While attending an equity session, where facilitated shared research data by Walter Gilliam where African American preschool boys are 3.5 times more likely to be suspended/expelled more than their white age peers. In state-funded programs the expulsion rate from prekindergarten is about three times higher than students in grades K-12. His data revealed the indicators of characteristics which were denoted as the 3 Bs. The 3 Bs of expulsion risk are Big, Black and Boys who are more likely to be suspended or expelled. Therefore, teachers are more like to recommend preschoolers for suspension or expulsion when the child is black, or boy, or is physical bigger than their peers.
The United States Department of Education Office of Civil Right
(2016) stated,
- Black preschoolers 3.6 times as likely to be suspended than
their white peers.
- Black children represent 19% of preschoolers but the rate is 47%
of them are suspended.
- Boys represent 54% of preschoolers, but 78% of
suspensions.
Afterwards, a participant asked the question paraphrasing “What do
you do when you have a child (ethnicity nor gender given) who is exhibiting
inappropriate behaviors constantly and I don’t have time for one-on-one due to
State ratio nor do the parents help nor care?” The facilitator
reiterated the importance of administrator’s support systems (e.g., early
childhood mental health consultant, coaching, mentoring) conduct behavioral
assessment and more. The constructivist theory encourages children
to construct their knowledge when actively interpreting their experiences in
the areas of academic, physical and social world at-large (DeVries &
Kohlberg, 1987; DeVries & Zan, 2012) where this approach can lessen
inappropriate challenging behaviors.
I chimed in this a topic [challenging behaviors] where the child
is always the protagonist instead of the educator taking a deep look at the
following:
- Take a deep hard inner look at self and if there are implicit
and/or explicit bias actions demonstrated towards the child.
- Conduct a real look at the physical environment to see if
child’s interests are represented.
- Record interests of the child via conversations with him/her
and engage in conversations of parents/family members to incorporate in
lesson plans and throughout the learning environment.
- Write behavior goal plan outlining goals to embed and steps
toward accomplishing which are written in the child’s individualization
goal plan as stated on weekly lesson plan.
- Implement culturally responsive age appropriate
practices. Yes, one must know cultural experiences of all
children and family members that are incorporated into the learning
environment towards a sense of self-pride.
- Mirrored books that represent child … engage in conversations
of content along with having representation in the learning
environment. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop coined the term “mirrored”
books where characters look like the child themselves to make
relationships with content.
If educators and administrators have a child who has been deemed as
having challenging behaviors and done soft suspensions acts such as (a) send
child to director’s office, and (b) place child in a fellow colleague’s room
where s/he is missing instructing time with fellow peers. Therefore,
it is crucial for the adults to take a deeper dive into the ecological systems
of Urie Bronfenbrenner to support the child in making effective means of
change. The ecological systems are microsystem (activities
and interactions in the child’s immediate surroundings, parents, friends,
etc.), mesosystem (relationships among entities involved in
the child’s microsystem: parents’ interactions with teachers,
school’s interaction with school and child), exosystem (social
institutions which affect child indirectly; the parent’s workplace, extended
family, mass media, community resources), macrosystem (broader
cultural values, laws and governmental resources) and chronosystem (changes
which occur during child’s life both personally and culturally) to see the whole
child and factors of their life that will directly impact behaviors displayed
in the learning environment and school building at-large. Wright and
Counsell (2018) want educators to self-reflect “whether they thought factors
other than assigning blame to children and families, such as teacher attitudes,
teacher expectation, implicit bias, racism, and/or discrimination, were
important considerations (p. 51). Yes, it’s easy to blame the child;
however, educators and administrators must switch lens to effective actions
where child is not being suspended and/or expelled from
school.
After the facilitator and I shared, it was easy to feel in the air
she and other participants were re-thinking how they had laid the blame 90 to
100% on the child and not really looking in the mirror of self to seek out what
modifications and/or adaptations could and should be made towards reducing
and/or eliminating the inappropriate action(s). Whereas, the
questioner still could not see outside of her lens it’s the child who needed to
adhere to whatever her perceived rules and guidelines are to stay in the
classroom. If some early educators are in serious quandary whether
challenging behaviors are of the child versus educator to seek strategies to
align with what have been deemed by educator’s themselves as challenging
behaviors with no foresight of alternatives other than to suspend or expel
child from program. Therefore, for those who are instructing child
guidance and behavior management courses
at 2 and 4-year institutions of higher education, technical assistants,
mentors, evaluators, early childhood mental health consultants, education
consultants and others must truly know the breadth, depth and application of
culturally responsive developmentally age appropriate practices through
behavioral goal plans that include family partnerships which will lessen and
hopefully eliminate the desire to feel the only method is to suspend and/or
expel the child.
References
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory of
development: Definition & examples (n.d.) Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/bronfenbrenners-ecological-systems-theory-of-development-definition-examples.html
DeVries, R., & Kohlberg, L. (1987). Constructivist
early education: Overview and comparison with other
programs. Washington, DC: National Association for
the Education of Young Children.
DeVries, R., & Zan, B. (2012). Moral
classroom, moral children: Creating a constructivist atmosphere in
early education (2nd ed.). New York,
NY: Teacher College Press.
Gilliam, W. S. (2005). Pre-kindergarten left
behind: Expulsion rates in the state
prekindergarten programs. Retrieved from [https://www.fcd-%0bus.org/assets/2016/04/ExpulsionCompleteReport.pdf]
https://www.fcd-
us.org/assets/2016/04/ExpulsionCompleteReport.pdf.
US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights – Civil Rights
Data Collection
Data Snapshot: Early Childhood Education (March 2016). Retrieved
from
https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/crdc-early-learning-
snapshot.pdf
Wright, B. L., & Counsell, S. L. (2018). The
brilliance of black boys: Cultivating
school success in early grades. New
York, NY: Teacher College Press.
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