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’s a quiet fear behind most conversations about student voice.
It’s not that educators don’t value it. It’s that many educators have lived the moment where “inviting students in” turns into spiraling discussion, fragile routines, and a classroom that feels harder to lead. Student voice can feel like a classroom management risk when there is no shared process for how voice actually works.
My stance is simple: student voice is a practice, not a risk. It is not about giving up control. It’s about sharing responsibility, and it only works when it is anchored in structure.
Why conflict matters in this conversation
A lot of classrooms are not struggling because students are “worse” than they used to be. They’re struggling because conflict is being treated like a disruption to remove, rather than information to learn from.
Conflict is often where the real curriculum shows up: boundaries, dignity, belonging, power, fairness, and how we repair harm when things go wrong. If we don’t have a shared way to talk about those things, we default to the tools the system hands us most easily: control, compliance, and escalation.
The Web of Rights is one way to change that. It gives educators and students a shared language and shared routines so that repeated conflict becomes teachable instead of personal. The Implementation Planner is designed specifically for this: building structured classroom community grounded in safety, dignity, and student voice, with conflict supports that work in real classrooms.
When conflict keeps repeating, it’s tempting to keep hunting for the “who” at the centre of it. Who started it. Who is always involved. Who needs the consequence.
But in many conflicts, more than one right is pressing at the same time. That’s why the Web of Rights shifts the focus away from blame and toward clarity. It helps a class name what matters, recognize that rights overlap, and build agreements that protect the learning community.
That is the heart of rights-informed practice: not loosening expectations, but strengthening them with legitimacy. When students understand that classroom structures exist to protect dignity and access to learning, structure stops feeling like something done to them and starts feeling like something they can participate in and uphold.
This is also why the planner emphasizes reducing repeated conflict by teaching shared language and routines, and shifting conversations from blame to forward-focused agreements.
When people hear “democratic school,” they sometimes imagine a classroom where adults step back and students run everything. That’s not what I mean.
Democratic education is about building processes that make voice real. It means classrooms and schools intentionally create systems where students can participate meaningfully, while adults still hold structure, purpose, and responsibility.
This matters, because “voice” without process becomes noise. Process is what turns participation into learning.
A practical reframe you can try the next time conflict shows up:
If you want a simple way to start applying this thinking without launching a whole new program, start with your next conflict.
Slow the moment down. Name what happened without turning it into a trial. Then ask a rights question instead of a blame question. Something as simple as: “What matters here for safety, dignity, and learning?” From there, you can guide students toward a solution that protects the community, rather than a decision that simply identifies a winner.
You don’t have to do this perfectly. You just have to do it consistently enough that students learn the pattern.
If you want a ready-to-use structure for teaching this, the Implementation Planner includes conflict support strategies, negotiation tools for overlapping rights, and guidance for repeated conflict and repair.
Want to go deeper?
If you’re new to this work, start with the free Web of Rights Starter Guide. It’s built to help educators create equitable, structured learning communities where students feel heard and supported, with practical strategies for honouring student voice while maintaining structure.
If you’re ready for a step-by-step rollout, the Web of Rights Implementation Planner is the next move. It’s designed for educators who want more than compliance-based classroom management, and it includes a 4-week rollout with classroom-ready tools and conflict supports.
If you want to learn live, seminars are designed as interactive sessions, not lectures. They’re conversations and hands-on explorations that leave educators with practical strategies for real classrooms. And if you want updates when the next webinar or seminar drops, join the email list.
There are days when classroom management stops being about “strategies” and becomes a relationship problem. A student walks in guarded, the class feels it, and you can sense the power struggle before anyone speaks. You can still hold boundaries, but when the relationship is fractured, consequences alone often stop working the way you want them to.
That’s why I keep coming back to a simple practice called 2x10. In the clip below, I describe it as one of the best things I’ve done as an educator: two minutes a day with one student for ten consecutive school days. In practice, I often stretch it to 5x10, because two minutes can feel too quick, but the principle is the same: protected, consistent connection that is not disguised as a behaviour conversation.
