Beginning in 2024, Heathmont College are partnering with Real Schools to create a Restorative culture at the college. 

Real Schools is an organisation started by Adam Voight (former teacher and principal) and you can access their webpage here. 

As we move through the partnership, resources and ideas will be uploaded to this space as needed. Each staff member will also have access to a Real Schools portal which houses all resources available to support this work. 

In 2024, we will be discussing the resources and approaches in our fortnightly Yarning Circles. 

The diagram below outlines our Action Plan for our first year of Real Schools partnership, identifying the focus for each period of time. 

Resources for Term 1 

Conversation starters 

The following articles will be discussed in our Yarning circles. you are not required to read these ahead of time unless instructed but are welcome to read them ahead of time if interested. 

Week 1

Key content: Affective Language

Key points to remember:

·         The three pillars of the RP2.0 framework are Language, Conduct and Mindset. We are starting with language. Affective language is a subset of the language pillar.

·         Affective language means language that speaks to emotions,

·         Use of affective language can get student attention, develop empathy, help them to recognise that we are human and that what they do affects us and others, gets their attention.

·         Affective language ignites the ‘limbic’ area of the brain – the primitive part of the brain and the one that adolescents are most often ‘in’ (frontal lobes are still developing and so regulation of emotion is not as developed).

·         The article that we looked at (Language in, language out) talks about the importance of language for establishing the culture of our classrooms and schools. The language we use sets the tone for the classroom. “The words you speak become the house you live in”. As the leaders of our individual classrooms, it is up to us to set the tone of the culture through deliberate choices around the language we use. If we use combative language, for example, then we are in for battle. If we wanted to remove or avoid the battles, we need to find another style of language to use when students make mistakes or do the wrong thing (and when they do the right thing).

Key skill: writing Affective Statements

·         Make sure you can label the emotion that certain behaviours make you feel. Expand your emotional vocabulary. Use the feelings wheel to help with this.

·         Frontload these statements with the emotion and MAKE IT PERSONAL. You need to be convincing in telling a student that they have made you feel something and then outlining how they did that.

·         Basic formula for an effective affective statement (see what I did there!) is:

o   “I feel [label the feeling that you feel] because [outline the behaviour that caused the feeling].”

·         BE HONEST! This is the only rule about affective statements. Don’t use a strong emotional word to describe a minor infringement. Likewise, don’t be overjoyed by a student doing something quite mundane (unless you actually are because it is the first time they have done it despite ongoing attempts to get them to).

·         Use the SWPBS matrix to write affective statements as these are the behaviours we have agreed we want to see students exhibit.

Resources

All of the resources we discussed can be found on the Real Schools Partnership page on the Staff Information Portal here.  They include:

·         The feelings wheel

·         The article “Language in, Language out”

·         The “having fun with affective language” booklet that has ideas you can use to support yourself to use these in classrooms.

Homework

Please write your values cards for students and pop these in my pigeonhole (or hand to the front office). I will be sending these out early next week.

Looking forward:

It would be great to come up with some ways to encourage ourselves to use more affective statements in our practice. Make sure that you develop some ‘stored responses’ that you can draw on to ensure that you do so. We might also look to find ways to encourage you to use this language with some staff competitions and maybe whole community competitions around feeling words. Stay tuned…..