Welcome to Discipline & Restorative Practices, the fifth course in the series The Role of the School Counselor.
An increasing body of research indicates that restorative approaches are effective in transforming student behavior and building healthy school communities.
Circles and groups provide opportunities for students to share their feelings and to build relationships and solve problems. When there is wrongdoing, students play an active role in addressing the wrong and making things right (Riestenberg, 2002).
This course provides practical strategies for implementing restorative practices to create a positive school community and classroom culture in which every student feels respected. This course provides strategies and tools the counselor can use to facilitate restorative practices including restorative circles.
As part of working with teachers, the counselor can help to build an understanding of how discipline issues in the classroom are greatly reduced by engaging instruction.
This course offers a number of strategies that counselors can share with teachers to deal with discipline and behavioral issues in a preventative way. Activities are designed to help the counselor and teacher collaborate on building structures that promote self-regulatory learning expectations for all students.
This course should take 10-16 hours of study time to complete all assignments and the reflection questions as directed. There are three written assignments including the reflection questions at the end of the course.