Preschool Suspension and Expulsion Part 2

Dr. Katie Herron and Research Associate Lynne Hall continue their discussion about preschool suspension and expulsion.

Transcript

Welcome to the Early Childhood On-the-Go Podcast, where the Early Childhood Center team shares ideas and strategies for professionals and families.  Dream big, start early. Hi, everyone, this is Lynne Hall. I'm a Research Associate at the Early Childhood Center and excited to be back today with Dr. Katie Herron to continue our conversation around, believe it or not, suspension and expulsion and preschool. Ugh. Yeah, so, Katie, thank you for being here today. Of course. Last time we kind of talked about what suspension and expulsion is and kind of how it manifests in the early childhood space. So, let's now get into what early childhood systems can do to offer alternatives to suspension and expulsion, because we know it doesn't work. It doesn't work. And I wish I had something easy to tell you. What we know from some recent data from a needs assessment done in Indiana is that despite the relatively high rate of suspension and expulsion, and remember, this data doesn't include what we call informal removals or document when families are told that the program might not be a good fit or maybe they should go to half days or anything like that. But despite the high rates, a lower percentage of professionals believe it actually works. So, we've got professionals using it, even though they're telling us they know it's not effective. So, what that says to me is that they're doing it because they don't know what else to do. And I say that not to bash early childhood educators, because they have intense challenging jobs. This is really about the systems within which early childhood education is situated. They are not set up to provide our educators with viable work environments or even living wages in a lot of cases. And for that reason, it's very challenging to expect our educators to have the resources, the training, the backup that they need for them to succeed when they're managing behaviors in classrooms. Yeah, so Katie, when you tell me that this data doesn't include the informal removals, it just makes me shudder to think what that data would look like if it did. Oh yeah. And to think about the number of children that are getting that negative message and missing out on, you know, education opportunities because of these practices. So, if we really want to fix it, we have got to start with the workforce. I think so. Yeah. When we have educators who are valued, the system is professionalized, educators, they're paid well. They then are able to be trained because we don't have the turnover that we currently see. We can start to realistically expect to see things like nurturing and responsive environments, which we know we need for children to be safe and emotionally regulated and be able to begin to learn some of those social-emotional skills around identifying and managing their emotions, which, of course, is what they need to have in place in order to not have the behaviors that we're seeing. Yeah, and I think that's really important to put that piece into place, but I also think the professional development has to include what the system can do differently to accommodate the needs of diverse children's abilities, right? So, when I talk about that, I think about how flexible is that environment? What choices are being offered if a child can't hang with a circle time for 10, 15 minutes, right? What are we doing to help that child be successful? What else can they be doing during that time? So, really opening our eyes up to how we can differentiate what we're doing in in the classroom. Not saying it's an easy fix, but it's a place to start for sure. Absolutely. And when we have the system capacity to be able to think about those things, then there are all kinds of models and frameworks and training programs out there that can be really, really supportive. I mean, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a wonderful way to, from the very beginning, set up our classrooms for all different kinds of learners, not just kids with disabilities or kids that haven't been in school before, but all children, because we know we all have strengths and weaknesses. But again, any of that stuff is going to require our workforce to be not transient, right? Not coming and going. And basically, in a good mindset to be able to take in information. Yeah, this is so important, especially in the wake of the pandemic and knowing the mental health challenges that lots of us are having, including, you know, young children as well and being able to be supportive. And just because a program or a system has always done something a certain way doesn't mean we can't change and learn and grow and do things differently when we know something's not working, right? So, given that those bigger system pieces are still works-in-progress, what can educators and administrators do right now? That's a great question. I'd start at an administrator level by reviewing current behavior policies, because, you know, our ideas about behavior at the research level have changed quite a bit and that we've been informed a great deal by neuroscience around the way that we should view behavior. So, have they looked in the last few years at their policy? Have they been informed by some of the newer information around regulation and doing some preventative things to set up classrooms and manage those behaviors before they become so challenging that we're looking at suspension expulsion, things like that. Is the way that they handle behavior punitive rather than relationship-based and again, that probably means if it is on the regular punitive, then we're missing some of those preventative pieces up front. What are the power and control dynamics that don't need to be there? The old school way of looking at behavior is that kids are expected to do what the teacher says every time, no matter what, and all kids should do the thing that the teacher says. And when we think about that often we end up in these power and control dynamics where we're picking fights with kids over things that it just doesn't matter. Like whether a child is sitting perfectly still at circle time, or whether they are seated at a desk, or seated a little bit farther away, or whatever the case may be. So, some of those things that we end up having, seeing behaviors around, are preventable if we just look at things a little bit differently. And the other thing we have to remember is that kids at this age, really kids of all ages, but particularly in early childhood, there's such a range of where kids are developmentally. And we can look at developmental milestones as a very good way to keep us making sure that our expectations are appropriate, but we also have to remember that it's normal for kiddos to be a little below that milestone or a little above a certain milestone and we have to be sure that we're paying attention to that too. And then, you know, the other thing to think about is how are we doing with social- emotional learning in the classroom? How are