Schools talk often about student voice, but the harder question is whether students actually experience school as a place where their voice can shape what happens next.
That was the heart of my recent conversation on Restorative Works!, a podcast from the International Institute for Restorative Practices. I joined host Claire de Mezerville Lopez to talk about the Web of Rights, restorative practice, democratic schooling, and what it means to build school communities that serve students rather than simply manage them.
Listen to the Conversation
Listen here, or open the episode in your preferred podcast app.
One of the tensions we explored is familiar to many educators. We want students to feel safe, respected, and engaged, but many of the systems we inherit still begin with compliance. Students are told the rules, corrected when they miss them, and often given very little space to understand why those expectations exist or how their own voice fits inside the community.
That approach may create order for a while. It does not always create responsibility.
The Web of Rights begins from a different place. It helps students understand that rights are connected. A student’s right to speak connects with another student’s right to be heard. A student’s right to play connects with another student’s right to feel safe. A student’s right to identity connects with the community’s responsibility to protect dignity and belonging.
In the podcast, I shared a classroom example from kindergarten, where three children wanted to play together outside, but their rights were overlapping in real time. One child loved rough-and-tumble play. One child was worried about being hurt. One child wanted to be part of the game but did not want certain kinds of touch.
A compliance-first response might have been simple: no wrestling.
But a rights-informed response asks a better question: what agreement could protect everyone’s rights?
The students worked toward a shared structure. One became the referee. They created a stop signal. They found a way for play, safety, and identity to exist together. The point was not that adults disappeared. The point was that adult structure helped students practise community.
That is where restorative practice and the Web of Rights meet so naturally for me. Restorative work cannot be only reactive. It cannot just be the card of questions we pull out after harm has already happened. The strongest work is preventative. It is built in the daily language, routines, agreements, and relationships that help students understand themselves as part of a shared community.
That is one reason this conversation felt meaningful. The International Institute for Restorative Practices has spent years helping schools, organizations, and communities think more deeply about relationships, repair, and community-building. Their work includes professional learning, graduate education, implementation support, research, and resources for people trying to move restorative practice beyond a single strategy or script.
That connects closely to how I think about the Web of Rights.
In my own work, restorative practice is not separate from rights-informed education. Both ask adults to take relationships seriously. Both require structure before conflict, not only response after harm. Both ask us to slow down enough to notice who has been affected, which rights are involved, and what kind of agreement could help the community move forward.
That is why IIRP’s ongoing work is important. Schools need more than isolated tools. They need training, research, implementation support, and communities of practice that help restorative ideas become part of the daily culture of school.
This is also why student voice needs structure.
Voice does not mean children make every decision. It does not mean adults step back from responsibility. In fact, meaningful student voice requires strong adult facilitation. It requires clear boundaries, developmentally appropriate language, and a shared understanding of safety, dignity, and responsibility.
When students are included in that process, school starts to feel different. Rules become less arbitrary. Conflict becomes more teachable. Repair becomes more possible. Students begin to understand that their voice is important, but so is the voice of the person beside them.
For educators and school leaders, that shift is not always easy. We work inside systems shaped by curriculum pressure, assessment demands, policies, staffing realities, and limited time. I understand that. I have lived inside those pressures too.
But I also believe we can build classrooms and schools where structure serves students more clearly.
Sometimes that begins with one small question:
Which rights are involved here?
That question can change the tone of a conflict. It can slow down blame. It can help students move from defending themselves toward understanding impact. It can help adults respond with more clarity and less reaction.
I’m grateful to Claire and the IIRP team for creating space for this conversation. If you are an educator, school leader, parent, or anyone thinking seriously about dignity, student voice, restorative practice, and the future of schooling, I hope you’ll listen.
You can find the episode on most streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and on the official IIRP website.
You can also explore more of IIRP’s work here:
And if the conversation connects with work you are already trying to build in your classroom or school, you can explore the free Web of Rights Starter Guide and other implementation resources.
The next step does not have to be large. It can begin with one classroom conversation, one shared agreement, or one moment where we pause and ask students to think not only about the rule that was broken, but about the rights that need to be protected.
There are moments in school when the paperwork is done, the policy has been followed, the adult response can be justified, and still, the child in front of us has not really been served.
I think most educators know that feeling. It shows up in small ways at first. A student is struggling, and the conversation turns quickly to behaviour. A teacher is exhausted, and the answer becomes another initiative, another expectation, another system to manage. A parent raises a concern, and suddenly everyone starts speaking carefully, as though the language of school has become more important than the child’s experience of it.
That is the tension the book I'm writing, is trying to name.
I have spent more than two decades inside public education. I have seen extraordinary educators do deeply human work in systems that often make that work harder than it should be. I have seen schools protect students, open doors for students, and give children a place to belong. I have also seen students quietly diminished by routines, assumptions, labels, and policies that were never really built around who they are.
