STACY PHILLIPS: OK. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today for this Family's First session entitled Trauma-Informed Strategies to Stop the Exclusion of Preschoolers. We have four presenters today. Joining us is Aidan, Amy, John and Maria. Not trying to butcher anyone's last name. I appreciate you all being here. Amy Lynch is the associate professor of instruction for the College of Public Health here at Temple University, and I think everyone else will introduce themselves. Families First is an Philadelphia Interagency Coordinating Council activity. It is funded by Philadelphia's Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services and Elwyn Learning Services. So they provide funding for Families First projects. 

At the end of our session, we will ask you to complete a brief evaluation, which my colleague will drop in the chat. So if you can take a moment to do that, we would greatly appreciate it. And now I am going to turn it over to you, Amy, and your team. Thank you so much. 

AMY LYNCH: Wonderful Thank you so much. Welcome, everyone. It's my pleasure to have the opportunity to meet with you all today and to co-present with Aidan, Maria and John. Thank you so much for taking the time in your busy lives this morning. We're really excited to be talking to you about this really important work that we've been doing with the grant from the Pennsylvania Developmental Disabilities Council. 

And just want to acknowledge and give thanks to McKinley Rose and to Lisa Tesler for their support to this project. Today and throughout our time together, we are not only going to be talking about inclusion and exclusion, but also doing activities that you can do with the children in your classrooms if you are educators or ancillary service providers. Or if you are a parent that you can do at home and then share those strategies with your child's educator towards promoting connection and inclusion. 

So today we're going to get started by doing a group warm up. I invite you to actively participate through doing or if you would like are invited to actively participate through listening. So if you would like to participate, we're going to start with a grounding activity that is a poly-vagal stretch. So if you'd like to participate, what you're going to want to do is put your left hand above your head and then wrap it underneath your right armpit. Take your right arm and put it over your left ear and tilt your ear to your shoulder. 

Now, the really tricky part of this that feels good is you're going to look diagonally towards where the ceiling and wall of whatever your room is come together and just take a nice deep breath in. And hold it for a second and then breathe out. We're going to do one more breath like that. Breathe in. And then breathe out. Keep loosening up to the ceiling. And then gently relax. You may feel your neck and your head just completely relaxed. You might feel a little bit dizzy. That's normal. 

And then we're going to do the same thing on the other side. So I invite you to put your right arm up underneath your left armpit, and then put your left hand on your right ear and pull your ear to your shoulder and then look diagonally towards the ceiling, where the ceiling and the wall come together on the other side. A nice deep breath in. And breathe out. Yeah. And then one more breath in. Looking diagonally the ceiling. And breathe out. Gently release. 

Thank you. Now I'm going to turn the share screen off for a minute and invite you, if you would like, for the next part to turn your cameras on. We're going to just do a little connection activity. We're all in this busy, busy world, often hyper-focused on some particular challenge or activity, and so to take a moment to connect. So we're going to do a clapping activity. And I just want you all to think about what comes to mind. So I'm going to do a tap, tap on my table and then a clap, tap, tap, clap. And I invite you all to do it at the same pace. Tap, tap, clap, tap, tap, clap. Try to do it so we can see your hands in the screen. Tap, tap, clap. Real slow. Tap, tap, clap. Tap, tap, clap. And then tap, tap, clap. 

Is anything coming to mind right now? Is your brain starting to predict any sounds? Just say it out loud. 

ANGELIQUE MAURY: [SINGING] Oh, lady mack, mack, mack, all dressed in black. 

AMY LYNCH: OK, yes! Miss Mary Mack. Excellent. What else? Danielle. Oh, you're on mute. 

STACY PHILLIPS: Hey, how about we do [INAUDIBLE] 

AMY LYNCH: One more time? 

DANIELLE VAKNIN: How 'bout if we do the rock, paper, scissors? 

AMY LYNCH: Oh, rock paper scissors. Yep! Did anybody else's brain predict we will rock you? [SINGING] We will, we will rock you. All right, so mirroring activities are really wonderful activities to get a group of people in sync, on the same page. Let me just get back to sharing my screen. And when we're talking about inclusion, we are talking about everybody be on the same energy level, or understanding one another's energy level and feeling safely connected to other people. So when we're doing trauma-informed work, we always want to enter any space doing activities that will ground individuals and try to connect them, because we're all bringing whatever happened to us historically in the past into that space at that moment. 

And in this space, one of the trauma-informed tenets is that we all learn and perform best and do our best when we are feeling calm and grounded, and when we feel safely connected with the people around us. This is true of you. This is true of your children at home. This is true of your children in their classrooms. If you're an educator, it's the children in your classroom. And so at a home, for those of you who are parents, or in the classrooms, you can do activities to help everybody feel calm and connected by regularly doing throughout the day pause moments where you do things like a freeze dance, where everybody takes turns leading a move and everybody else does that same move. 

You can also do a mirror breath. So we did a little poly-vagal stretch, but you can do a mirror breath. So if you would like, you can turn your cameras on And? We're going to do just a quick breath where we're going to put your hands together, tuck them underneath your chin, take a nice deep breath in. And waiting for the people that I can see are mirroring. And then put your head back and breathe out and bring your elbows together. And then one more time, breathe in and bring your elbows up. And take a look at the screen and then breathe out. 

When we do these kinds of things in synchrony with our children, we feel more connected to them, they feel more connected to us, and as a group, we are all more calm, grounded, regulated. When parents learn what calms and connects their child to adults, they can collaborate with their educators so that the educators can use the same strategies in the classroom. 

So for the rest of the session, we're going to be talking about inclusion and exclusion. Why do they happen? How do they happen? Really talking about exclusion and the impacts of exclusion and who is more likely to be excluded and why. And then we hope to spend the last 40 minutes or so really talking explicitly about trauma-informed strategies that we will be using. Strategies, all the things even we just did. Could our trauma-informed align with all the trauma principles and you could do them at home or at school, or promote it between kids at school, if you're an educator or an ancillary service provider. So I'm going to turn it over to Aidan. 

AIDAN CAMPAGNOLIO: Thank you, Amy. Hi, everyone. With that being said, we want to run through some potentially imaginary scenarios or maybe scenarios that you yourself have experienced. So I want you to think about the following on screen. Imagine / your child starts to cry and yell in the store. Your child starts hitting you when it's time for bed. Your child runs away to their toys when it's dinnertime. And your child hides behind you and won't leave your side when it's time to go into their class. 

I want everyone in the chat, if they're comfortable, to simply write the number 1 if any of these scenarios has indeed happened to them, they've experienced them. Or number 2, if you were like, no way, this has not happened to me and I really do not wish it to happen. So that is a 1 if any of these has happened to you. And then it's a 2 if they have. All right. Yeah, so we're getting specific ones. Nice, thank you, Danielle. Yeah, a lot of people with 1. I'll give a few more seconds for everyone to participate. Nice. Our first 2. Congrats, Amy. 

