Being restorative does not mean letting kids run wild.
At a recent restorative practices training we facilitated with the Alameda County Office of Education, a staff member left us a question in the parking lot:
“How do you balance safety with order and compliance? In a lab setting, you do need to do what the teacher says or it’s unsafe.”
I loved this question because it gets at something that honestly drives me a little crazy about the way restorative justice and restorative practices are sometimes talked about.
There is this idea that being restorative means being permissive, as if restorative educators don’t believe in consequences or firm boundaries and basically just let kids run wild and do whatever they want.
That is not restorative practice, and it certainly wasn’t how I taught.
When I look back at my own years in the classroom, I think I was a pretty firm teacher. I had high expectations for my students—both academically and behaviorally—and I’d like to believe I was restorative too, even before I had all the language and frameworks I have now.
Those things were not contradictory.
My students had things happen in their lives. Of course they did. Sometimes there were very real reasons why an assignment wasn’t completed or why a student was struggling.
I could understand that context without abandoning the expectation.
Maybe you didn’t complete the assignment when it was originally due. Okay. Let’s talk about what happened. What do you need? How can I support you?
And you still need to do the work.
I tried to stay firm around grades and expectations while also giving students opportunities to improve, repair, try again, and demonstrate what they were capable of.
To me, that’s part of what restorative practice is about.
Understanding someone’s circumstances does not require us to lower every expectation we have for them.
Sometimes the more relational response is actually to say: I know you can do this, and I’m going to help you figure out how.
Now let’s go back to the science lab.
If a student is doing something dangerous, the teacher says:
“Stop.”
That’s it. This is not the moment to negotiate or begin asking restorative questions about what was happening for the student when they decided to mix those chemicals.
Safety comes first.
Restorative practice changes how we exercise authority. It does not eliminate our responsibility to exercise it.
And I think one of the clearest ways to understand this is to think about what happens before, during, and after a situation.
We should have already established clear expectations, and students should understand why the safety rules exist. Ideally, we have also built enough relationship and trust that students understand the teacher’s authority is being exercised for a legitimate reason rather than arbitrarily.
Restorative practice is proactive. We don’t wait until something goes wrong to start thinking about relationships, expectations, and accountability.
When immediate action is necessary, the adult can give the direction clearly and firmly without unnecessarily humiliating, threatening, shaming, or escalating the student.
Safety may require an immediate directive, but it does not require us to abandon dignity.
Being a restorative educator doesn’t prevent us from being clear, establishing boundaries, saying no, or absolutely saying “Stop” when someone is in danger.
The question isn’t whether adults should exercise authority. It’s how we exercise it.
Once everyone is safe, then curiosity, accountability, impact, and repair become relevant.
What happened?
What was going on?
Who was affected?
What needs to happen before the student can safely participate in the lab again?
Maybe there needs to be a consequence. Restorative practice doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences either.
The question becomes whether the consequence actually makes sense in relation to what happened and whether we’re also creating an opportunity for accountability, learning, and repair.
The safety intervention and the restorative response are not competing approaches. They are different parts of the same process.
There’s another part of this question that I think is even more interesting.
We also have to be willing as educators to examine the difference between safety and control.
There are times when we require immediate compliance because something is genuinely unsafe. But if we’re being real, there are also times when we want compliance because we want quiet, efficiency, order, or simply because we gave a direction and expect it to be followed.
Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Restorative practice asks us to become more thoughtful about our own use of power and ask:
Is this boundary actually necessary to protect someone from harm, or am I seeking compliance primarily because it makes this environment easier for me to manage?
That doesn’t mean classroom order doesn’t matter. Of course it matters. Teachers have to create environments where people can learn. But a challenge to adult authority isn’t automatically a safety issue, just as a boundary isn’t automatically oppressive simply because an adult established it.
We have to be able to hold both of those truths.
I think this is ultimately why the question stayed with me.
I don’t want restorative practice to become another educational framework where we swing the pendulum so far in one direction that we create a false choice.
We can value relationships and still have expectations. We can practice compassion while holding people accountable. Student voice can exist alongside appropriate adult authority, and safety and restorative practice were never opposites to begin with.
Educators have responsibilities that students don’t have. We are responsible for physical safety, learning environments, legal requirements, and the well-being of the larger community.
That responsibility comes with authority.
The restorative question is what we do with that authority.
Do we use it automatically or intentionally?
Do we use more power than the situation actually requires?
Can we maintain a boundary without humiliating someone?
Can we understand what happened without excusing the harm?
Can we hold high expectations while also giving someone an opportunity to try again?
Can we protect the community while preserving the dignity of the person who caused harm?
Restorative practice doesn’t eliminate adult authority. It asks us to use authority intentionally, relationally, and with as little unnecessary coercion as possible.
That may mean listening, asking a restorative question, offering someone another opportunity to get the work done, or sitting in circle. But when safety requires immediate action, being restorative doesn’t make the boundary any less clear.
Sometimes, the appropriate response is simply:
“Stop.”
