This guide provides a restorative perspective to support the planning for the return to the classrooms, playgrounds and corridors of physical schools. It aims to help schools and the people within them to heal from what has happened, and to come back together stronger and healthier than before. It highlights seven interconnected, key areas which are where we need to stimulate thinking and make decisions in order to collectively move forward into a healthy ‘new normal’.
RESTORE is a lens through which staff, children and parents can look at the strategy and plans that are needed for everyone’s well-being in a fast-changing environment and for a safe and healthy return to school.
- Recognition - that everybody will have been affected differently by the pandemic.
- Empathy - for the different ways people are dealing with this extraordinary event.
- Safety - both physical and emotional safety will have been threatened and need to be restored.
- Trauma - individual and collective trauma will make itself shown and will need help to heal.
- Opportunity - to rethink what matters and reshape what we do and how we do it.
- Relationships - reconnecting and (re)building inclusive and responsive relationships.
- Engagement - in our own health and well-being and with the issues that affect us.
The write-up for each theme includes a definition of the theme, why it particularly matters at this time, and some suggested questions to guide thinking and planning.