MANAGING A RESTORATIVE CLASSROOM TRAINING

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Welcome to our complementary resources page. Below are key Takeaways and Downloadable Resources that support our training sessions.

Your Implementation Hub

The focus is on executing the work, establishing expectations, supporting staff, addressing challenges as they arise, and maintaining consistency across settings.

Implementation Path

Begin The Work

Start with the two-day session In-person  Overview Key Takeaways to clarify expectations and align your approach.

Begin Implementing With Just One Student

Begin applying the strategies through your systems, staff communication, and daily structures.

Use Key Takeaways to Guide Decisions

The Key Takeaways for both strategies are designed to guide decision-making as situations arise, not as standalone learning modules.

Keep It Going

Use the downloadable resources to support staff, maintain alignment, and ensure consistency across your campus.

Training Overview

3Ts (Tag Out, Time Out, Take Out)
4Rs of Classroom Management
Structured Day
Respect Agreements

What It Is

The four things that have to be in place before a problem ever starts: Relationship, Rewards, Routines, and Rules. It's the proactive foundation of a functioning classroom or building — not a way to respond after behavior goes wrong.

The Problem It Solves

Schools spend most of their energy reacting to behavior. The 4Rs move that energy upstream, so far fewer situations ever reach the point of needing a consequence.

Why It Matters

Most of what gets labeled a "behavior problem" is really a gap in the setup. When all four are present, students largely manage themselves, and correction becomes rare.

Core Principles

  • Relationship carries the other three. Students accept correction from adults they trust and tune out adults they don't.
  • Routines make the day predictable, and predictability heads off behavior before it starts.
  • Rules make the line clear — few, plain, and taught, not assumed.
  • Rewards give students a reason to buy in; you can't force change, but you can make it worth their while.
  • The four aren't interchangeable. Order matters.

Important Distinctions

  • Rules handle policy. They can't handle the everyday friction between people — that takes a different tool.
  • Structure is a support, not a punishment. The same routine can steady a student or feel like control, depending on how it's used.
  • Rewards aren't bribery. It's motivation and recognition, not a payout for compliance.

Common Misconceptions

  • That the 4Rs are a discipline response. They're prevention — if you're reaching for them after the fact, you're already late.
  • That rules come first. Lead with rules before relationship and you get compliance that collapses the moment you look away.

What Successful Implementation Looks Like

  • Correction is rare because the environment is doing most of the work.
  • Adults spend more time building than reacting.
  • Students know what to expect and why it's worth meeting expectations.

The Mindset

Behavior is about the environment as much as the student. Build the environment first, and most problems never get the chance to grow.

Key Takeaways

  • Prevention, not response.
  • Relationship is the foundation everything else sits on.
  • Rules set the floor; they don't cover how people treat each other.
  • You incentivize change, you can't force it.
  • Design the room before you correct the kid.

What It Is

An alternative to suspension that keeps a student in class and learning while removing their privileges and their access to peers. It's a real consequence that doesn't cost the student a week of instruction.

The Problem It Solves

The common options don't change behavior. Out-of-school suspension removes the one place you have leverage. In-school suspension usually becomes a holding room that teaches nothing. Both trade away learning and rarely get a different result.

Why It Matters

You shouldn't have to choose between holding a student accountable and keeping them learning. A Structured Day is built to do both at once.

Core Principles

  • The consequence is the loss of privileges and social access — not the loss of instruction.
  • A consequence alone changes nothing. It has to be paired with teaching the behavior you want instead.
  • Students earn their way back through their own behavior, not by waiting out a clock.
  • It's a team effort — it can't sit on one person's shoulders.

Important Distinctions

  • Structured Day vs. in-school suspension: one keeps the student in real instruction; the other removes it and replaces it with less.
  • Time served vs. behavior changed: serving days isn't the goal. Different behavior is.

Common Misconceptions

  • That you can swap "three suspension days" for "three Structured Days" and be done. Mechanical substitution misses the entire point.
  • That keeping a student in class means going easy. Losing every privilege while everyone around you keeps theirs is a consequence students feel.

