of relationships the focus as an educative process that leads to personal accountability, self-regulation acknowledgement of others, forgiveness and healing.

Put simply, Restorative Practices (RP) is a way of viewing relationship-building and behaviour management in schools that works to strengthen community among students and between students, teachers and parents, through educative processes.

It doesn’t just belong to schools either. Restorative Practices can be an important approach to dispute resolution at home too. Begin with the three questions, and follow through with the actions that must arise.

What happened?

Who’s been harmed?

What needs to happen to repair some of that harm?

Be the light of Christ