So this book did not begin from a distance. It began from classrooms, hallways, staff rooms, parent conversations, school meetings, and the quiet knowledge many people in education carry but don’t always feel free to say out loud.
We keep saying public education is here for students. I believe it should be. I still believe public education is one of the few places where children from different families, cultures, languages, identities, abilities, and experiences are meant to learn alongside one another. That is worth protecting. I haven’t written this book because I’ve given up on public education. I’ve written it because I haven’t.
But protecting public education cannot mean protecting every structure public education has inherited.
Some of those structures were built for efficiency. Some were built for sameness. Some were built to make large systems easier to manage. Some were built in another time, for another world, around a much narrower idea of the student. And now, many of those same structures are still shaping children who are growing up in a world that requires creativity, flexibility, collaboration, critical thought, and the ability to live well with difference.
That contradiction shows up everywhere once we start paying attention. It shows up when we call a quiet classroom successful without asking who feels safe enough to speak. It shows up when we treat the same consequence as fairness, even when the students involved are carrying entirely different histories, needs, and circumstances. It shows up when a child’s movement, intensity, sensitivity, or questioning is treated as something to correct before it is understood. It shows up when student voice is invited only after the adult decision has already been made.
This is where I think schools have to become more honest.
A student is not simply a behaviour to manage, a score to report, or a problem to solve. A student is a person with rights. That sounds simple, but in practice, it changes how we understand almost every part of school life.
If students are rights-bearing people, then dignity, safety, voice, and belonging cannot be treated as extras. They cannot be offered when learning is smooth and withdrawn when learning becomes difficult. They have to be built into the structure of school itself.
That does not remove adult authority. It does not mean students get whatever they want. It does not mean classrooms become chaotic or expectations disappear. It means the authority adults hold has to be used in service of students, not simply in service of order.
There is a difference between a school system that manages students and a school system that serves them. A system that manages students is usually asking, “How do we get this child to comply?” A system that serves students is asking, “What conditions does this child need in order to learn, participate, repair, belong, and grow?”
Those questions lead to very different schools.
I think many educators already know this. They feel it on the hard days. They feel it when a student’s behaviour finally makes sense after someone takes the time to learn the story underneath it. They feel it when a conflict that could have become a punishment becomes a conversation, an agreement, or a repair. They feel it when students are given enough structure to use their voice well, and the room becomes more grounded instead of less.
Those moments are small, but they are not minor. They show what school can become when the system is willing to learn.
That is really the heart of School the System. For a long time, we have focused on schooling children into the existing structure. We teach them how to line up, wait, produce, perform, meet the measure, and adapt. Some structure is necessary. Schools need routines. Communities need agreements. Children need limits, guidance, and adults who can hold steady when things become difficult.
But structure should serve students. When structure starts serving the system more than the child, we need to be honest enough to notice.
This book is trying to name the moment when compliance gets mistaken for learning. When sameness gets mistaken for fairness. When silence gets mistaken for respect. When a child is asked to become smaller so the system can remain unchanged.
I don’t think we change public education by pretending educators are not trying hard enough. Most of the educators I know are trying very hard. Many are carrying far more than the public sees. But care inside a strained system is not enough on its own. Good people can still be handed tools that don’t serve students well. Thoughtful leaders can still be pulled into decisions that protect process over people. Caring educators can still participate in patterns they would never have designed themselves.
That is why the system itself has to become part of the lesson.
If schools are truly here for students, then schools have to be willing to learn from students. Learn from the student who withdraws. Learn from the student who keeps getting sent out. Learn from the student who asks why. Learn from the student who does well on paper but feels invisible. Learn from the parent who senses something is wrong but does not yet have the language for it. Learn from the teacher who keeps saying, quietly, “This is not working.”
That is the work this book is trying to begin.
Not a finished answer. Not a perfect framework. Not another promise that schools can be transformed if everyone simply follows the steps. Something more honest than that.
A call to look carefully at what public education has inherited, what it still protects, and what students are asking us to become brave enough to change.
The first draft is finished. The work of refining it is just beginning. And maybe that feels fitting, because the book is asking of the system what writing is asking of me right now: revise what no longer serves, keep what is true, and be willing to learn from what is in front of you.
If this is the kind of school conversation you care about, I’ll be sharing more behind-the-book reflections through The Schooling Signal as School the System takes shape.
We spend a lot of time talking about whether young children are ready for school. Can they recognize their letters? Can they count? Can they listen to a story, follow a routine, put on their coat, manage a transition, sit when they need to sit?
Those are reasonable questions. But after more than twenty years working in schools, including time as a kindergarten teacher, I think they can also make us overlook some of the most important learning happening in early childhood spaces.
Young children are learning how to live with other people.
That sounds simple until you spend a morning in a kindergarten room. Someone has the truck somebody else wanted. Three children have very different ideas about the game they're creating. Someone wants a hug and someone else absolutely does not. A child wants to join a group that isn't sure it wants another person. Someone thinks something is unfair. Someone has been hurt. Someone needs space but doesn't yet know how to ask for it.
