Excerpt from: “Starting with a Pause: How Restorative Communication Transforms Schools”

by Annie O’Shaughnessy, M.Ed. True Nature Teaching

Synopsis by Jessica Villeneuve

It’s the first day of school and John enters my high school English classroom late, sits down in the back and yells, “English f ’ ing sucks” at no one in particular. His words hang heavily in the air as the rest of the students look at me, waiting for my reaction.

I invite you to pause to reflect on how you might respond in this moment. Would you say: “Using those words in school is inappropriate and will not be tolerated. This is your first warning.”? Do you respond with humor and sarcasm, “That’s a fine way to start class!”? Or do you simply ignore his words and get the class started?

What would a response sound like that not only holds the student accountable but also deepens relationship and personal growth for both parties? I asked myself this question countless times over the 25 years since I first became a teacher. Studying mindfulness, trauma-informed care, and restorative practices helped me to finally articulate an answer worth sharing. What is Restorative Communication?

If you googled “restorative communication (RC)” right now you will not find an agreed upon definition. But if you read a dozen of the related articles or books, you would find a common focus on the power of: 

• creating a compassionate, relational space for all voices to be heard, 

• exploring the unmet needs at the core of the conflict, and 

• using an inquiry-based protocol for repairing the harm and moving forward. 

Specifically, current restorative approach literature references “affective statements”— the practice of taking responsibility for one's own feelings instead of projecting or blaming — as the core element of this approach. In addition, principles and practices from Marshall B. Rosenberg’s approach called “Nonviolent Communication” are often incorporated in RC training.

Finally, RC asks us to avoid deficit thinking and language that identifies a person as the “problem” and instead refer to the incident or behavior as the problem. So instead of thinking “How do we deal with the bully?” We ask, “What needs to happen to prevent John from feeling the need to intimidate and bully others?” In this way, RC is not only a way we speak to kids, but also a way we speak about kids and to each other.

With this approach, everyone, including John, can learn how to have a conversation that leads to engagement, peaceful resolution, learning, and repair instead of escalation, disengagement, and/or exclusion. And in the field of restorative practices in schools that is the goal — to create the conditions for students to engage and remain engaged in learning. 

As teachers, we often hold onto the hope that if we just come up with a more exciting lesson plan or read more classroom management books, we will succeed in this goal. The truth is much more complex and gets more so every day as anxiety, depression, trauma, and other behavioral challenges increase in schools everywhere.

Beyond Affective Statements

Many RP trainings refer to the use of “affective statements” as an essential part of the restorative approach. Using affective statements, better known as “I-Messages” is the technique of owning our own thoughts, feelings, and needs. This is important! Being able to say “When you shoved your classmate, I felt scared.” is part of helping the person who did the harm understand the impact of their actions thereby motivating the need to repair. But this technique can also be misused. For example, when a teacher responds to a tardy student with: “I feel sad when you show up late to my class every day.” Consciously or unconsciously they are implying a direct causal relationship between the student’s behavior and the teacher’s emotions. In other words it says to the student, “Your behavior is the cause of my sadness” when in reality the teacher’s sadness might be influenced by any number of factors. 

In fact, this statement communicates that the student is not only responsible for, but has power over the teacher’s emotions moment to moment. The larger negative message it teaches when used daily between educator and student is that other people have power over our emotions and this is not the original intent of affective statements. So we must use care. 

A more holistic approach to restorative communication offers a way to communicate how behaviors affect us in the moment without blaming or creating an unhealthy sense of codependence. Affective statements are embedded within a conversation, conference or circle process that allows all voices to be heard and a fuller, more nuanced story to emerge about how the desire to get our needs met sometimes negatively impacts others. 

I developed a model for this more nuanced approach called P.A.I.R. Up! hoping it would act as a framework for the difficult work of responding to challenging behaviors.

So how did I respond to John? Before you read the answer, consider reviewing P.A.I.R. Up! (found here) along with the Restorative Communication Toolbox Camille Koosmann and I developed. Then come back and, as you read, listen for P.A.I.R Up! in action:

I pause and inhale deeply. On the exhale I feel my feet on the ground and consciously let go of the negative assumptions I am forming about John. I say, without sarcasm, “Wow. You must have had a rough time in English if those are the first words out of your mouth on the first day! On behalf of all English teachers, I am sorry for whatever has made you so unhappy with English.” John, I will learn later, is not quick to soften or smile or even respond. So I continue, “In all seriousness. I’m committed to making this English class not ‘suck’ for you. But I am going to need two things from you: I need your willingness to work together on this challenge, AND I will need you to change the way you enter class. Your opinion matters to me, but having a student say ‘English f’ing sucks” as they enter class really takes the wind out of my sails and makes it hard to do my best. Do you think you can do those two things?” John nodded his head with a grunt. 

John would continue to groan about English, but he did follow through on his side of the bargain. Together we found ways to make English class less painful and he never did enter class like that again. Instead he slowly became my advocate when students became disruptive, earned his first “B” in English, and eventually let me know that I was the best teacher he had ever had. In June he revealed this, “I left my last school because I threw a desk. I did not know how to deal with my anger. Thank you for helping me with that and thank you for being fair and caring so much.” 

Today, as a consultant, I reflect back on that relationship often. What did I do right? How did this student come to feel like I cared so much when I didn’t feel like I went out of my way for my students like some teachers did? My conclusion: the mindfulness and restorative practices I used in my classroom. 

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