Hi Yojairy and Kasie,
There was a detailed discussion thread about exclusion and approaches to supporting children to replace exclusion a few weeks ago that you might find helpful! The title of the thread was "Challenging Behavior in a 3 Year Old". It might also be helpful to revisit the Addressing Challenging Behaviors section of the NAEYC Early Learning Program Accreditation Standards on pp. 15-16. And one more NAEYC reference - Dr. Rosemarie Allen was the keynote at the NAEYC Annual Conference a few years ago and I like the way she explains suspensions in ECE in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8nkcRMZKV4.In 17 years of teaching (mostly preschool age children) and administration (my own home-based program and a campus-based program) I definitely got stressed out by challenging behavior, but I never sent a child home for it. With practice I no longer got stressed out by challenging behavior, I came to see it as an opportunity to learn how to be the best teacher I could for each student. I have collaboratively designed a tool that teachers have found helpful in figuring out how to address challenging behaviors, it's like a "Choose your own Adventure" because there are four sub-tools:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YIRRdF_GmViKKeYRzrLaqxzgTIgeb2h7N1-_K-bEPoY/edit?usp=sharing. The first sub-tool starts by asking the teaching team how they actively teach social and communication skills as well as emotion regulation skills. I think this is always the place to start when teachers are concerned about behavior. The last sub-tool I have never had to use because the other tools invite parents to the table early on and in a collaborative way.
Related to exclusion, there were a couple of extreme circumstances in my experience when a child did not yet have the capacity to manage the demands of being immersed in a group setting for 8 hours and they were physically hurting other children consistently. We had tested different scaffolding strategies for weeks at a time with no reduction in the amount of shadowing needed. We also consulted with specialists and tried additional strategies. Then we determined that a shorter day was needed temporarily in order to reduce the expectation that the child manage in the group context for 8 hours per day (we would never make a child study math for 8 hours if this subject was really challenging for them). This gives the child a chance to experience success instead of exhaustion and as a result build some new neural pathways. Intensive scaffolding is provided by one teacher who is capable of providing consistent co-regulation support and gradually the length of day is increased. In one case results from a neuropsych eval also gave the child access to additional support that we were not qualified to provide as teachers.
All that to say, if I had to write a policy about exclusion today it would be something like, "We don't exclude children from school for behavior. We actively teach social and communication skills by...Challenging behavior is children's attempt to communicate. From this perspective we respond to challenging behavior (biting, hitting, spitting, etc.) in this way... When we have a concern about development that impacts a child's behavior we will proactively communicate with the child's family to collaboratively determine individualized strategies to support the child...and so on..."
I hope that's helpful!
Sincerely,
Lauren
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Lauren Stauble
Consultant/Faculty
Boston, MA
feelthinkconnect.com
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-30-2021 01:29 AM
From: Kasie Crown
Subject: Discipline Policies
I am very curious as well. We serve children 2.5-5.5 yrs old and we have been seeing a lot of various challenging behaviors from pushing, scratching, to head butting across all the ages. I am eager to hear what others are doing as we have yet to find a consistent system. It is more case by case basis taking the child's development and age, and frequency of behaviors into considerations.
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Kasie Crown
Martinez CA