In a recent episode of the Table, I had the opportunity to sit down with Beth Smull and Julia Getty from the International Institute for Restorative Practices. Beth serves as the director of continuing education instruction at the IIRP graduate school, while Julia works as an instructor and implementation coach, partnering with schools nationwide. Their combined decades of experience offer a valuable perspective on how schools can move beyond reactive discipline toward proactive community building.
What struck me most was the clarity both Beth and Julia brought to a term often misunderstood in educational circles. When I asked Beth for her elevator pitch, she offered this: “Restorative practices is a way that we intentionally build, sustain, and restore relationships in any sector in order to build stronger communities.” Julia expanded on this, noting that “restorative practices is a little bit of a misnomer. I actually wish it were called ‘relational practices’ as a field. Because when people hear ‘restorative,’ they think it’s only about repairing harm. But so much of restorative practices is the proactive energy that goes into building relationships and trust and social capital first. Because if you don’t have that, there’s nothing to restore.”
This reframing matters enormously for schools. It’s not just another discipline strategy; it’s a fundamentally different approach to how we structure relationships within our institutions.
The Foundation: Relationships Come First
Both Julia and Beth emphasized that restorative practices cannot be reduced to interventions we pull out when things go wrong. The work begins long before any conflict arises.
Beth described her role at IIRP as “building relationships for a living,” noting that each new class starts with building connections and community. The social capital we build through consistent, authentic relationship-building becomes the foundation that makes restoration possible when harm occurs.
Julia connected this principle to her earlier work in wellness education. “At some point in that journey, I realized the importance of connected and authentic relationships to overall well-being, whether that was for children or adults,” she explained. This led her to restorative practices, where she found “a whole field dedicated to making relationships stronger and especially to repairing harm when it occurred.”
For schools, this means examining how we invest time and resources in relationship-building before implementing any restorative interventions. Are we creating regular opportunities for students and faculty to connect authentically? Do our schedules protect time for community building, or are relationships an afterthought?
The Balance Between Support and Accountability
One of the most compelling aspects Julia highlighted is how restorative practices holds support and accountability in productive tension. “I’m fascinated by the balance of accountability and support that comes with restorative practices,” she shared. “It’s the heart of the work. And I honestly believe that balance is the secret to success in so many areas, including parenting, government, social work, criminal justice, and of course, education.”
This balance addresses a persistent challenge in school discipline: how do we hold students accountable while supporting their growth? Traditional punitive approaches emphasize accountability at the expense of support. Purely therapeutic approaches can prioritize support at the expense of accountability. Restorative practices offer a framework that honors both.
In practical terms, when a student causes harm, the response involves helping them understand the impact of their actions, take responsibility, and actively work to repair relationships. This differs fundamentally from “you broke a rule, here’s your consequence” or “we understand you were struggling, let’s just move forward.”
Beth noted this approach requires a shift in how educators think about their role. Rather than positioning ourselves as rule enforcers or solely as supporters, we become facilitators of accountability and restoration.
Moving Beyond Individual Skills to Systemic Change
Julia made a crucial distinction about implementation. “Schools that say, ‘We’re doing restorative practices,’ when what they really mean is, ‘When something really bad happens, we might have a circle to talk about it,’ that’s a real problem,” she observed. “That’s extracting one process or practice and calling it restorative practices, and that is not sufficient.”
This gets at something I see frequently: the tendency to adopt individual practices without changing underlying systems and culture. A school might train a few people to facilitate restorative circles, but if the culture remains fundamentally punitive, those circles become isolated interventions rather than part of a coherent approach.
Julia emphasized that implementation requires attention to organizational culture, not just individual skill development. “Implementation is all the things that happen between the training, between the excitement of the training, the dopamine hit of the training, and the time when people are comfortably and regularly using restorative practices,” she explained. “That middle time, which could be days, weeks, months, years, is implementation. And there is a whole body of research on change and implementation.”
This should give pause to schools thinking they can send a few people to training and return ready to implement. The work requires sustained attention to how systems, policies, and culture either support or undermine relational approaches.
