Kolbe Catholic College’s policy and practice is informed by Restorative Practices. Restorative Practices is a whole school approach to promoting resilience and aims to contribute to the building of positive relationships in school communities (CECV). It helps build capacity in students to enable them to self regulate their behaviour which contributes to the improvement of learning outcomes.

We realise that everyone makes mistakes. Restorative Practices gives a framework to help our young people learn from these mistakes by focusing on the behaviour and how it affects them and those around them. They must decide how they can make things ‘right’ again. An effort is also made to get them to reflect on how they might act differently in the future. The aim is to work with the students to meet high expectations by offering high support.

Restorative Practices creates a safe & supportive environment that promotes wellbeing & connectedness to school, which research shows results in better learning.

To assist in building a positive classroom environment all teachers employ the 4Rs approach to behaviour management.

• REMIND of class acceptable behaviours
• REDIRECT to acceptable behaviour & task to be done
• RELOCATE within classroom
• REFLECTION – go outside for restorative chat, reflection sheet.

In support of the restorative approach the following mantra can be applied to any situation to ensure Kolbe Catholic College has a consistent and supportive environment.

IS IT SAFE?
IS IT FAIR?
IS IT KIND?