AMY LYNCH: [LAUGHING] 

And what we're seeing here overall, and thank you to everyone participating. Oh, nice, Alyssa. Yeah. So in multiple settings, it seems. And overall, what we're seeing is that a lot of us have been in this boat. Maybe some scenarios more than others, but we have all been in this scenario. Now, I want you to think. In any scenario that is speaking to you, what is happening? What might be happening for the child? Again, we invite via chat, or if you're feeling brave, you can raise your hand, what might be happening in these scenarios for the child? 

Stacy with a great one. She said they are overstimulated and dysregulated. Yeah, that can definitely happen. Jessica with a great one. They might be scared because it's a new place. If we're thinking of the store or a new classroom, those can potentially be new places or seemingly ever vast, ever-expansive environments. And Nicole with dysregulated, overstimulated. Alyssa, sometimes they're scared to leave a safe person or a safe item. 

Yeah, if I'm bringing my hypothetical little brother into their new classroom, he might not want to leave to this scary new environment. He's never been in this classroom. Nicole saying they can't vocalize what is occurring and it's their response. I think Nicole got our PowerPoint a little early, maybe, because that is a great response. Yes, when we were thinking of our littlest learners, our young children, they do not have the tools to maybe what Nicole said to vocalize. So yeah, really great responses everyone. 

And then for ourselves. What's happening for us? We're in the store and our child starts to yell or cry. We're trying to drop off our kids so we can go to work. What are we feeling? What might be happening with us? Yes, definitely stress. Oh, really great ones. So sometimes we can be anxious because it may feel unpredictable, might feel embarrassed or judged. And guilt. These are really great responses. 

So what we're trying to point out with these examples, and thank you everyone, is that our children have really big feelings and they are not born knowing how to manage them. As Nicole mentioned earlier, they're also not born with communicating them. And what happens when our children have big feelings? Big actions might follow the crying. Maybe hitting, things like that. And the point for all of us and teachers is that this can also be hard for us to manage, especially if we're thinking caregivers with multiple children. We're trying to get to and from a job. Teachers in a classroom. Managing big feelings can be really difficult. 

AIDAN CAMPAGNOLIO: So how we respond as the adults in their lives makes all the difference. And we would like to have you all think about this in breakout rooms. We will, of course, post the text here so you won't forget. But while you're in your breakout rooms, we would like you to think about how you respond when these big feelings occur, and what are ways that your child's teacher might respond when these big feelings occur. 

AMY LYNCH: Stacy is going to set up the breakout rooms. You should get an invitation to the room, so just follow that link and you can do a quick introduction and then Stacy will be able to post this content in the messaging. So it will come through your chat in the breakout room. Or you could take a screenshot of this. 

STACY PHILLIPS: OK, the breakout rooms are open and you should see on your screen. If you don't, I can help assign you manually, but it'll say join. There are five rooms. We have currently 23 people, so this should work out. And you just click the blue Join button. And if you need help, unmute and I'm happy to assign you to a room. 

AMY LYNCH: So Stacy, they'll be able to be in the same breakout rooms for the next breakout, correct? 

STACY PHILLIPS: Yeah, sure. 

AMY LYNCH: I just opened breakout rooms and it looks like they're going to stay put, so. 

STACY PHILLIPS: OK, great. 

AMY LYNCH: I'll wait for everybody to come back. 

STACY PHILLIPS: Welcome back, everybody. 

AIDAN CAMPAGNOLIO: All right. Welcome to everyone. I believe we almost have everybody back. So, yeah, you all had these questions in mind. I would love really quickly for people to share some things that really stuck with them while they chatted with others. 

ANGELIQUE MAURY: I think for our group, WE had Chloe and. was it Valdez? Monica? 

STUDENT 1: Monica, yeah. 

ANGELIQUE MAURY: We were just trying to get Monica's feedback, but I think what I found interesting between me and Chloe's story was that I was talking about managing the big feelings of a preschooler, and she was talking about managing the big feelings of a 14-year-old she knows, and how similar the tools were that we were using to help support those feelings. And I think the interesting thing that I found that she said was that sometimes I guess if, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Chloe, if you put too much time in the emotional space that they may get stuck and stay there and be resistant to transition. 

Whereas with the toddler, I think for me, I'm in the toddler, the preschool, I have found that the emotion now moves to the other item that they might have been drawn to based on me giving them some options. 

[INTERPOSING VOICES] 

Similar to what. 

[INTERPOSING VOICES] 

Can y'all hear me? I feel like I'm having two conversations. 

AMY LYNCH: You're doing great. We just have somebody who was unmuted for a moment. Sorry about that. 

ANGELIQUE MAURY: OK. Yeah. So Monica was saying she talks about how they have a flip chart that gives kids different options, and support either calming activities or-- I don't know. I don't know what other tools she was saying, but I know she talked about a flip chart that gave them some options. And for us, my option was to escort the child into the classroom, since it was a new space for most of our kids. And introducing them to the space and getting a sense from the parent what kind of things the child is drawn to and how to have the best support. 

AIDAN CAMPAGNOLIO: Yeah. Thank you so much, Angelique. That sounded like a fantastic conversation. And I think we're going to move on from that because there were so many beautiful things mentioned. Yeah, I'm really glad that you three had that conversation. Thank you. 

AMY LYNCH: Because how adults respond and promote calm and regulation and connectedness supports inclusion. And for our work, we've been looking at inclusion and exclusion in early childhood settings and the connection of exclusion to later life experiences, including the preschool-to-prison pipeline. What's important for all of us to know and what we want is inclusion. Inclusion is making sure that all children have equal opportunities to take part in all classroom activities, no matter what their skills or differences are. 

When inclusion happens, a child feels heard and valued. They feel supported and understood. And they feel that they are recognized for their strengths instead of people focusing on what's not working well for them. When a child is included, it helps them feel safe. As we talked about earlier, when children are feeling safe and calm and regulated and connected, they learn better. We all learn better under that circumstance. They feel more a part of community and part of a group, and that helps them develop more positive social skills or pro-social skills with others. And ultimately, inclusion helps kids act confidently and know what they need to do in a classroom. 

Unfortunately, as I'm sure you talked about in your breakout rooms, a lot of times, adult responses when a child is struggling with expressing big feelings or behaviors is to move a child away from the community space, or to take them for a walk outside the classroom, or have them sit in a different spot and play with a sensory activity to get some calming. From a parent's perspective, it might be that you're sending the child to another room from the rest of the family so that they can get settled. 

