Question 3

Bullying is a problem in many schools and classes. Describe how you would use the restorative justice model to deal with an incident in class where a student is being pushed, name called and excluded from the group.

The idea of restorative justice is that punishing the bully does not solve the problem, but getting the bully to understand the effect of their actions, and emotionally relate to the victim may cause them to change their behaviour. The restoration part is where the perpetrator does some action or favour for the victim as a recognition of their loss. The reason it will succeed is that it strengthens community, joins people in a healthy way and gets people talking and agreeing about how they should live.

As in all education the quality of the relationships is king.

To do an effective 'mediation' however requires a lot of confidence and training.

The first step would be to ensure that the school has a policy on bullying and that there is some agreement amongst the staff, some support and some training for staff in using the restorative justice method.

The scenario described could be serious if it had been going on for some time. Alternatively it could be quite mild if it was just a one off, and the parties involved were just having an off day.

If it was only a one off then I would try to defuse the situation by suggesting some alternatives to both parties, by modeling good listening skills, by being clear and firm about what behaviour is acceptable. A small amount of humour, or distraction back to the lesson may not go astray.

If it was an ongoing problem then, following discussion with the students' class gaurdians, and the college of teachers we might initiate a more formal restorative justice process.

This would involve a getting a mediator to interview both parties, and then a formal meeting with the bully, some of the bully's mates, some of the friends of the victims, and some unrelated students with more of a leadership role.

This group would carfefully work through the issues without laying blame on the bully, but rather to bring the actions to clarity and help everyone to understand the feelings and results of the bullying. If this is done skillfully then the bully should hopefully have some new empathy with the victim, and be willing to do some sort of restitution for them. An extra dimension is added by building community and links with all the participants which will make it less likely that there will be a repeat action.

Follow up meetings between the mediator and the victim and bully should reinforce this outcome.

As a teacher I would be very interested to see where the unmet needs are for the bully, and also the victim - with more understanding of these it might be possible to subtly intervene or plan for this in lessons so that some of the unmet needs might be met.