What matters is what it creates. Knowing students on an individual level helps build calm and trust, and it honors dignity and identity in your classroom. It gives your expectations somewhere solid to stand.
What 2x10 is really doing
Most students who are stuck in conflict are not listening for your logic first. They’re scanning for whether you’re safe. 2x10 quietly changes that scan, not through a speech, but through repetition.
When you show up consistently without trying to fix, correct, or extract a confession, you build a different kind of credibility. Over time, you’re not just building rapport, you’re building the conditions where learning and repair become possible again.
How to use it without turning it into a “check-in chat”
Start by choosing one student. Not the easiest student. Choose the one where the relationship feels brittle, tense, or stuck.
Then choose a predictable moment that is low-stakes and private: arrival, the first few minutes of independent work, dismissal, or a transition where you can be beside them without making it a public performance. Protect the time and return to it daily for ten consecutive school days.
The key is keeping the moment agenda-free. If you use those minutes to circle back to yesterday, to coach behaviour, or to “teach a lesson,” the student feels the hook. 2x10 only works when the student experiences you as steady.
What to say in those minutes
Keep it ordinary. You can ask about what they’re into right now, what they’re listening to, what they’re good at outside of school, or what part of the day feels easiest. You can also just notice something neutral and let them lead.
Low-pressure prompts (any age):
“What’s something you’re into right now?”
“What’s the best part of your day so far?”
“What music are you listening to lately?”
“If you could change one thing about today, what would it be?”
“Can you show me something you’re proud of?”
For younger students:
“Show me your favorite part of your drawing.”
“What game are you playing lately?”
“What do you want to be the class expert in?”
For older students:
“What’s been feeling annoying about school lately?”
“What’s something you wish teachers understood?”
“What’s one class that feels easiest right now, and why?”
If the student gives you nothing, you still show up.You can narrate something neutral:
“I’m going to keep checking in for a bit. No pressure to talk.”
If they give you nothing, you don’t punish the silence. You simply return tomorrow. Consistency is the message.
What you might notice first
People often expect a sudden breakthrough, and that’s not what usually happens. The early shifts are small: the temperature drops faster after conflict, repair is less dramatic, and the student is a little more present in the room. Those are not minor wins. Those are signs the relationship can hold stress without breaking.
Where 2x10 fits in the bigger work
I don’t teach relationship moves in isolation. My focus is helping schools move from compliance-driven discipline systems to structured, rights-informed learning communities grounded in equity and student voice.
The point is not less structure. In a rights-informed classroom, structure becomes legitimate because it’s anchored in safety, dignity, and voice, not compliance for its own sake.
That’s also why, when educators integrate the Web of Rights over time, many notice a shift where conversations about behaviour become conversations about dignity, and conflict becomes an opportunity for reflection rather than punishment alone. 2x10 supports that shift because it strengthens the relational conditions that make the framework usable in real moments.
The mistakes that quietly ruin it
Most 2x10 failures are not because teachers do it “wrong.” They fail because adults can’t resist making it transactional.
If the two minutes turns into a behaviour talk, it stops being 2x10.
If you only do it when the student is “good,” you teach conditional connection.If you make it public, you risk shame.
If you expect warmth on day one, you’ll quit before the consistency lands.
This practice is not about speed. It is about credibility.
If you want to learn more, here are two good next steps
If you’re new to this work, start with the Web of Rights Starter Guide. It’s designed as an introduction and offers the foundational mindset and language needed to begin.
If you want a more structured pathway from introduction to sustained practice, the Web of Rights Implementation Planner guides a structured four-week rollout and includes teacher scripts, discussion prompts, printable student reflections, activity templates, and planning space. It’s designed to support movement from compliance-focused management toward a structured, rights-informed learning community grounded in dignity and shared responsibility.
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