Common sense suggests that the rate of school suspensions go up as children grow older. This belief is fueled by media images of middle school bullies and adolescent thugs. So a recent Department of Education report on this topic surprised a lot of people. It turns out that preschool-aged children are 13 times more likely to be suspended than their older brothers and sisters.
Many of the children in the Head Start program at the Crittenton Center in Kansas City, MO. display the type of aggressive, defiant behaviors that would put them at risk for suspension in other settings. But here the outcomes are quite different.
Why? Because in 2010 a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation began training staff to rethink how they interpret children’s behavior. The innovative program is called Head Start Trauma Smart. Its goal is to teach participants to view what children do through a trauma-sensitive lens.
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