Restorative Practices in Action: A Hidden Key in Increasing Belonging & Changing School Culture

September 23, 2025/Sources Team

Growth Mindset & Restorative Practices, More Than a Buzzword

It’s easy to talk about “growth mindset” or “restorative practices” but it’s much harder to implement them in ways that stick. At Sources of Strength, we knew that if we were going to help students build these values, we had to move beyond concepts and into daily practice.

As Matt Hofmeister shared in our interview, “We didn’t want to just teach a  growth mindset, we wanted to actualize it. That meant giving educators tools to consistently celebrate growth, focusing on progress and growth and moving away from the heavy focus on performance and outcomes.”

Restorative practices remind all who are involved that they have dignity, worth, inherent strengths and deserve to belong within a community.

Implementing Growth Mindset Through Structure

The curriculum does exactly that by emphasizing progress over perfection. Each lesson is structured to highlight effort, reflection, and improvement. Students get to experience what growth looks like and feel proud of it!

Instead of rewarding students only for getting it “right,” the curriculum encourages them to try, reflect, and grow, reframing conflict, challenges and failure as powerful opportunities for growth and learning. This changes how students see themselves and their ability to navigate challenges, which lays the foundation for lifelong resilience.

Restorative Practices That Restore Belonging

Another key pillar of our curriculum is restorative practice. This approach allows for students and staff alike to learn the skills of healthy conflict navigation and is a relational approach to build classroom culture.

We’ve built a tiered framework that grows with students across grade levels:

  • Helpful Apology: For small, everyday conflicts (starting in early grades)
  • Helpful Conversation: For more complex situations that need deeper discussion
  • Restorative Conference: For significant harm that needs healing and repair

Each tier invites students to reflect and take responsibility. This work can restore trust and relationship, skills that not only support healthy behavior but also build empathy, communication, connection and belonging.

Changing the Outcome, thus Changing the Culture

Matt put it this way: “Traditional discipline systems often rely upon removing students from the classroom. We want to restore them to the classroom. That’s how we build community and belonging.”

And it’s working. Schools using our restorative frameworks report:

  • Reductions in behavioral referrals
  • Improved classroom relationships
  • Increased student voice and agency
  • Lessened racial discrepancies within discipline actions 

By embedding growth mindset and restorative practices into weekly lessons, our curriculum helps young students navigate conflict with compassion, and helps classrooms become places where everyone feels like they belong.

Want to explore how these strengths show up in real classrooms? Visit our Elementary Curriculum page or schedule a call with our team.

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