Restorative Justice Across Tiers: Protecting Safety While Teaching Accountability

When we talk about training all staff in restorative practices across all three tiers of behavior support, we are ultimately talking about how a school chooses to define justice, accountability, and human dignity within its learning community.

In education, we work with the understanding that every student, regardless of their behavior, remains a developing human being who deserves basic dignity, fair process, and the opportunity to learn from mistakes. Our discipline systems lose credibility when they rely primarily on humiliation, exclusion without support, or responses that communicate that a student is “the problem” rather than that a behavior (or behaviors) must change with an emphasis on the degree to which those behaviors are exhibited and their impact on others.

At the same time, restorative approaches are not about minimizing harm. They are about making harm visible, addressing its impact on others, and helping the student who caused harm take meaningful responsibility. In a school setting, we may define justice in three parts: (1) protects victims, (2) restore relationships where possible, and (3) teach the skills students need to behave differently in the future.

Many of the concerns I've heard from staff and families (throughout my decade+ of teaching) come from an underlying belief that consequences must involve some degree of suffering in order to achieve a level of regret that can be taken seriously. (This is a very real understanding of justice that I explore later in this article.) this belief is rooted in a view of justice that prioritizes moral balance rather than moral legitimacy. From this perspective, if a person has caused significant harm, responding without visible suffering can feel like a denial of justice itself, as though the seriousness of the harm is being trivialized.

This view of justice assumes restorative practices promote comfort for the perpetrator and may feel less like accountability and more like moral indulgence. Furthermore, some may perceive this as focusing on the dignity of the student who caused the harm and overlooking the dignity and safety of the student(s) harmed.

Often, these beliefs reflect the environments in which people have learned right from wrong, where physical or emotional punishment was understood as necessary for learning, remorse, or growth. Recognizing this helps explain why restorative approaches can initially feel insufficient or unsafe to those who equate justice with retribution rather than repair.

This is why restorative practices must be implemented within a multi-tiered system of supports; not as a replacement for consequences, but as a way to ensure consequences are:

• predictable

• instructional

• proportionate

• connected to repairing harm

Below, I explore a hypothetical 3-tier system. Notice how, at each tier, restorative practices remain intact while adult responses become more intentional, more individualized, and more protective of both student dignity and community safety.

Tier 1

At Tier 1, we're talking about the core values and elements of culture that define a classroom in support of restorative justice practices. 

This looks like intentionally teaching and practicing community expectations and relationship skills before problems occur, making sure all staff and students share the same understanding of what respect, responsibility, and conflict resolution actually look and sound like in everyday interactions, not just during scheduled SEL lessons. Self-regulation and relationship-building are not just lessons taught and forgotten but are rooted in every interaction between staff and students. The adults in this school can model this in a number of ways at this initial tier:

• consistently model self-regulation in everyday moments such as pausing before responding, naming their own emotions appropriately, and demonstrating calm problem-solving when challenges arise.

• demonstrate respectful disagreement in real time, showing students how to listen, clarify misunderstandings, and respond without sarcasm, dismissal, or escalation.

• teach routines through actions and not just what is said, sharing materials fairly, waiting their turn, and asking for help in ways that model patience, humility, and respect.

• embed relationship-building into daily interactions, using brief check-ins, reflective questions, and casual conversations to show that how people treat one another matters every day, not just during SEL lessons.

• notice and name emotions and social dynamics as they occur, helping students make sense of feelings, repair harm, and re-engage without shame.

• respond to mistakes as learning opportunities, reinforcing that accountability and dignity can coexist and that growth comes through guided practice, not punishment alone.

Tier 2

At Tier 2, we're talking about observable patterns of behaviors contextually specific to the personal and social dynamics of the students in your classroom. 

This includes structured opportunities for reflection, repair, and reteaching when patterns begin to emerge, with adults helping students identify which specific social-emotional skills (such as impulse control, perspective-taking, or problem solving) need more practice, while communicating with families so the same language and expectations are reinforced across school and home. At this tier, adults can do a number of things to support development:

• help students identify the specific self-regulation or social skills that need more practice (e.g., impulse control, perspective-taking, emotional regulation, problem-solving), framing support as skill-building rather than correction.