children being supported to learn about emotions? This is the time, right? In preschool, this is the time where they are developmentally learning how to identify what emotions feel like in their body, what they're called, what it looks like when they have them. And I'm not talking about behavior management here. I'm just talking about supporting the development of that understanding, so that the child can do some of the initial verbalization of what that feels like when they're feeling angry or upset. And this is not what we do, by the way, when the child is upset. This is preventative work that we're doing ahead of time to support the child so that maybe they can manage that a little bit differently. And by the way, notice I didn't say that they're going to win that battle in Pre-K because I'm still working on my behavioral management and I'm forty-nine. So, but what I will say is that it's the place to start. And then the other thing I'd think about is, you know, every time that we get to the point in Pre-K where we're looking at suspension or expulsion, or an informal removal, there should be a process in place to make sure that that removal is warranted and not being influenced by human factors, right? You know, we all have bias about some things, but beyond bias, we all just have some kiddos we like more than others. Let's be real about that. And so, in Indiana, the Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning has a checklist that they recommend that preschools and childcares use before they move to that point. The needs assessment that I referenced in a different podcast, I think, showed that a significant number of educators don't know about that checklist and aren't using it. So, well, I don't feel strongly about that particular checklist. I do suggest that something be in place to allow us to kind of put at bay those slippery human emotions and biases so that they don't interfere with the decisions that we make. Okay, that's just so important. And, you know, when you've talked about the social-emotional development and identifying feelings, the kids that are needing that the most are being sent away. They're missing out on those learning opportunities because now they've been excluded, and that is what they need, right? Absolutely. Would you be able to share just a few items from that checklist that you mentioned? Yeah, yeah. And so interestingly, you know, some of the items you're going to say, why is this on a suspension and expulsion checklist? Because there are things like, “Do staff greet children and parents cheerfully and by name?” Or, “Do you use a caring tone when speaking to the children?”   “Are you building good relationships with parents from the first interaction?”  So, some of these are more about family engagement and about engagement with the children. So, this is setting the stage, right? If these things are in place, we are much less likely to see the behavior later. Now, when we get down a little bit further in the checklist, it asks about some of the other things that may or may not have been done. So, it says, “Do you use feeling words and help children learn to recognize feelings by naming and reflecting feelings?”  So, we were just talking about that preventative piece around teaching the social-emotional skills so that kids can begin to identify and label how they're feeling. As we move down the checklist, it asks things like, “Are children offered genuine choices to avoid power struggles?”  So, and a genuine choice, right? Not like a, you know, “Sit down and cross your legs or else you're going down to the office,” but, you know, “We need to sit down and listen for a few minutes, would you like to sit on my lap, or would you like to sit on a chair?”  And so, again, helping to avoid some of those unnecessary behavior outbursts that come from those power struggles, asking, “Have you ever utilized milestones checklist developmental tracking or other tools for tracking child development?”  And sometimes, as a Pre-K teacher, we might accidentally give three commands all at once, and there might be some kiddos who have not yet mastered following three commands, and so when they get lost after that first command, we might think it's noncompliance, when in fact, it's really just reflective of where they are developmentally. And then it gets down all the way through, you know, “Have you sought help from a behavioral consultant,” or “Have you asked another staff person to observe?”  These are all things that need to be taken into account from the very get go, around building the culture, all the way down through, “Have we brought in outside help” and “Have we already tried to address the issue?”  We don't want to just have these behaviors and throw up our hands and say, you know, we can't handle this kiddo. Because that has ramifications for the child, has ramifications for the family. And, you know, even teachers know that it's not an effective strategy. What I really like about the ones that you mentioned from the checklist, Katie, is it really takes the onus off of the child and family. And again, puts it back on the system and the program and the practices that are happening to see where can we make changes here first.  And hopefully at an administrative level, you know, I know how busy teachers are and how many kids they have in their classrooms sometimes. And we also know that sometimes teachers call in and then there's more kids in the classroom. But having that administrator run over that checklist, it's another set of eyes. And so, I think again, it doesn't have to be that one necessarily, but something like that should be in place to help. Yeah, absolutely. And something else that we know from the research is that if you have the types of practices that you were sharing in place, 80% of your kiddos are going to do just fine. If you have these practices in place. Well, it not only decreases the numbers of suspensions and expulsions, but it decreases the disproportionality. And I think you mentioned in the last one where, we do see it more with children of color. We do see it more with kids with disabilities. And that disproportionality goes away when we take, again, some of that human emotion and bias out of the equation. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Any final thoughts? I would just bring us back to the beginning and end on that we really need to update the system to support the retention of a professional early childhood workforce. Because again, we have all kinds of exciting professional development and coaching opportunities, and we have the things out there that we know need to be implemented to do better with behavior, but it's too much to ask until we have a workforce that's supported financially, and the turnover goes down.  And so, we know what we need to build those strong relationships with children and families, and we just need to get our workforce in a position to be able to take that on. Great. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Early Childhood On-the-Go podcast from the Early Childhood Center team at Indiana University. Learn more at IIDC.Indiana.edu/ECC/