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Restorative Practice Across 64 Nationalities | Alistair Goold What happens to belonging when almost nobody in the building is from the country they live in?
Alistair Goold has spent 19 years as an international educator across three continents, and he says restorative practice changed shape in every one of them. In Scotland's inner-city schools, affective statements were his superpower, because for some kids that was the only positive language they heard all day. In the Middle East, he found that neglect takes a different form at the other end of the wealth spectrum. In Kenya, where he teaches now, he describes a traditional and punitive approach and real pressure on schools.
Bridget Johnson and Alistair go straight to the part most schools skip: culture change is slow, and it usually gets led from the middle. He walks through six years of it, circles in one grade level, then every grade level, then team meetings, then a whole-staff circle in the first week back and a line in the strategic focus areas. He's blunt that training is the beginning and not the finish line, and that leaders who claim restorative without acting it damage this work more than the skeptics do. When a staff member pushed back that it was the soft option, his answer was "show me a better way."
Bridget names the myth in her own voice, that restorative practice means the absence of consequences, and lays out what she tells the schools she works with about consistency: the process has to look the same every time even though the outcome will not. From there the conversation turns to third culture kids, whose identity, as Alistair frames it, rests on relationships rather than geography, which makes the school itself the culture they belong to. It ends where a dean can actually start on Monday, with the circle.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
- Why culture change is a slow burn led from the middle, and what six years of it actually looked like
- How to answer "restorative practice means no consequences" without softening the practice, using high accountability and high support
- What third culture kids are, and why Alistair Goold frames their identity as resting on relationships rather than geography
- Why a school that draws students from everywhere becomes the culture they belong to, and what that asks of the adults
- How consistency of process holds a restorative approach together when the outcome is different every time
- Why the North American lens on belonging and identity is one lens, and what happens when international schools import it wholesale
- Why he brings training to schools rather than asking schools to fly staff out to him
- The lowest-hanging fruit for a dean this week: the circle, including the whole-staff circles he designed for the first week back
This episode is for: deans of students, student life professionals, boarding and residential life leaders, independent and international school administrators, counselors, advisors, and restorative practices practitioners.
Featured Guest: Alistair Goold is the founder of Restorative360 and a social science teacher and grade level leader at an international school in Kenya where 64 nationalities are represented. He has spent 19 years as an international educator across three continents, is fully trained and licensed with the International Institute for Restorative Practices, and sits on the European Forum for Restorative Justice's Register of Restorative Trainers and Consultants and its education working group. He completed his master's in restorative practices in 2024, and his academic work has been published in On the Horizon and the International Journal of Restorative Justice.
Resources:
Alistairs LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/alistairgoold Restorative360: https://restorative360.com/ European Forum for Restorative Justice, education section and monthly webinars: https://www.euforumrj.org/
Visit the Deans' Roundtable: https://deansroundtable.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deans-roundtable Email: bridget@deansroundtable.org
The Table Podcast Series: Where student life professionals and K-12 educational leaders connect, learn, share, and grow together.