And this is all exclusion. Exclusion is when children do not have access to opportunities to take part in all of the classroom activities. This happens when an individual student or when children are leaving other children out, when a teacher or an adult at home is leaving a child out. It also happens, we know, at a systems level in terms of systemic marginalization and access to even educational systems. And we're going to talk more about exclusion in terms of suspension and expulsion in just a few minutes. 

And so it's important to recognize, though, that even our strategies for responding can be exclusion. And when a child experiences exclusion, they feel misunderstood. They feel unsupported and unwanted. They feel like they're broken. They're different from everybody else, and often that people are only seeing them for their problems. This can make them shut down. It impacts their ability to learn because they feel disconnected, and often exclusion can lead to them feeling more dysregulated, and they may act out more often or withdraw more often, which pulls them away from learning or participating in activities in your space even more. 

And for many kids, it leads them to be very preoccupied with trying to get attention from others or to avoid others. And they can go to extremes to do that, which can lead to other big actions and behaviors for adults to manage. And none of us want this for our children. And when we are moving a child to a different space, the intent is to help them calm and feel safe and get regulated. But we need to think about exclusion is not what we want because of the outcomes that are not what we want. And yet we know exclusionary strategies happen. And they often happen because adults feel out of control and don't know what to do. 

So we need to think about why does inclusion and exclusion matter and what can we do. So inclusion has a really positive benefits for short-term and long-term outcome. It leads to stronger social skills, stronger communication skills, improved emotional skills, including attunement to their own emotion regulation and the ability to take the perspective of others. Kids who are feeling included learn better and have better academic outcomes, greater confidence and sense of belonging, and there are fewer incidences of big behavioral actions linked with big emotions when children are feeling included. 

When children are feeling exclusion, they feel more stress and bigger feelings. Their behaviors worsen over time and it becomes more difficult for the adults in their lives-- educators, parents, ancillary providers-- to know what to do. They miss learning opportunities. They have lower confidence. And in the long run, we know that they have delayed development. We also know that exclusion is a direct factor that leads a child to be involuntarily funneled into the preschool-to-prison pipeline, meaning the more time that children experience exclusion, whether it's removal from a classroom but staying in the building or whether it's suspension, expulsion, having a parent come early and pick their child up, there's a greater likelihood that they will experience being involved in the justice system when they get older, and that's nothing that we want. 

And I would just like everybody to pause for a minute, because based on your historical experiences, this knowledge that the preschool-to-prison pipeline exists and is directly linked to children's experiences of not being included. Everybody's going to experience that knowledge differently. So our group, with gratefulness to the Pennsylvania Developmental Disabilities Council, aim to be looking to understand more about exclusion. 

If exclusion leads to increased risk for preschool-to-prison pipeline, then work needs to be done to stop exclusion. We were working at this preschool-to-prison pipeline. What's the earliest origins? Who experiences exclusion the most? What do teachers and educators think about what's happening? And how can we increase public awareness to preschool-to-prison pipeline, to exclusion? And offer resources to change the lens for best and promising practices, and offering insights to reduce the risk of in-building exclusion, as well as suspensions, expulsions and soft exclusion, like sending a child home early. So John is going to help us explore more with this, what the pipeline is, who's most at risk, and John and Maria are going to talk about what we're going to do next. 

JOHN SAUREZ: Thank you, Amy. So as she mentioned, I'm going to talk about exclusion. What does exclusion look like? So when we talk about exclusion, many people think of the most obvious examples such as suspension, expulsion. Suspension is when the child is temporarily removed from a school. So that could be from a few days where they would be out of school, and then they would return to the school within a few days. But expulsion is when a child is permanently removed from a school, and then they would have to find a different school to attend. 

For different preschool settings. There could be different exclusion policies or suspension and expulsion policies. Private schools make different rules compared to other schools like Head Start. So just be mindful they do have different policies. One thing too that's important to note, there are laws to help protect children who may have disabilities. That one law is IDEA. And what that means is Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. And that's a law that a school must have a meeting to see if the behaviors that's related to a disability to be sure that the children are treated fairly and get the support that they need in the preschool setting. 

You can go on to the next slide. OK, I'm going to go to the next slide. Perfect. All right. As I mentioned to you, this is also more information about what exclusion looks like. So it also affects families as well, OK? so just let me make sure I explain that a little bit. So how does it affect? It could affect parents. So it can happen, and it's hard to see. Exclusion is hard to see. So for parents it might be frequent phone calls from the school. It could be being asked to come pick up your child early. Or you may hear from the school or from the facility, we're not sure that we can keep your child safe. 

What about children? How does exclusion affect them in the school setting? So for children, it could look like sitting one on one away from the group in the classroom. It could look going to a sensory corner maybe during reading time. It could look like doing a different activity compared to the other children in the classroom. And remember we mentioned earlier equal access. So in that moment the child is doing a different activity, so they're not going to have equal access to the same activity as their peers in the classroom. It can even look like taking a walk outside of the classroom. That could be a form of exclusion, as well as taking the child to the administrative office as well. These actions might be meant to help, but they can limit the child's access to learning and peer interaction. 

When is exclusion often used? Exclusion usually happens when a child is having a hard time expressing what they need. It can also happen in the classroom when the adult is feeling stressed. And this can happen because, as you guys may sometimes, people feel stressed. Anybody. We kind of talked about that earlier. So in the classroom, how can teachers, educators what is affecting that stress? Some of the things could be maybe they're understaffed. Maybe they just don't have enough support to be able to meet the child's needs. Maybe the routines change. Maybe the adults-- 

Maybe the time or the training, and they don't just have the support to be able to respond to the child calmly. So it's not their fault. And I want to make sure that I'm clear about that. It's not their fault. They need support that they don't have to help the children. And it's not fair. So I just want to make sure I address that. You can move on to the next slide. 

And as I mentioned to you before, it could be the lack of support. But also they might not know what to do. That could be because of training or some other factor that we don't know. They want the behavior to stop, and they want the child to be able to feel good, feel better and enjoy learning just like the other kids. So it does happen that it most often happens when the adults feel out of control and they're very uncomfortable. So as I mentioned to you before, getting that support can help in that aspect, having more staff under ratio could also help. 

And you can move on to the-- Oh, wait, go back some more. I forgot one more thing and I want to make sure I reiterate this because I didn't mention it. It's not just in classrooms. This also applies to adults in the home, too. So I want to make sure their voice is heard as well. So it's not just educators or adults in schools. Parents also feel out of control when children have big feelings. And that's a very natural response. Naming helps normalize the experiences for families and helps build more understanding for adults at school. And it reminds the parents at home that are navigating the same, the similar challenges that the teachers may be experiencing, that they're not alone. So we're all in it together as adults. And you can move on now to the next slide. 

