What Are The 5 Steps Of Restorative Practices?
What Are The 5 Steps of the Restorative Justice Process?
The 5 Steps or the 5 R’s of Restorative Practices are a framework often cited by Restorative Practice or Restorative Justice trainers or coaches. These 5 steps or 5 R’s might include concepts like Respect, Responsibility, Repair, Relationship-Building, Reintegration or Reflection. Though catchy, this approach can fall short in terms of its usefulness in schools because it fails to operationalize Restorative Practices Training in a way that’s defined and actionable.
At CSC, we’ve built on a framework used successfully in Chicago Public Schools, providing an excellent foundation for understanding and applying restorative practices.
In this model, the 5 Steps of Restorative Practices are Calm Self, Calm Other, Reflect, Repair, and Plan. Each step has a short menu of options that provides choices to the teacher/support staff/social worker/administrator navigating a situation.
Expanding on Each of the 5 Steps
Calming Self & Other: Emphasizing Personal Responsibility
The biggest barrier to handling a challenging situation with a student or colleague? Being triggered. We’re human—others’ words, actions, tones, and non-verbals impact us, just as ours impact them. And when we’re dysregulated, clear thinking goes out the window. Ever made this classic mistake? Someone’s upset and one of the first things out of our mouth is “calm down.” But as the saying goes, “Never in the history of calming down has anyone ever calmed down by being told to calm down.”
This is why the first 2 of the 5 Steps are about pausing to calm yourself and the other by using bottom-up brain strategies. CSC offers a Calm toolkit that staff and students can tailor to their preferences and use right at the moment. The workshop for this is one of our most popular! Community members play a crucial role in facilitating discussions and healing during these processes.
Reflect
The 3rd of the 5 Steps of Restorative Practices is Reflect. This menu provides a set of reminders to consider the underlying cause of behavior or unmet needs of the student, emphasizing the importance of addressing the harm caused in relationships. If your school uses PBIS, this step integrates perfectly with your pre-referral steps. Factors to consider include: Where is the student on the Compass of Shame? This is a key component in Restorative Practices that stems from Affect Psychology – think of the Inside Out movie! What is the student’s lagging skill? What behavior is being reinforced, even accidentally? How are you leveraging the Engagement Window- providing both accountability and support to do things WITH the student, rather than TO or FOR them? It is also crucial to recognize individuals who have been harmed and understand the impacts on them.
Repair
The 4th of the 5 steps of Restorative Practices is Repair. This step includes:
A menu of options for Restorative Practice actions such as Affective Statements, Curbside Conversations, Classroom Re-Entry Conversations, or Responsive Circles
Options for natural consequences
A menu of choices for making amends
A section for school-defined disciplinary responses
Administrators/support staff and teachers often disagree on how to handle unwanted student behavior, and this breakdown causes rifts.
CSC’s menu of Repair options provides BOTH restorative responses AND accountability measures so that school staff can work together to find a balanced response. It ensures that the student must take responsibility for their actions while also repairing the harm, developing empathy by understanding the impact of their actions on others, and conversation for continued reintegration and ongoing relationship-building. Solutions must aim to repair both tangible and intangible harms.
Plan
The last of the 5 steps of Restorative Practices is Plan. This step provides a structure to create a plan for helping the student get back on track, as well as document and communicate the plan with other stakeholders. This step also integrates seamlessly with your PBIS pre-referral action steps and includes a menu of options for simple environmental, sensory, behavioral, and relational supports.
Impact on Integrating Restorative Practices, Building Community, and Resolving Conflicts
The more commonly written 5 Steps of Restorative Practices that you might come across in your search..concepts like Respect, Responsibility, Relationship-Building, or Reintegration are often taught or written about in broad or philosophical terms, which can leave school leaders at a loss for effectively lifting Restorative Practices in a school setting. What kind of impact can you see if practices aren’t defined, tailored to fit the needs of your staff, practiced, and baked into procedures? At CSC, we know from our long careers working in schools, that you’d see very little impact with this approach. The restorative justice process is a means to mend damaged relationships caused by harm. Restorative justice plays a crucial role in healing relationships and fostering community integration.
CSC has baked the 5 Steps of Restorative Practices into a simple checklist that flows from Step 1 to Step 5. This makes it easy to both remember what some of the options are in the heat of the moment, norm across staff, collaborate in ways that prevent rifts between colleagues and weave Restorative Practices into your current PBIS system. The restorative practice process provides a structured approach to resolving conflicts and restoring relationships. The restorative process is essential in promoting healing and accountability.
“Checklists turn out to be far more powerful than we imagined, not because they tell us what to do but because they prompt us to talk and think about the things we might miss.” — Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto.
The Importance of Training with a Trained Facilitator, Especially In-Person!
There is an incredible “ah-ha” experience that the majority of educators who take our foundational training talk about. They have new structures for understanding their own behaviors, and their approach with colleagues, students, parents, and even their own family members. This experience highlights the importance of moving forward in the repair process. They return on day 2 sharing how they tried something new with their spouse or children the night before. Respect is a key ingredient for the success of the restorative process. This experience opens the door to adopting a restorative mindset and courageously learning and practicing all of the Restorative Practice skills, including those strategies for communication in the challenging moments.
At CSC, we pride ourselves on our trainers who come with long rich experiences working in schools as teachers, social workers, support staff, and administrators. Personal responsibility is crucial in restorative justice, as individuals must confront their own actions and their impact on others. Our training details the structured process involved in restorative practices, from referral to monitoring outcomes. This includes the importance of taking responsibility for one's actions to ensure effective restorative practices.
The repair principle is a crucial step in the restorative justice process, emphasizing the need to heal relationships that have been harmed. A trained facilitator plays a vital role in conflict resolution processes, providing essential tools and guidance to empower individuals in managing conflict.
Reach out to us at info@collaborativeschoolculture.com to tell us what you’re looking for and learn more about our training and coaching!