Restorative Circles PPT

I used my presentation I had from last year in practicum on Restorative Justice and how to apply it through
restorative circles at school. I presented it to the support staff in one of my placements sites, as they work
with kids who have some behavioral concerns and they wanted to get some more tools on how to approach
discipline in a more restorative way. To incorporate restorative justice after a conflict arises, it is very beneficial
that kids already know the routine on how these practices work, and the use of restorative circles in the
day-to-day may be beneficial to then be able to apply the skills when conflict arises.

Feedback:
After the presentation, I obtained positive feedback and the support staff started using restorative circles in
their day-to-day in the group of students who access their room on a daily basis. They suggested that I
continued to be available to problem-solve with them whenever they tried using those in response to
behavioral conflicts and situations in which the use of these practices was more challenging. For instance, one
thing we ask during conflict resolution through restorative practices is: “How might your actions have made
the other person feel?”, and on one occasion, the student replied “I don’t CARE”. As a team, problem-solved
how to deal with this situation by making the student realize that his actions have impact on others just like
others’ actions had impact on his reaction. We used the approach of flipping the situation by asking him “If
you would have been on the other side of the conflict, how would you have felt?”. He then said “I would have
felt sad that NAME treated me in a way I did not deserve, and would have liked him to apologize to me”, and
so he did just that. He ended up writing the other student a note with an apology and made an origami figure
as a gift.