STACY PHILLIPS: John, sorry to interrupt you. Amy, there's a question in the chat. I didn't know if you wanted to try and tackle that or respond. 

AMY LYNCH: Yes, I saw that and I'm actually working on a response for Reseda. That's a really great question. So Reseda asked, just so we'll just take a brief moment, but we're going to hit on this. When a specialized service comes into the center and works with the child once a week for 45 minutes, is it exclusion? And that's actually a lot of what we talked about when we were doing interviews as part of our environmental look at what's happening. 

And ultimately, it is soft exclusion. We are pulling kids away from the group. Other children are seeing that child getting specialized help, which makes other kids go, well, wait. Why is that kid getting it? What's wrong with that child? And it can appear to be built into implicit bias that comes up later for children as they grow and evolve into adults to that person needs help so they're over there versus we're all-- That child's experience something that I might do at home. But because I don't do it at school, I don't have that person helping me. And so it's really something to think about. And talking with Stacy Kenny and others at the state level, as you may know, there's a big push actually, to do full inclusive service delivery. So it's a great question. And this whole discussion of exclusion really starts to challenge us to think whole picture and start thinking about some major paradigm shifts that would be helpful to promoting inclusion. So Maria-- 

MARIA AGUILAR WALLS: Thank you. Hi, everybody. My name is Maria. So it's important to look at the-- 

AMY LYNCH: Oh, Maria. I'm sorry. We were going to have a breakout room. I'm sorry. I forgot the slide was up when I was answering Reseda's questions. So we're going to have you all go to breakout rooms, the same ones. So Stacy will open them back up. And what we want you to think about is how do you feel when your child is struggling, or a child in your classroom is struggling with the behavior? 

And think about it when you are well rested versus under rested, when you're feeling supported by others, either in your preschool setting or in your home setting, or in the grocery store, versus not feeling supported by others. When you are not stressed versus when you are experiencing a lot of stress. Maybe you have job pressure or another child in the house is ill. Or maybe if you're an educator, there are 10 kids who have behavioral-based IEPs in your classroom, and it's just a lot for you. So how do you feel under these different conditions when a child is struggling with big feelings and big behaviors? So Stacy, thanks for opening the breakout rooms, and we'll see you all back in just a couple of minutes. 

MARIA AGUILAR WALLS: Hi, my name is Maria, and thank you for joining us today. I'm excited to be talking with you. And so when we're thinking about exclusion in school settings, it's important to look at the data to understand what this looks like recently in the current moment and how students are being impacted. So we can see that within the K through 12 setting, there's a lot of systemic marginalization happening of minoritized populations. So in K through 12 settings, Black students are considerably over represented in school expulsions, and students with disabilities are suspended more than twice as often as students without disabilities. 

Further than that, there's also some compounding marginalization of students with multiple marginalized identities. So we can see that Black high school boys with disabilities are suspended drastically more frequently than the national average. And so this is information on K through 12 students. But what do we know about how preschool students are being impacted? And the answer is we know much, much less, but what we do know is that preschoolers are expelled three times as often as K through 12 students, which is significant. 

And in addition to that, Black preschoolers receive out-of-school suspensions almost twice as often as other children, even though they make up a smaller part of preschool classes. And further than that, preschoolers with disabilities make up only 24% of preschool enrollment but receive 62% of preschool expulsions. So again, we can see that there is some systemic marginalization of minoritized populations when it comes to school exclusion. 

So knowing that inclusion is the goal and knowing that that's what we're all aiming for, what is actually happening at this point in time to encourage inclusion? And so an example of a exclusion-focused policy would be in 2017, the State of Pennsylvania actually issued an announcement that required early learning programs to develop policies that would prevent and reduce expulsion and suspension. So great. We know that some states are making strides, but unfortunately, despite the fact that policies are being enacted, they're not as effective as we would want them to be. 

So why is that the case? If we know that states are trying and we know that policies are being pushed, why is this still not being reflected in the classroom and being reflected in children and their family members' experiences? And so the answer to that is complicated. Why are these policies minimally effective? A big one would be staff and educator buy in. So making sure that staff members in a school within a district and educators specifically feel comfortable with these policies, feel like they can actually reasonably execute them, making sure they believe in them and are actually willing to use the policies. 

So just because something exists doesn't necessarily mean that it's being enacted. And in addition to that, not having enough staffing to support policies of inclusion. Certainly, across the state and across many states, there are staffing shortages within education, specifically in preschool. So there may not be enough manpower to actually enact these policies that are made in good faith. And in addition to that funding, there's always an issue of funding. Money is very impactful in this regard. And money controls whether or not oftentimes you're able to hire extra staff, you're able to provide sensory equipment for your students. And so there are a variety of reasons why, even though these policies are created in good faith, they're just not as effective as we need them to be. 

And so thinking about this and thinking about the experiences of children who are excluded, we'd like to talk to you a little or have you talk to each other a little bit about your experiences. So what are your child's experiences with exclusion? And what are your experiences related to your child's exclusion? So how have you felt? What have you experienced? How has this impacted you and your family? How has this impacted your child, the child in your care? So we'd like to have you actually return to breakout rooms. And if you're comfortable, because we know that this can be sensitive and vulnerable information, if you're comfortable sharing your experiences, please feel free to do that with your group in your breakout rooms. 

STACY PHILLIPS: OK, breakout rooms are open. You should be able to join. I will assign people. Oh my goodness, now there's too many people in room three. 

MCKINLEY ROUSE: How many of you guys got to-- I know you have a lot to cover, but I'm just saying, we get some good discussions in there, but we have to jump out real quick so that's fine. 

AMY LYNCH: Thanks for that feedback. 

MARIA AGUILAR WALLS: All right, so it looks like most everyone is back from the breakout rooms. So we know that this information is sensitive, and we appreciate your discussions. If you are comfortable at this point dropping in the chat the feelings that you've experienced related to your child's exclusion, how this has impacted your family, please feel free to put that information in the chat. A summary of your discussion or anything that you would like to share. OK, so Stacy says it can be very isolating. Absolutely can maybe feel like you're not sure where to turn to for help. Feeling like you're without support. Yes. Increased isolation. Absolutely. 

Any other thoughts, feelings, emotions this may have brought up for you? Somebody says can cause stress on the marriage. Absolutely. Can be difficult to manage the different caregivers at hand and the different roles that everybody might play. Someone talking about-- Oh, so many good messages in the chat. Feelings of frustration. Yeah, great. Well, thank you. Thank you for your participation. Oh, I see that there's a hand raised. Reseda, feel free to unmute and share your experiences. 

