62 | Restorative Practices & Responsive Classrooms | with Allison McMannis

Today we’re going to talk about Restorative Practices and Responsive Classroom, a relatively new but incredibly powerful approach to formal educational spaces that utilizes a variety of social and emotional learning techniques.

To learn more about what these practices are and what they look like in a classroom (even a virtual classroom), we sit down with Allison McMannis, a third-grade teacher at Herbert Mills STEAM Elementary School in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. Allison’s passion is creating a safe, supportive, culturally responsive learning environment, and she’s responsible for spread-heading many of these initiatives at Herbert Mills.

And if that school sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because we’ve done a couple of episodes featuring teachers from Herbert Mills because, quite frankly, they’re rock stars; they grab onto every sort of immersive teaching strategy you can think of and use them to create a really, really amazing elementary school culture.

We unbox:

• What are restorative practices?
• How SEL (social and emotional learning) initiatives tie into the UN’s sustainability goals
• Why the school shifted away from punitive systems towards restorative practices
• What is a responsive classroom and what does training for it look like?
• How are students responding to digital classrooms in the era of COVID-19?
• How can students and teachers use these practices to support children while sheltering in place?

Resources:

• Learn more about Herbert Mills Elementary: www.reyn.org/herbertmillselementary_home.aspx
• Twitter: twitter.com/missmcmannis