This is where Early Childhood Educators do an extraordinary amount of foundational human work.
The work can be easy to underestimate because so much of it happens through small interactions. An ECE helping a child say, “Stop, I don't like that,” isn't simply resolving the issue in front of them. They're helping that child develop language for a boundary. When they help another child hear that boundary and respond to it, they're working with both children on what it means to share space with another human being.
When they help children work out who gets to play, what fair might look like, how to disagree, or what to do after someone has been hurt, they are building capacities we will continue asking those children to use for the rest of their lives.
Long before we expect people to collaborate with colleagues, advocate for themselves, participate in communities, navigate disagreement, respect consent, repair relationships, or listen to perspectives that differ from their own, they begin practising those things in much smaller ways.
Often while wearing a snowsuit.
My own thinking about the Web of Rights began in a kindergarten classroom. I was interested in whether very young children could meaningfully understand the idea of rights. What I discovered was that the language needed to be developmentally appropriate, but the thinking itself didn't have to be simplistic.
Children already had a strong understanding of identity. They knew they could have a favourite colour that was different from mine. They knew they could love a game their friend didn't enjoy. They understood that another person couldn't simply decide those things for them.
Once we started there, the conversations became much more interesting.
If I have a right to play, what happens when the way I want to play makes somebody else feel unsafe? If I don't like being touched, how do I tell someone? If two people want different things, does somebody always have to lose?
These are early childhood questions, but they're also community questions.
One of the examples I've used for years involves three children trying to play together. One loves wrestling. Another wants to wrestle too but is smaller and sometimes feels uncomfortable with how rough the play becomes. The third wants to be involved but doesn't like being touched.
An adult can solve that problem quickly by saying, “No wrestling.”
Sometimes, for immediate safety, that may even be necessary. But once everyone is safe, there is a much richer educational opportunity available.
The children can talk about what each person needs. Perhaps two children wrestle while the third becomes the referee. Perhaps they establish a stop word. Perhaps they decide what kinds of contact are okay. Perhaps tomorrow somebody changes their mind and the agreement needs to change too.
Now the children aren't simply being managed through a conflict. They're learning how to negotiate one. They're practising boundaries, listening, adapting, perspective-taking, safety, participation, and shared responsibility. That kind of structured negotiation sits at the heart of the Web of Rights.
This is also why the language we give young children is so important.
We often tell children to “be nice” or “make a good choice,” but those phrases ask a great deal from a child without always giving them much to work with. A child needs language they can actually use: “I need some space.” “I'm still using that.” “Can I play when you're finished?” “Stop. I don't like that.” “I want to tell you what happened.” “Can we find another way?”
Those sentences are simple because they need to be. They give children another option besides yelling, pushing, withdrawing, grabbing, or waiting for an adult to solve the problem for them.
Over time, something deeper begins to develop. A child who can name a boundary is practising self-advocacy. A child who learns to respond to somebody else's boundary is beginning to understand responsibility to another person. A child who experiences repair after conflict begins to learn that getting something wrong doesn't have to end a relationship. A child who discovers that fairness sometimes requires different responses for different people is developing a more complex understanding of community.
These are not abilities that suddenly arrive in adulthood. We build them.
That is why I sometimes struggle with the way we talk about “school readiness.” When early childhood education is framed primarily as preparation for the academic years ahead, we risk shrinking the work.
ECEs aren't simply getting children ready for Grade 1.
They're helping children learn how to participate in a community.
They're helping children experience fairness before they have sophisticated language for equity. They're helping children understand consent through everyday boundaries. They're helping children discover that their voice is important while learning that the other people in the room have voices too. They're showing children that having a right doesn't mean getting everything you want, because your rights exist alongside everyone else's.
Much of this happens through play, conversation, observation, relationships, and hundreds of ordinary interactions that will never appear on a standardized assessment.
But consider what we eventually ask of the adults those children will become.
We want people who can disagree without dehumanizing each other. We want people who can listen, communicate boundaries, advocate for themselves, consider another person's perspective, participate without dominating, repair harm, and understand that living in community comes with responsibilities to the people around them.
For many children, early learning settings are among their first sustained experiences of a community beyond their family. Different personalities, identities, needs, preferences, bodies, boundaries, and ways of communicating all have to coexist in the same room.
That's not a warm-up for human life.
That is human life, at a smaller scale.
When I think about the work of ECEs through that lens, I don't see people preparing children for the “real” learning that comes later. I see educators working at the foundation, helping children develop the language and capacities that every classroom, workplace, family, neighbourhood, and democratic community will eventually ask them to use.
If we want future communities filled with people who know how to use their voices while respecting the rights of others, who can disagree and repair, who can protect boundaries and still find ways to belong together, we need to take seriously the places where that learning begins.
Early childhood education is foundational human work.
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