STACY PHILLIPS: Thank you. I've been a preschool person for the last 30-plus years, and I've been doing teaching in the classroom, directing program coordinator services and for special needs and all that. But I also had an experience with my children. I have four grown children, and when the third one was going to school, I got phone calls every day from the high school that he was attending, and we ended up-- and I say we because we made the decision together-- We ended up withdrawing my son from the high school a year before the-- He actually withdrew in February of the pandemic, close down, and they closed down the school in March. So we signed the paper before in February. So he didn't graduate from high school. 

And it was a constantly phone call every day. I needed to step out of my job every day, at least three times a day because the school is nearby, around the corner of my job. And he has some social-emotional issues. He has some mental health issues as well. It was written down in IEP. So he was receiving services, but still they make me feel that they were unable to manage him. So I ended up not having the resources of what do I do with this kid? Now where do I send him? What do I do? Do I put him in a hospital? What do I do? 

And I ended up not having support at all. And, back then he was 17. So whenever a kid come to the center with behaviors and we try to work around, I usually, in a way, I understand how the father or the mother feels when, what do I do? Because we ended up as parents saying, what do I do now? And I was someone, I am someone that is involved in education in a sort of way and understand the system in a way. But I ended up having a child at that age without knowing what to do. I didn't have the resources. I didn't have the support because it was exhausting. And I said, I'm going to have to take this kid out because I'm not able to concentrate on my job. I couldn't perform my job in the best way because of this calling all the time. It's frustrating. Thank you for the opportunity. 

MARIA AGUILAR WALLS: Thank you for sharing. That sounds incredibly challenging and destabilizing for everyone involved in your family. And unfortunately, that is a shared experience. Fortunate in that you're not alone, but unfortunate in that many families have experienced something similar. So it sounds really challenging. And thank you for sharing that. 

AMY LYNCH: And the other thing I think about with that is that even your knowledge, how about families who aren't a part of an educational system? You're a part of an early childhood educational system, and finding ways to advocate and support and find resources for your son was a struggle, so imagine families who don't have the professional experiences in an education space. And McKinley talks about how these experiences can be really demoralizing for parents and really cause a higher degree of stress because we want our kids to succeed and we tend to see our children's strengths and wanting their school settings to see them as well. 

So our work also found that if we know exclusion is not what we want and we want exclusion, what is out there in terms of the research, in terms of the education delivery models, in terms of how to change the lens. And what we found with in the early childhood settings is that best and promising practices, all roads led to trauma-informed approach strategies. And while we're talking about trauma-informed education, as many of you have discussed, our child's trauma triggers and our trauma triggers don't just occur in school, they occur in our homes, in our grocery stores, and our community centers. 

And so it's really about trauma-informed living and a paradigm switch to recognizing that trauma has happened, to realizing the impact of a historical experiences of trauma or current increased chronic toxic stress upon an individual. And how do we flip the lens for how we respond to the big feelings and big actions that go with experiences of adversity? 

So thinking about trauma-informed care really means that all of the adults around the kids-- teachers, parents, grandparents, ancillary service providers-- understand that some young children have gone through hard or scary experiences that make their ability to respond to their emotions even more difficult. Now in the traditional sense of trauma, it's thinking about adverse childhood experiences like experiencing physical abuse, neglect, being a witness to intimate partner violence, living in a community that has violence happening around them. It's poverty. 

It's experiencing a pandemic. Because for everybody now, everybody has experienced a global trauma and shifting parent working home, kids not going to school, increased stress, kids returning to school. Kids having, we know because of the pandemic more social, emotional, cognitive, motor skills and language differences than children pre-pandemic. And none of this is intentional. So much of this is incidental happening and passed on through intergenerational trauma as well. And I think that's the part that we have got to recognize is that when trauma has happened, it is not intentional. It is not anything we desire. 

And we have to be looking at it from a bigger-picture impact on the brain and the body and emotionality. And that from an education and a home living standpoint, when kids have experienced hard or scary things, they are going to have a difficult time responding to their emotions. And somebody was speaking with us earlier about this. All kids are going to have the same types of triggers, but children who've experienced trauma experience it more frequently, more intensely, and it's harder to help them regulate and feel safe. 

And so educators and other adults around kids need to recognize this is not a child being bad when they are showing behaviors, they are not consciously making a choice to do this in order to make the adults around them angry. They truly are feeling internally unsafe, out of control, and they don't know what to do. And so it's very important that we respond to those needs behind the behaviors instead of just responding to and trying to extinguish the behaviors. And this is really hard. 

If you're a parent, you may have gone through the trauma that your child witnessed, or you both may have gone through homelessness or other really big life challenges. And for adults in classrooms, these are behaviors that can be really uncomfortable. And it's hard to respond because we just want the behaviors to stop. So when you see a big emotion or behavior, what is vital is that you push Pause and think about what's really happening for the child behind the behavior. And trauma-informed strategies help us think through what is happening for the child and how can we respond in a way that aligns with trauma-informed principles, so that the child can feel heard, that they can feel their need is understood, and that we can help them feel safe. 

And so we're going to talk through these core principles. There's six of them. And we're going to talk through each one. And I think because now we're aware we have a little bit more time, we might pause after the third one and send you all to breakout rooms for a couple of minutes to think about how you could deploy some strategies around them. Team, are you OK with that? Great. OK. 

So the first strategy is safety. And here's the thing. As an adult, I may put everything in place so that a child could feel safe. I may be aware of their physical environment. I may be aware of making sure that their hunger and their thirst and their sleep needs have been met. Or I may be aware that they haven't been met and so how am I going to meet those needs first to ensure physical safety? I may be setting up my classroom or my home space environmentally, so that there are more regulating spaces and that the noise is reduced and that the movement activity around kids is reduced to enhance physical safety. 

I'm going to need to prioritize social safety. And this is really promoting that group regulation and that group connection, promoting a community for a sense of belonging. Emotionally as the child feeling like everybody is seeing hearing their needs and that they're valued for their strengths. And what are they emotionally sensing in terms of their own internal signals? When they are sad, are they feeling sad and expressing sad or they unsure what the uncomfortable feeling is and so they just express anger? 

This is emotional attunement that we need to help kids become aware of their body signals and recognize what their actions are that might indicate what their body signals really are, even if they don't know them. And help them understand and meet their emotional needs. Because it can be really scary for kids when they don't feel safe. 

So even when we put all these things in place, we have to remember the child still may not feel safe. And for us, a strategy regarding safety is recognizing our own internal signals. If we're like, I'm doing everything I can. I Don't know what else to do. Because then our own energy contributes an instability to the overall potential safety experiences of children in the class and children in the classroom. So we really need to be thinking about what might be happening at a physical level, at a social level, and at an emotional level that's causing the child to feel unsafe and then taking a step back and going, well, even if we've put everything in place, this child's history may mean they still don't feel safe. 