• use consistent language and expectations across settings, communicating with families so students experience alignment between school and home rather than mixed messages.

• conduct predictable check-ins (e.g., at the start and end of the day or during known transition points) for students who need explicit support such as preview expectations, reinforce progress, and reflect on challenges in a calm, supportive manner.

• explicitly model and practice replacement behaviors with students, rehearsing what appropriate attention-seeking, help-seeking, or conflict responses look like in the moments those skills are most needed.

• facilitate restorative conversations between students, guiding listening, accountability, and repair without assigning blame or forcing premature resolution.

• clearly connect motivation strategies to behavior change, provide a rationale, reteach the expected skill, and offer concrete opportunities for reflection and repair before full restoration.

Tier 3

At Tier 3, we're talking about the few students exhibiting repeated behaviors at risk of harm to themselves or others, physically or emotionally. 

In these instances, restorative approaches are paired with intensive supports, clear safety plans, and, when necessary, temporary removal from certain settings so that all students remain protected, while the student receives explicit coaching and consistent adult guidance to build the regulation and relationship skills needed to safely rejoin the larger community.

• A personalized behavior and/or regulation plan with clearly defined adult responses, ensuring predictability, consistency, and reduced escalation across staff.

• Scheduled regulation breaks or access to a designated calm-down/reset space, tailored to the student’s needs and proactively offered before escalation occurs.

• Increased adult proximity and scheduled check-ins during high-risk times (e.g., transitions, unstructured settings, recess) to support co-regulation and prevent harm.

• Structured restorative conferences involving staff, the student, and family, held regularly to review patterns, reinforce shared language, and adjust supports as needed.

• Temporary alternative placement or modified participation in specific activities until safety and self-regulation improve, with SSPT approval and a clearly defined plan for reintegration.

The goal is not to eliminate consequences. The goal is to ensure that our responses restrain harmful behavior, protect the community, and hold students accountable without degrading their humanity, because students are more likely to change when they experience firm boundaries combined with consistent support.

Research in educational psychology, trauma-informed practice, and behavior science consistently shows that punitive approaches rooted in shame and fear may suppress behavior temporarily but are associated with increased aggression, avoidance, and reduced internalization of self-regulation over time, whereas approaches emphasizing accountability, repair, and adult support are more likely to produce durable behavior change (Dweck, 2006; Gregory et al., 2016; Noguera, 2003; Perry & Szalavitz, 2017; Skiba et al., 2014).

Recognizing that staff, families, and communities hold different beliefs about punishment, fairness, and safety, training all adults in restorative practices helps create a shared understanding of how our school defines justice: a system that can set limits, remove a student from harm when necessary, and protect others while still treating every student as someone capable of growth.

In this way, restorative practices are not about being permissive. They are about aligning our discipline responses with our mission as educators: to teach, protect, and develop students rather than simply control their behavior in the short term to meet our immediate objectives specific to academic teaching and learning.  

Greg Mullen

Feb 10, 2026

General Consult

30min

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References & Research:

Core behavior, discipline, and restorative practice

• Gregory, A., Clawson, K., Davis, A., & Gerewitz, J. (2016). The promise of restorative practices to transform teacher–student relationships and achieve equity in school discipline. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 26(4), 325–353. https://doi.org/10.1080/10474412.2014.929950

• Skiba, R. J., Arredondo, M. I., & Williams, N. T. (2014). More than a metaphor: The contribution of exclusionary discipline to a school-to-prison pipeline. Equity & Excellence in Education, 47(4), 546–564. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2014.958965

• Noguera, P. A. (2003). Schools, prisons, and social implications of punishment: Rethinking disciplinary practices. Theory Into Practice, 42(4), 341–350. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4204_12

Trauma, shame, and regulation

• Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2017). The boy who was raised as a dog (Rev. ed.). Basic Books.(Widely cited for neurodevelopmental and trauma-informed behavior responses.)

• van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score. Viking.(Foundational for understanding how fear-based responses impair regulation and learning.)

Learning, motivation, and internalization

• Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House. (Supports the claim that shame-based responses undermine learning and growth.)

• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01