1. Being Heard, Healing the Hurt,
Changing Perceptions: Use of
Restorative Practice in School
Settings
Lynn Massey-Davis
Withernsea High School

2. What are your
thoughts about
the lad in
black ?
Now how about
the lad in blue ?
More information: The lad in blue is called
Lewis. His dad is in prison for drug dealing.
Their house had been petrol bombed by some
of his dad’s associates. Lewis, his mum and
baby sister barely escaped with their lives.
Lewis is often violent towards other children and
has been labelled by his teacher and others in
his class
Change
anything ?
But what happens if you are the
teacher who has to deal with Lewis
every day as one of 28 kids in your
class ?
Or the parent of the child who has
been bullied ?
Or Lewis who now has a belief that “I
am bad, I can’t do anything right”

3. This is Tim. He teaches modern foreign
languages in a school where although the
area is predominantly white working
class, a large proportion of children
struggle with their primary language. He
is young, private school educated and
has not yet developed the empathy which
will one day make him a good teacher
The school where Tim teaches has a
system where disruptive children are
removed and if they have two
removals in a subject in a week, the
pupil has a lunchtime detention.
When the log is analysed by the head
of “Inclusion”, it appears that Tim has
one of the highest removal rates in the
school and there are around 3-4 pupils
who have been removed more than 10
times

4. LABELLEDLABELLED
He keeps wasting my time!
She can’t keep friends
I’m not going to help her anymore,
she’s had so much help and she just
goes from one person to another,
nothing changes
She can’t handle her
classes
Why are kids from his class
always removed to me. They
aren’t a problem for me
Jack is so far behind with his
coursework he won’t get his 5
A*- C’s yet he is a bright lad
I am useless. I can’t do
anything right
I am useless, I can’t do
anything right.

5. This workshop
• A couple of case studies of work with
individuals
• Where we are going to in our school with
restorative practice

6. Suzie
• Year 9
• Odd one out
• Made lots of allegations to a
range of staff about bullying
• Teachers investigate to find
nothing
• Suzie has worn out the
patience of every teacher
who teaches her
• Relationships are broken and
Suzie is labelled
• Mum and dad are concerned
• There is a need for healing.

7. Being heard
• The story of pain has
to be heard
• Borrowed from
Solution focussed
therapy
• Only then can the
question “what would
make it right again ?”
• What can you give ?
• What should you give

8. Back to Suzie
• Contract between Suzie and
the teachers she had “hurt”
• If she wasted time in false
allegations – then she would
have to “pay back” the time to
the teachers.
• Later there was also a contract
which Suzie had the
confidence to ask for between
her and a group of girls she felt
bullied by

9. What happened to Suzie?
• Rather than be a “failure” I
ended up teaching Suzie A
levels
• Suzie is now 2 years through
her mental health nursing
degree
• She is her own person and
happy and will make a terrific
nurse
• She gave permission for her
story to be told because we
are still in touch!

10. Lessons
• Everyone has to be
heard
• The person who feels
“wronged” has to
have some justice
• This seems to draw a
line under the events
and deliver “Label
amnesia”

11. Behaviour Audit
• Withernsea High School
• B4L
• Systematic way of dealing with disruption
• All removals are logged with details of time, lesson and
teacher
• Year group 130
• 12-16 pupils “hard core” 20+ removals a year
• 4 out of 5 are boys
• Significant numbers have difficult relationship with one
teacher only
• This is sensitive!

12. Beginings of restorative working
• Chris is in my form
• Lives with big sister because
mum has serious mental
health problems
• Came up from junior school
labelled as a “difficult”
student
• I monitored his “log”
• 3 removals from one science
teacher in a fortnight

13. Science teacher
• NQT with Ph.D.
• I took the time to talk with her
at break
• Listened to her talk about
Chris (I am fond of Chris, this
was hard for me)
• Asked her to state “What
would make things a little
better?”
• Slipped in a few details to her
about Chris’s life before he
lived with sister
• Asked her to notice when
things were a little “better” with
Chris.

14. Back to Chris
• Talked to Chris about
how things went with
Ms H.
• “If you could do one
thing differnet which
might make a
difference to the
lesson with her what
would it be ?”
• Can we try it ?

15. Outcome
• Chris is no longer a
likely lad
• Averages 2 removals
a term
• None from Ms H

16. Next steps
• Use behaviour logs for early identification
of poor relationships
• Seek to repair through skilled helper
mediation
• Never forget the pain
• Restore means the opposite of assertion
• Written contracts sometimes help
• Other times not
• Its like “Jazz” be prepared to improvise ?