And we need to not take that personally and keep working through strategies that might help them feel safe. Giving them a rest, giving them a snuggle, giving them water or a drink and/or food, even when it's not mealtime. Really thinking and digging deep about what the child might be feeling internally so that their basic needs are met for basic sense of safety. 

And I want you to think about that in your schools. How often does a child say, I'm thirsty, and you say, well, we're going outside. There's no time for a drink. Or I'm hungry, and, well, lunch is at 12 and it's only 11, and we can't do a snack right now. And how often that can just start to slowly eat away at your child's internal physical stability so that they don't feel a basic need is met and at a lower brain level, they're not going to feel safe if their hunger needs aren't or thirst needs aren't getting met. 

The second principle is empowerment of voice and choice. This is really making sure that kids feel empowered to have a voice. And to tell you how they're feeling, and to feel that can feel heard, and for children to have a lot of choices. Don't worry, a lot of people think that empowering voice and choice means giving children everything that they need and having no boundaries, where kids get to do everything and have anything that they want. And that's not what we're saying here. Empowerment of voice and choice ensures that educators and adults around the child and the child themselves feel that they are given an opportunity to be heard and to have power and control over the things that are developmentally appropriate. 

Oftentimes, when kids have big emotions and big feelings, they feel scared and out of control. And in those moments, they get very, very stuck. And so at a child level, being able to describe what you're saying that you're seeing and not naming a feeling is a way to start giving them voice. Our tendency is to say, oh my gosh, you're angry. But what if the actions look like anger and the child is really feeling sad? So instead, you say, I see your fists are tightening up. I see your face is getting red I hear your voice is getting really loud. What's happening? 

Here's a picture of different emotion faces. Which one are you really feeling compared to what you're showing on the outside? Giving them voice beyond the actions that you see. 

When a child is not upset, empowering voice and choice is super important because it builds connections and positive relationships. So as often as you can give a child a choice, do you want to, number one, at dinner time sit on the stool or sit on, number two the chair? Or do you want to, number two stand at the table? When you're out on the playground, do you, number two, want to go on the swing, or number two, go down the slide? 

Really thinking about ways that you can empower lots of choices so that then when a child is stuck, you can go, oh, I see these things. Do you want to, number one, take a mirror breath, or number two, take a break and do freeze dance? So that you help them get unstuck, feel like they can take control because when they feel out of control, it's very scary. And help move them away and help get them more regulated from where they're feeling very stuck. But the empowerment practice when they are not feeling stuck is really important. 

The other thing about empowerment is setting very clear boundaries, making sure that they feel safe with boundaries and predictable expectations so that they know what needs to happen next. Predictability and structure. So having a visual schedule. We're having morning circle, and then we're going to the library, and then we're going to the playground. And then it's going to be snack time. 

And sticking to it. When we stick to the plan, a child feels empowered to know what's coming next. And then they feel like they have more control and more choices. So language that reflects educators offering choices is also important, but also educators feeling like they are being heard will occur more if there's a regular structure and routine. And some consistent language to make choices. 

So for example, using language like we're going to all stick together. So when it's time to move into the morning circle and one child is at the blocks and one child-- and you're saying, hey, come on over, and another child is over at the water table. And you're like, what are you doing? We're at morning circle. That's too much. If you were to have all that language versus empowering voice through using uniform language like, we're all going to stick together. You're at the blocks, we're at the mooring circle. Stick together. You're at the water table with the morning circle. Stick together. 

Common language gives common voice, which helps with choices and strategies and people feeling voicing. And at home it's the same thing. Are you embedding opportunities for voice and choice into your structure so that-- And are you ensuring that there is predictability and routine so that kids know what to expect? Because when we do, we feel safer. When we feel safer, we can access our language part of our brain, and we are more likely to be able to have a voice and feel like we can express our choices. The other thing about empowering voice and choice is really giving lots of strength-based language. As much as possible, praising kids and what we used to talk about as praising kids for what they're doing right. But praising kids for all of the things that are their strengths. So character praise is really important. 

The third one is trustworthiness and transparency. This is being really clear. Are your words consistent across spaces? When children know what to expect and what's expected of them because communication is very clear and open, then they can trust that the adult is going to follow through on what's expected. So trustworthiness and transparency really goes tightly with safety and empowerment of voice and choice. In a school, having that routine is essentially saying to the child, you can trust that what's coming and in trusting what's coming, you can stay calm. 

When you need to change something, being very clear. Uh-oh, it's snowing. No playground today. Would everybody like to, number one, have a dance party on the carpet, or number two, spend some quiet time in the library? So being very clear about a change and why that change is happening with words that are developmentally appropriate. Some kids may need pictures. Some kids may need stop-and-go cards to have visual communication that's more clear. But the point is that adults are setting up and being clear, and their actions are matching their words. If we have two more minutes or somebody gets to do something two more times and you set that boundary and stay with it so that the child can trust that you mean what you say and you'll follow through all the time. 

So why don't we send you all into breakout rooms to give you time to just think about these three strategies, and what-- I would love to hear some of the things that you all discussed before we move on to the final three and a couple of scenarios. So what were some of the things that you discussed? We can throw it in the chat or raise your hand. 

ANGELIQUE MAURY: What came to mind for me as you spoke about the different areas, I remember when you were given us category, but you talked about giving choices. Maybe something related to communication. And I was telling them that some of this experience, I almost feel like it's even a trigger for me. But I'm a bit more grounded now. But it's funny how in revisiting certain statements or certain things, the feelings come back. And you said something about giving a choice as to, OK, when you say it was a time to eat and you said something about, well, you could either stand up or you could either sit down. And culturally, for us, standing up is not OK. 

And then I was telling them how we even grew up with a lot of I guess they call them old folk tale superstitions. And they used to say, if you stand up and eat, it makes the house poor. So even to this day, certain practices are still very present in my life and even in my mind that sometimes we don't know when we're crossing a cultural difference until you're in that space. 

And I shared about a little boy who they removed the food from because it was time to transition into nap time and he freaked out. And when I went to talk to him about it, he was scared as to what would happen to him if he didn't finish eating that food. So-- 

AMY LYNCH: Yeah, absolutely. Angelique, boy, thank you for sharing all that. Because you've basically started our way into principle six, which is cultural, being aware of history, our own history, the history that's passed on through cultural values and attitudes and beliefs. So thank you. We'll talk more about that in a minute. All right, so let me go back here. OK OK. 

