The Power of One

I am back from Wellington and I now feel much better than I did this past weekend. While in Wellington I had a very nasty cold, however I did push through it and was able to do some pretty fascinating things. Bre and I took a tour of the Parliament, rode the cable car, visited the national museum named Te Papa, and strolled around the city. I am really happy that I learned about New Zealand government and formed a deeper understanding of Kiwi culture. Wellington is a small yet vibrant city which I would love to visit again.

On Monday I had the opportunity to go to a professional development course with my teacher on Restorative Practice in Schools. There was a lot of review from when I learned about it with the rest of the teachers during a day-long inservice, however, I found it to be incredibly helpful. For the past eight weeks I have developed management and relationship skills using Restorative Practices and when the facilitator, Margaret Thorseborne, explained the theory, philosophy, and benefits of the practice I was able to really connect and expand on the information. I am a firm believer in making Restorative Practices part of Green Bay Primary and also in schools that I work in throughout the future. It is a different way of thinking about behavior management because the teacher is working with the student so that maximum control and support is given rather than just discipline and very low support. This means that the punitive way of control is out and a restorative approach is done through conversation and conferences. Students respect a teacher when they problem-solve and discuss behavior rather than being punished. Students take responsibility for their actions and the consequences do not take care of the problems, but rather work towards a solution. There are scripts and aids for teachers to learn the jargon and phrases that initiate the conversations with students when bad behavior occurs. I need to continually use these phrases so that I approach kids in a restorative manner and then the vocabulary will be part of my everyday speech and the students will be comfortable with what is done in bad behavior situations. My classroom teacher is really good at integrating Restorative Justice in the classroom and I continue to model my management style like she does in the classroom because it works.

My students are working yudents Movie Maker and many knew how to use it (probably better than I can). Because they are really advanced with this technology I think that the advertisements will be complete by the end of the term and look really flash (Kiwi term for fancy). Today my kids say an anti-bullying play called "The Power of One." My students knew most of the bully terms and information because of our unit, which was wonderful! My students could really connect with the play and I hope that it made a big impact on my students' desire to end the cycle of bullying.