The Adult Community Matters Most
One of the most valuable insights centered on something schools often overlook: the adult community. Both Beth and Julia were clear that restorative practices must begin with adults.
“If you’re not doing it with the adults, you’re sort of saying the unsaid thing is, ‘This is something we do to kids and not with adults,'” Julia noted. “And that is not what we want to convey.” She added that many schools eager to see behavior change in students forget that “you have to start with yourself.”
Beth expanded on this: “We always start with adults. Always. You can’t model what you don’t know, right? So if we don’t know how to do this ourselves, we certainly can’t teach it to our students.”
This emphasis addresses several critical issues. First, it ensures educators have experienced restorative practices firsthand. Second, it acknowledges that adults bring their own relational challenges and conflicts. Faculty rooms can be as fractured as student communities, and unaddressed adult conflict significantly impacts school culture. Third, it models the vulnerability and growth mindset we hope to see in students.
The practical implication is that schools need to invest significant time in adult community building before expecting results with students. This might mean regular faculty circles, protocols for addressing adult conflict restoratively, and structures supporting ongoing adult learning and relationship repair.
Understanding the Social Discipline Window
Beth introduced a framework that helps clarify when and how to use restorative approaches: the social discipline window. “The social discipline window looks at how we respond to behavior, to wrongdoing, to conflict, whatever it might be, on a scale of high control to low control and high support to low support,” Beth explained. “And there’s this sweet spot in the upper right quadrant, which we call restorative. This is when we have high control, meaning high accountability, high expectations, high structure, and we also have high support.”
The other quadrants represent common but less effective approaches: punitive (high control, low support), permissive (low control, high support), and neglectful (low control, low support).
Understanding this framework helps educators recognize that being restorative doesn’t mean being soft or avoiding difficult conversations. It means holding high expectations while also providing support to meet them.
Julia connected this to communication gaps she sees in schools. “I think people assume that communicating is easy, and I think the past years have really challenged that assumption,” she observed. “Our assumptions of what we meant when we said something and what other people heard or interpreted are often very different.” Restorative practices provide structures for surfacing and addressing these disconnects rather than letting them fester.
Implementation Challenges in Independent Schools
Having spent a decade in independent schools, Julia offered particular insight into the opportunities and challenges these institutions face.
“Independent schools have this really beautiful culture of close-knit relationships,” she began. “And so they have this strong foundation. However, many schools have never really thought about what to do when things go awry with those relationships.” She described a pattern in which schools work hard to build relationships but struggle when those relationships face conflict or harm.
Part of the challenge is that independent schools often pride themselves on their culture but may not have examined what happens when that culture is disrupted. The question becomes: do we have the structures, skills, and cultural permission to address conflict directly and restoratively, or do we avoid it until it becomes a crisis?
Julia also pointed to a resource challenge particularly relevant for independent schools. “In the public sector, there are often restorative practice coordinators, people whose job it is to hold this work,” she noted. “In independent schools, it often falls to whoever is passionate about it, which means it can be fragile if that person leaves or gets overwhelmed.”
This raises important questions about sustainability. If we’re serious about restorative practices, how do we resource the work appropriately? Who is responsible for implementation, ongoing training, and supporting the adults doing this work?
What Makes Implementation Succeed
Both Beth and Julia emphasized that successful implementation requires more than initial training. Beth noted she frequently hears from schools years after training, saying, “We did that training five years ago, and we really need to revisit it because we’ve had turnover or we’ve lost momentum.”
Key implementation realities include:
Staff turnover matters: Each time new faculty join the community, they need an introduction to restorative practices and experience with how things work in this particular school.
Ongoing support is essential: Initial enthusiasm fades without structures to sustain the work. This might include regular circles for faculty, coaching for facilitators, or protocols for addressing challenges.
Leadership commitment must be visible: Julia emphasized that “if leadership isn’t using the practices themselves, if they’re not modeling it, it’s very difficult for it to take hold.”