So mutuality and collaboration is another principle. And this is really hard because as adults, it's our natural inclination to want to have to instruct and have kids do exactly what we want them to do in the moment. And the more we feel out of control, the more we want to step in and have control. And so we become instructional. And instructional is not mutuality and it's not collaboration. 

And so this pairs with empowerment of voice and choice because, to some degree, in adult-child relationship, whether it's educator-child or parent-child, we know there needs to be some adult-led boundaries guiding respect, kindness, determining what is safe and appropriate for a child to do. What a two-year-old can do and have choices over is going to be very different than what a five-year-old can do and have choices over. And then also taking into account kids' sensory needs and things to maintain safety. 

It's human inclination to want to have control, but that sets up power continuums, and especially for people who've had trauma experiences, which I'm going to remind you all, we all did. Several years of shutdown during the pandemic. It's going to impact having a higher tendency for trauma responses-- fight, flight, freeze-- coming out from a history of their experiences playing out in the now and current experiences that might be causing discomfort. And when we feel in those spaces of fight, flight, and freeze, guess what we want to do even more? Our big brains and little brains want to take control more because we don't feel safe. 

And so power differentials can come up even more when somebody is in a reactive trauma space. And then we have to work even harder towards mutuality and collaboration. And this is why all of these strategies, it is so important that we are talking about them proactively. So not just when somebody is struggling with big feelings. It's actually even more important outside of those times to fuel safety, to fuel empowerment of voice and choice, to demonstrate I am safe, I am trustworthy, I am transparent. And to say, we are going to work together, mutually collaborative interactions and promoting play in a house between parent and child, educator and child, child and child as siblings or classroom peers. 

Helping kids learn how to take turns with equity and opportunity. Teaching kids to wait. These are skills that then support mutuality and collaboration. It's shifting from this concept of adults know everything and kids just need to listen to this concept of together, we're going to look at the problem, not the person. Together, we're going to work to figure out a solution to the problem that works for both of us. 

Together, we're going to ensure that our actions show an awareness of understanding of where each person is in that space so that we can problem solve, work through, and have mutual respect for who's bringing what to the situation that's a problem in the moment. So imagine how much more a child will feel empowered and less under a power struggle if you've spent lots of time in play in naturally occurring opportunities to give them lots of choice that's developmentally appropriate. So that then when it's time to solve a problem or make a plan, they feel less of that power continuum. Does that make sense? 

The next concept is peer support. And oh my gosh, some of the things that you've all shared makes me just literally want to jump through the screen and say, let's start a voxer group. Let's get everybody talking. Because finding your people, not feeling isolated, knowing that if you are standing in that preschool and your child will not leave your side, or that your child is flipping chairs, that it is not just you that has happened to. And that is not just you and your child trying to figure this out together. 

And this is where finding peer supports, especially those that engage folks in self-care for regulation, are going to be really vital and really important. So for educators, it's making sure in your building that you have time that you're spending with other educators without children around. For parents, it's really making sure that you are finding people that you can feel safe to talk to. 

Ask your early childhood education center, hey, can parents meet a half an hour before pickup in this space and just have time every Wednesday to meet up and talk? Or is there a lobby space that as administrators you can set up that can be a safe space for parents to sit and wait or to meet up after they drop their children off? Actively creating spaces for peer support opportunities. 

And in a traditional peer support, nobody is paid. There are no pre-trained professionals to lead the group. They are really safe spaces where peer to peer you can share what's happened, and this is often the time of hearing strategies that you wouldn't have thought of but have worked for somebody else. And because you know that they've been vulnerable with you, you're safe to hear it and be vulnerable with them. Even some of the things that came out in your breakout rooms, and by having you all in the same breakout room, hopefully we created a little bit of peer support just within this group, this session. 

And the final principle is what Angelique was talking about. And this is that we all need to remember that we all bring history, whether it's history from 56 years ago when I was a two-year-old, or whether it's history from two days ago and what's happened. It's experiences that may be good or experiences that may have been very hard and hurtful and be impacting us, impacting the way we respond to New stress or triggers of old stress. History might be linked to our race or ethnicity and experiences of discrimination that we have had regarding race, ethnicity, gender, ability. 

Maybe as an adult you remember being actively or passively excluded in your classroom because you had executive functioning differences or identified as neurodivergent and nobody recognized that, or because of what color your skin was and that there was bias happening in your access to opportunities or within your homes or classrooms. Maybe you experienced bullying. How is that history and the feelings you stored impacting your responsiveness when you hear your child is having a hard time? Or you're an educator in a classroom bringing your own history, and you went into education to make sure that kids felt included and that nobody got yelled at, and you find yourself yelling. 

We bring our history and experiences into our spaces And so do our kids. So if you're the third educational center a child has been in, that child has experienced some sort of othering and exclusion in their history that they're bringing in, and they're not going to feel safe in your environment initially. We know that exclusion happens and we know more often, unfortunately, it happens for children who are Black or tan or have disabilities. So we have to be very aware of the history and the intersectionality. 

In a recent study, educators were asked to identify children's executive functioning, planning, problem solving, decision making, and quite unfortunately, depending on the child's racial and ethnic presentation, educators judge what their executive functioning capacities are going to be differently. So it's really important that we acknowledge our own history and that we acknowledge bias and that we learn to work to break down bias. Because intentionally or not, exclusion experiences happen, very much so when we're not considering historical, cultural, racial, ethnic, gender, ability, experiences and the intersectionality. 

And so when we're thinking about physical safety, emotional safety, social safety this comes into play. Did I just take food away from a child who at home gets in trouble if they don't finish their food? I have just shifted their physical safety. Did I just tell a child that they have a choice to stand up to eat, but they've been told from their cultural beliefs that will impact their family's experiences of wealth? Like, we really need to have a much higher degree of cultural humility and historical humility to be understanding what's happening and what people are bringing into our spaces. And the same occurs at home. If anybody's doing any multi-generational living, you're probably going to see this very loud and clear in your home. 

So what should happen in a trauma-informed space? Essentially, that an educator recognizes that all young children have gone through some hard or scary experiences, some may be harder than others, and that if they're wiggling versus sitting still or having a hard time following directions, or yelling or hitting or hiding when they have big feelings, that this might be a child who is expressing to you that they've had a hard or scary things happen, or maybe they've got a disability that hasn't yet been identified. 

Sensory differences, executive functioning differences, early childhood mental health differences. These are all going to influence what a child is doing. And it's up to the educators, the teachers, the adults, parents to find ways to create safe, stable, nurturing environments where kids can be seen, heard, and valued, even when they're having a hard time. 

