Olympia performs a variety of restorative practices to build social-emotional learning within the school setting.  These opportunities include building classroom contracts, morning meetings, circle groups, and incidental learning opportunities through “Give ‘em 5” and restorative dialogues.

Morning Meeting/Circle Groups/Classroom Contracts:  The morning meeting and circle groups are opportunities that allow the teacher to check in with students.  Teachers can share observations and work as a class to determine the best way to support the classroom learning environment.  As a group, students problem solve, gain insight into needs of their classmates, and create classroom contracts to address problems that come up within classroom.  Frequently, these contracts will include a discussion about what consequences should occur for violations of the contract.

Incidental Learning Opportunities:  Other opportunities for social-emotional learning occur frequently and are addressed through two techniques “Give ‘em 5” and restorative dialogues.  “Give ‘em 5” is a technique used for younger students and is 1 to 1, private, and shorter.  It allows you to support students with a quick reminder of the expectation, breakdown, benefit, and a closure with what consequence they may have to serve.  Restorative dialogue is for our socially more mature students and gives them the opportunity for students to diagnose the problem and come up with a fix together.   A teacher helps facilitate this process.

Below are quick references for both the “Give ‘em Five”, and restorative dialogue techniques, and classroom behavior matrix.