February has been a busy and exciting month providing training for the Victoria University Residential Advisors (RAs) in Restorative Practices. The RAs play an important role in the creation of caring and connected communities on campus and in finding ways to respond to wrongdoing that repair rather than punish. To learn more about the Restorative University efforts at Victoria University, check out the article I wrote for the Journal of Australian and New Zealand Student Services Association, “Building a Restorative University.”
In designing trainings, one of my favorite things to do is to create games and activities to help explain a concept or spark conversation and deeper learning. I find that a well-facilitated group discussion reflecting on a shared experience often generates greater insight than I could ever bring alone as instructor. I also see this approach to teaching as in alignment with Restorative Pedagogy. In the pictures above, you will see an image of the most recent game I designed based on the Social Discipline Window. It was a hit with the RAs and really helped to deepen their understanding of what differentiates a restorative conversation from a punitive or permissive conversation with a resident.
In addition to training the RAs, I also offered introductory workshops in Restorative Practices for visiting students from the Creation Care Study Program and for the Capital Mosaic community. I love any opportunity to share the restorative paradigm shift with others!
This month I was also asked to facilitate a mock restorative justice conferenced for the EdX course on Restorative Justice that is being designed an delivered by my PhD supervisors Chris Marshall and Tom Noakes-Duncan and my colleague Haley Farrar. They have been hard at work creating an excellent online course that is free and available to anyone in the world. If you are interested in learning more about Restorative Justice, you can enroll here.
You can check out this month’s edition of the of the Rotary District 5540 Peacebuilder Newsletter here. I was honored to have my piece in this newsletter shared by Rotary Voices.
Thank you to Rotary for the continued support of my research and work here. I couldn’t imagine a greater opportunity! I am back to writing now to meet my next chapter deadline. 🙂
Lindsey Pointer, PhD 
Leave a comment