Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/creating-d/5024282/
Many of us have been there. Sitting in conversation with a teacher or program leader, we go through the laundry list of a particular child’s difficult behavior. We list the approaches we have already tried. We wonder what else we could possibly do. Exhausted and frustrated, we turn to our last option; we send the child home.
If this scenario sounds familiar, you are not alone. In 2016, the United States Department of Education estimated that early childhood programs suspended 2.7 percent of children served—that is 13 times the suspension rate of K-12 schools. The problem, we have recently learned, is that severe disciplinary and exclusionary practices in preschool settings have the potential to set children on a trajectory toward negative developmental outcomes. In fact, children who have been expelled or suspended in these early years are more likely to experience myriad challenges later, including school delinquency, poor academic performance, school dropout, and the preschool-to-prison pipeline (Meek & Gilliam, 2016; Losen & Skiba; 2010; Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010). Our goal as dedicated educators is just the opposite—to help children develop a lifelong love for learning with positive development outcomes. So, what can we do as program leaders to better ...