What Successful Implementation Looks Like

  • A consequence students take seriously, without anyone falling behind academically.
  • Staff who share the load and hold the plan consistently.
  • Fewer repeat trips, because the behavior actually got addressed.

The Mindset

The point is changed behavior, not served time. If a placement won't change the behavior, it's the wrong placement.

Key Takeaways

  • Accountability without lost learning.
  • The privileges go; the instruction stays.
  • Pair the consequence with teaching, or nothing changes.
  • Let students earn their way back.
  • If it won't change the behavior, don't do it.

What It Is

A shared agreement, built by the whole class, for how people will treat one another. It covers the everyday friction and pet peeves that classroom rules were never designed to handle.

The Problem It Solves

Most classroom conflict doesn't come from students breaking big rules — it comes from people getting on each other's nerves. Rules don't reach that layer. A Respect Agreement does.

Why It Matters

People honor what they help create. When a class builds and signs its own agreement, it carries a weight that a posted set of rules never will.

Core Principles

  • It has to be built together. A teacher who writes it alone and hangs it up has made a poster, not an agreement.
  • The conversation is the real work — the document on the wall is just the reminder of it.
  • Context is what changes behavior. Knowing why something matters to someone moves people in a way a rule never does.
  • Everyone signs it, including the adults. The teacher is held to it too.

Important Distinctions

  • Breaking a rule breaks a policy. Breaking this agreement breaks a person — so the response is making it right, not a standard penalty.
  • It's not a rules chart with a friendlier name. Rules come from the adult; this comes from the group.
  • Students' own words matter, even when the tone isn't polished. Cleaning up their language quietly strips their ownership.

Common Misconceptions

  • That the teacher can create it and have students agree to it later. That's backwards — the creating is the point.
  • That a signed agreement means no one will ever cross it. It means that when someone does, there's a shared standard to point back to.

What Successful Implementation Looks Like

  • A class that holds its own norms because they helped set them.
  • Conflict handled by naming the harm and making it right, not by reflexive punishment.
  • Adults held to the same standard they hold students to.

The Mindset

Buy-in comes from ownership. People live up to what they built and put their name on.

Key Takeaways

  • It handles what rules can't — how people treat each other.
  • Built together, or it doesn't work.
  • The conversation matters more than the poster.
  • Everyone signs, adults included.
  • Repair the harm; don't just punish the act.

What It Is

Three moves for the heat of the moment, Tag Out, Time Out, and Take Out, that create space to calm down before anyone makes a discipline decision.

The Problem It Solves

The worst discipline decisions get made while people are still upset. The 3Ts interrupt that, so a small moment doesn't turn into a removal you'd regret once you cool off.

Why It Matters

Emotion clouds judgment, the adult's as much as the student's. Getting to calm first is what keeps minor incidents from climbing into referrals and suspensions.

Core Principles

  • Tag Out is for the adult: when you're the one escalating, hand it off. The grown-up is often the one who needs to step back.
  • Time Out is space for the student to cool off. Space, not a punishment.
  • Take Out changes the setting so a student isn't performing for an audience they can't back down in front of.
  • Accountability still happens. It just waits until everyone is calm.

Important Distinctions

  • None of the 3Ts is a consequence. They're what happens before the consequence, not instead of it.
  • Calming down is not the same as letting it go. The conversation about the behavior still comes.

Common Misconceptions

  • That this is "soft" or letting kids off the hook. It's the opposite — it protects your judgment and your options.
  • That Time Out is a punishment. The moment it becomes one, it stops working.

What Successful Implementation Looks Like

  • Fewer flare-ups climbing into office referrals.
  • Adults who catch themselves before they escalate a situation.
  • Consequences that come from a clear head, not a hot one.

The Mindset

Regulate first, decide second. The pause isn't a delay, it's a strategy.

Key Takeaways

  • Buy time before you make a call.
  • Check yourself before you check the student.
  • Space now, accountability later.
  • Calm decisions hold; hot ones fall apart.

Implementation Tools for Your Campus

These tools are designed to support staff, reinforce expectations, and maintain consistency during implementation.