Avonwood has an excellent reputation for being a school where children feel safe and happy. It is one where mutual respect is expected between all individuals, enabling everyone to thrive. We believe in a positive reward-centric approach, where children always present themselves to our high standards and are recognised when they go above and beyond. On those rare occasions when children do not meet our expectations, we offer a nurturing and highly supportive restorative approach to rectifying these behaviours. Whilst poor behaviour is never excused, understanding the underlying issues behind incidents is key. It is this culture of excellence, supported by a skilled staff team that enables Avonwood children to flourish; all underpinned by our school motto “It Starts With One”.
Restorative Approach
At Avonwood, we use restorative approaches as part of a planned response to relationship and/or behaviour difficulties. This is a more effective response than traditional ‘punishments’. Restorative approaches lead to more positive relationships between pupils and between pupils and staff.
A restorative approach may include having a ‘restorative conversation’. These conversations may happen during the school day and practitioners will use restorative language and questions to allow children and young people to understand the impact of their behaviours.
More serious incidents may require practitioners to hold a formal meeting and involve parents or families where appropriate. Examples of questions used in a formal meeting include:
- What happened?
- What were your thoughts at the time?
- What have been your thoughts since?
- Who has been affected by what happened?
- How have they been affected?
- What do you need to happen now?
At Avonwood, we ensure that appropriate training is available for adults to support the restorative approach. This includes developing listening skills, empathy, use of language including body language and understanding situations from another person’s point of view.
Through this restorative approach, pupils accept responsibility for their actions, recognise the harm and upset caused and are supported to find restorative responses to harmful actions. At Avonwood, we believe that developing positive, supportive relationships is key and these can be developed through activities such as circle time and peer support.
As part of the restorative approach, we believe that sometimes a short period of reflection or calming time is necessary before beginning this process but that ideally incidents should be dealt with as soon as possible to ensure a positive resolution and that children and young people are happy and progressing well.
Conscious Discipline
At Avonwood, we use an approach where all staff demonstrate and model our code of conduct and our value system through their daily interactions with others. This approach ensures that all parties are responsible for their own behaviour. Conscious discipline is a skill-based approach to help resolve conflicts, enhance brain development by creating optimal learning environments, support self-regulation in ways that strengthen relationships and help children build respectful relationships with themselves, peers, parents and each other.
Conscious discipline is built on three completely different premises; controlling and changing ourselves is possible and has a profound impact on others; connectedness governs behaviour; conflict is an opportunity to teach. It is based on the Brain State Model that empowers us to shift from systems grounded in controlling others to cultures of learning based on safety, connection and problem solving.
When you walk the corridors and classrooms of Avonwood you will always discover a safe, calm and purposeful environment built on mutual respect. Conscious discipline is key to this, with staff not only modelling expectations but also explicating teaching positive behaviour expectations too.