There are some different packages and programs that are available. Schools can get trauma-sensitive schools training. They can do multi-tiered systems of support. There's trauma-sensitive pedagogy. There has been some work over the last few years in full classroom, trauma-informed coaching and models for children and educators. For caregivers, there's a toolkit, and there's a Center for Social and Emotional Foundations for Learning. And some places are lucky, like trauma-sensitive pedagogy that includes direct coaching and in-classroom strategies. But that paradigm shift really needs that in=classroom coaching. Aidan. 

AIDAN CAMPAGNOLIO: With those strategies and packages available, we also want to empathize with our educators that it is incredibly difficult to respond to a child's big feelings when you are worn out. From our research, we found that there's increasing, it feels, ever-increasing student-to-teacher ratios, low wages specifically in Pennsylvania. In all 67 counties, on average, early childhood educators do not make a living wage. And that is from 2024. Again, in all of Pennsylvania's counties, on average, early childhood educators do not make a living wage. 

So there are incredibly significant systemic barriers that would make it difficult to respond in a trauma-informed way. And, of course, the staffing crisis. For parents and caregivers, your kids might be seeing new teachers even within a school year. And for staff themselves, it's hard to feel, it's hard to establish a predictable environment in your classroom when the environment around you is changing a lot. And simply put, educators really need more support. There's a bunch of different adult wellness programs that districts may offer, schools themselves might offer. And we want to know from all of you, could you put in the chat some things that would help or have helped your own wellness in these scenarios, or helped your child's educator with wellness? 

Great. Yeah. Thank you, Stacey. So one thing to help with wellness is the school-to-family connection and building that space. Stacey says if something worked at home, that's great news, so we should share that with school staff so that hopefully they can take some lessons learned. We have some more people coming in. We have Nicole saying taking a breath and realizing they're human as well. And you want to have a conversation with these people, of course. That's a great point in stepping back. And most of the time us as caregivers want to do well for our child. 

Most of the time, educators also want to do well for their children, so having that connection and taking a breath. Yeah, love that. We have a, oh, wow, so many more stuff. This is great. Extra staff to the classroom. Yes. Sometimes, especially with preschool environments, might have one on ones. I know that's sometimes common. Getting more sleep I'm seeing. Yes. So many great things here. Trauma-informed IEPs. And IEPs, of course, where we can set goals and be very specific on what different strategies would be helpful for your kid, for your child. This is all great. Seeing so many things here. Awesome. 

So we want to leave you with something here. We want to look at a situation where a four-year-old is suspended from preschool for two weeks for hitting a teacher and their classmates over four times in the last two days. So with all of the knowledge you learned from this presentation, we want you to answer the question, what is the concern here in this suspension or exclusion practice? A four-year-old is suspended from preschool for two weeks for hitting a teacher and their classmates over four times in the last two days. What is the concern here? 

STACY PHILLIPS: This is Stacy. I would say the main concern is the reason that the child has been hitting so much in the last two days isn't being addressed by just excluding him from school for two weeks, or them from school for two weeks. 

AIDAN CAMPAGNOLIO: Yeah. Thank you. Stacy. So we learned in this PowerPoint our young learners have big feelings and they're not equipped to handle them. They are too young. So exactly as you said, the solution proposed here, which is suspension, isn't really getting at the underlying reason. Why is our four-year-old hitting it seems four times in the last two days? That seems pretty severe. So yeah, we're not really getting at the underlying reason here. 

We have Nicole as well. The students' needs were not being met. That's exactly right. Sometimes our students, again, it's difficult to communicate their needs, so sometimes they might hit. So we need to as a school team, and as school team also including caregivers here, we need to investigate what needs are not being met? 

ANGELIQUE MAURY: I think I was also concerned about the policy that supports a two-week suspension. That's what you say here, two weeks. 

AIDAN CAMPAGNOLIO: Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, so exactly what you're saying. So Angelique is looking at this and going two weeks. That's a lot of time away from school. Where did that number come from? 

ANGELIQUE MAURY: Yeah, because I work at a crisis nursery, and that means that we get a lot of these children that come through here when this happens. And to have a parent be concerned about child care for two weeks when they've already been approved for childcare subsidy so that child can attend a program, I think that I found myself many times wanting to support them with a conversation with the school around this, and how the school has supported the behavior or has not supported behavior before we got to a two-week suspension. 

AIDAN CAMPAGNOLIO: Exactly right. So as Angelique perfectly described, we're not only seeing the effect of the student themselves, so they're missing out on all this education and spending time with peers, but in the greater system, their families and caregivers have already planned that their childcare or move things in place so that their child wouldn't be two weeks at home, for example. So we're seeing that not only it doesn't get to the underlying reason behind the hitting, it has almost a cascading series of events. 

I believe we have more people. Yeah. Jamie points out they're going to miss out on educational opportunities. This consequence seems a little extreme. Jamie mentions this could have been a teaching moment, and as we see here in the practice, that was not the case. These are all really great. Yeah, thank you all so much for this participation. 

And one suggestion we have here is that for caregivers with students without an IEP, maybe we can request an evaluation. There's various different things, maybe like a functional behavior assessment to get at the underlying reason of, well, why hitting? Why is this happening? And for families and caregivers with young learners with IEPs, if a student with a disability is to be suspended, there needs to be a meeting about that. And that is the law. So yeah, those are some strategies that we have here. 

AMY LYNCH: Thank you, Aidan and John and Maria for sharing all of this. And thank you, everybody, for your active participation, both in this larger group, in the chat, and in your breakout rooms. We could have made this a full-day seminar. There's so much that we could have talked about. And we hope that we were able to consolidate and present in a way that educators, administrators, parents, I believe there's some OTs here and some education students, that we presented information in a way that you can feel like you can take things back with you to whatever spaces to promote inclusion in a trauma-informed way, and be more sensitive to the experiences that you as an adult and the child or children you're working with are feeling. 

I'm going to share screen We have a couple of minutes for more discussion, but as people start to hop off, it's really important not only to thank you, but a special thanks to the Pennsylvania Developmental Disabilities Council for continuing to support this work so that we could bring this to you. We're working on a website, resources for families and videos for educators and parents. So thank you all for coming. And if you would like to have more discussion or stay, we are here. We don't need to leave right away. And if you need to leave, we honor you for taking the time out of your very busy lives to come and learn. And you can reach out to Stacy for any follow-up questions or thoughts you have. She can get that back to us and we can respond to you. 

STACY PHILLIPS: Thank you so much, Amy, Aidan, John and Maria. We really appreciate you all being here today. This was really informative. And I will be sending out the slides by the end of the week. So as long as you registered, which you did in order to be here today, I will send those out to you. Please don't forget to complete the evaluation. John, can you put that in the chat just one more time so that it's right there? Thank you. We appreciate you doing that. It's just a couple of questions. And yeah, we're here if you have any other thoughts.