Time must be protected: Beth noted that time is one of the most common barriers. “People say, ‘We don’t have time for circles, we don’t have time for restorative conversations.’ But what you’re really saying is that relationships aren’t a priority.”
Clarity about what we’re doing: Schools need clarity about what restorative practices actually are and an honest assessment of where they are in the journey.
Addressing Common Misconceptions
Several misconceptions about restorative practices are worth addressing:
It means no consequences: Both were clear that restorative approaches don’t eliminate accountability. Beth noted, “Sometimes the most restorative thing is to have a consequence. The difference is how we arrive at that consequence and what we do alongside it.”
It’s only for serious incidents: Julia emphasized that restorative practices should be “a way of being, not just something we do when things go wrong.” Daily check-ins and regular circles lay the foundation for addressing serious harm.
It’s too time-consuming: “The irony,” Beth observed, “is that when you invest time in relationships proactively, you actually save time in the long run because you’re not constantly putting out fires.”
It’s soft on discipline: The emphasis on high support and high control challenges this assumption. Julia noted, “If anything, restorative practices asks more of students than traditional discipline. They have to face the people they’ve harmed, understand the impact of their actions, and actively work to repair relationships. That’s harder than just serving a detention.”
Moving Forward: What Schools Can Do Now
As we wrapped up, I asked Beth and Julia what advice they’d give to schools just beginning to explore restorative practices:
Start with curiosity: Before implementing anything, get curious about your current approach to relationships and discipline. What’s working? Where are the gaps?
Invest in adult learning: Meaningful implementation begins with the adult community. Protect time for faculty to learn together, practice together, and build skills.
Think systemically: Look beyond individual practices to consider how your policies, structures, and culture either support or undermine relational approaches.
Seek ongoing support: Julia noted that IIRP offers both public trainings and private events designed for school teams. “What’s valuable about bringing in outside support is that you get expertise and you also get an outside perspective on your culture and systems.”
Be patient with the process: Beth shared, “This is culture change work, and culture doesn’t shift overnight. Give yourselves grace as you learn.”
Stay connected to purpose: Julia reflected, “At the end of the day, this work is about helping people be in relationship with each other in more authentic and connected ways. That’s worth the effort.”
A Framework That Meets People Where They Are
One of Julia’s observations that stayed with me is the universality of this work. “When I do trainings, I always have someone who immediately can see, ‘I’m gonna use this with my kids, or I’m going to use this with my elderly mother, or I could use this in the club that I am vice president of,'” she shared.
This universality reflects both the strength and challenge of restorative practices. The principles apply across contexts because they’re rooted in fundamental human needs for connection, belonging, and dignity.
Beth’s reflection on what keeps her in this work resonated: “I get to build relationships for a living.” For those of us in schools, this should be our work too—recognizing that relationships are the foundation that makes everything else possible.
The schools doing this work well aren’t perfect. They still have conflicts and challenges. But they have something crucial: a shared commitment to working through those challenges relationally rather than punitively, and structures that consistently support that approach.
Resources and Next Steps
For schools interested in learning more, IIRP offers several pathways:
Graduate Programs: Including a Master of Science in Restorative Practices (30 credits), certificates in restorative practices and facilitating relational trauma, a certificate in change implementation, and a thesis option (36 credits).
Continuing Education: Both public events (where individuals or small teams can attend) and private events designed for entire school communities. Popular offerings include foundations of restorative practices, conferencing, listening circles, and workplace conflict.
Implementation Support: Beyond initial training, IIRP provides coaching and follow-up support to help schools move from learning to sustained practice.
The invitation is to engage with this work not as another program to implement, but as a fundamentally different way of being in relationship within school communities. As Beth and Julia both made clear, the work begins with us as adults. We have to experience it, practice it, and commit to it ourselves before we can expect it to transform our cultures.
That’s both challenging and hopeful. Challenging because it asks us to examine our own patterns and skills. Hopeful because it means we can begin right now, in our own relationships and interactions, without waiting for perfect conditions. Every authentic conversation, every moment of choosing connection over avoidance, every time we model vulnerability and repair, contributes to building the culture we hope to see.
