COE Connections Episode 19: Sascha Longstreth

Transcript

Sascha Longstreth: We would never suspend a child for not knowing how to read, but every day, there are children in early childhood who are suspended and expelled for not yet knowing how to manage their emotions or their behavior. And so, what we've learned in education is that literacy is built through teaching, not through punishment. Behavior's no different. It's a skill set. It's not a character flaw. So the work that I do is about helping schools and early childhood programs make that same shift from punishment to teaching.

(Music plays)

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: Welcome to COE Connections, the SDSU College of Education Research and Scholarship podcast series. I'm your host, Rachel Haine-Schlagel. I'm the Associate Dean for Research for the College of Education, and a Professor of Child and Family Development at San Diego State University, a proud Hispanic-serving institution on the land of the Kumeyaay.

Today, I'm joined by Dr. Sascha Longstreth, Associate Professor in my department, Department of Child and Family Development. Sascha’s research is closely connected to her teaching practice, and she is deeply committed to the exploration of practices that support children's early social-emotional competence. Sascha co-directs SDSU's Center for Excellence in Early Development, a transdisciplinary, research-based training facility with a holistic approach to supporting early childhood development, mental health and education in San Diego County and beyond. 

She is an award-winning author, co-authoring two books, “Effective Discipline Policies, How to Create a System That Supports Young Children's Social-emotional Competence”, and “Developing and Implementing Effective Discipline Policies, a Practical Guide.” Sascha works with multiple local and statewide early childhood systems in her role as an early childhood mental health programmatic consultant to promote equitable and developmentally appropriate discipline policies and reduce exclusionary discipline practices.

Sascha received her Ph.D. and her master's degrees in Human Development and Learning from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Bachelor's in developmental psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Welcome, Sascha! Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. 

Sascha Longstreth: Thank you for having me.

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: Alright, well, as you know, I have a few questions for you, and my first question is, why do you study what you do?

Sascha Longstreth: So my journey into this work started when I was a school psychology intern in grad school, and I was an intern at a local elementary school in Berkeley, and I noticed that when I came in each week, I kept seeing the same kids in the principal's office. Week after week. And there was one little guy in particular, he's a kindergartner, and was tiny, I remember, and every week I'd go in, he'd be sitting in this chair next to the principal's office. And I remember thinking, like, this child can't even tie his own shoes yet, but he's already being labeled as trouble. 

So, what I learned was that instead of getting help, the kids that were having behavior issues were basically being removed from their classroom again and again. And that really stayed with me. So, when I started digging into it more, I realized that there wasn't much support for these kids. That most schools were using suspensions and expulsions as some form of behavior intervention, instead of trying to understand what is really going on. And so that's when something really clicked for me, and that was what we often call challenging behaviors in the field, are really so often just behaviors that adults find challenging.

So, instead, you know, the way I look at it is that when a child is struggling, it's really an invitation for us, the adults, to look closer, to not push them away. It's basically our problem to solve, not theirs. And so that realization really pushed me to zoom out more and look at the bigger picture. I wanted to understand not just what was happening with the individual kids, but also with the systems that are shaping how educators are responding to these kids in the first place. So that's what led me to start focusing on discipline policies themselves. And one of the reasons I focus on that is because I think discipline policies really do send a powerful message about what we value in children.

I've personally always believed that good education supports a child's academics and their social-emotional development. And if we want our kids to thrive, then we need to create structures that are going to help them to learn and to grow, and not to remove them when things get hard. And really, that is the belief that's guiding everything that I do now.

Sascha Longstreth: I love that. I love that idea of, you know, when challenging behaviors are really challenging for us as adults, rather than challenging for the child, per se. That's a really great reframe. Alright, let me ask you next, what are you working on right now?

So right now, Sarah Garrity and I are partnering with several states to integrate our TAGPEC framework. TAGPEC stands for Teaching and Guidance Policy Essentials Checklist. Our goal is to work with these states, which include Utah and Wisconsin and Washington and Iowa, to use this TAGPAC, which is basically a checklist that we created. It's grounded in years of research about what actually works to support children's behavior in educational settings. So, we're currently training coaches who then work directly with program leaders through a reflective process. 

So, for us, it's not just about checking the boxes, but we really want to help people examine their assumptions about discipline and to build policies that truly serve kids and their families. And we've been doing this work almost for two decades. It takes a long time, but we are seeing a real shift in how programs are thinking about discipline.

We're also emphasizing that this work has to start with leadership. So, program directors, principals, even state departments of education… Sarah and I are both former teachers, you know, we don't feel that we can keep putting everything on teachers. They already have such a demanding job. So, we think that real change happens when leaders create systems that make these kinds of teaching-based approaches possible. So that means creating high-quality policies, that means providing coaching, professional development, all the things to support our teachers that we know really work. 

What we're hearing right now from the field is that because of COVID, that this need for more behavioral support in school settings is even more urgent. We've seen a sharp rise in behavior challenges since children have returned to school. Teachers are reporting an uptick in behaviors like aggression, emotional dysregulation, and anxiety. So, teachers are actually facing more complex classrooms and more complex behaviors than ever. But the system around them hasn't evolved with it. And so, we are trying to work with these systems to help them evolve so that they have more compassion. They have more coordination, and they take a humanistic approach to understanding what kids have been through.

We've also been responding to Executive Order 14280. This executive order came out earlier this year, and unfortunately, it does try to roll back much of the progress that we've made in moving away from punitive discipline.

So, we're doing things like writing op-eds, we're working with districts to help them stay focused on what we know, really works, which, again, are those teaching-based approaches rather than punishment. And we're also making sure that families who speak languages other than English can access these tools, too, because we really do believe that every family wants to help their children thrive.

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: Wow just the impact that you're having. My next question's about impact, but I'm thinking about, you know, all these different states from all over the country that you and Sarah are working with. It's really phenomenal impact, but do you have an example of… of impact that your work is having on community? And it could be at the state level, or it could be any other level that you want to talk about.

Sascha Longstreth:  Yes, I think a great example comes from our work in Seattle, Washington. So, the child care resources team there, we trained them on the TAGPEC framework, and then they used the TAGPEC framework to help meet the state's new no-expulsion requirement, and they actually made it a point to work with programs that had been expelling or using what we call soft suspensions, things like sending kids out of the classroom or to the office again and again.

And I remember that one of their coaches shared some feedback that really stuck with me.
She said that before using the TAGPAC, that most programs were writing discipline policies mainly to protect themselves legally. So the children's well-being wasn't even the focus. But working through this framework helped them to kind of reimagine what a discipline policy could be. It's more of a guide that could support everyone, not just something that can protect the program from liability.

And we have seen an impact in districts that have adopted more effective discipline policies. A good example locally is the San Diego Unified School District. After implementing restorative justice approaches, their expulsions dropped in one year from 111 students to 29. So that… those are… each one of those is a child, you know, whose needs have been better met. But I think what excites Sarah and I the most about this work is that beyond these numbers, we're really seeing a shift in people's mindset about discipline.

We're in classrooms, and we're noticing that teachers are moving away from asking questions like, how do I manage this behavior? Which is what we used to get to what does this child need? And when we hear these stories, you know, it's really what keeps us going, because I know we're making real progress.

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: Yeah, well, that links back to what you were saying earlier about the behaviors being challenging for adults, you know, saying, how do I handle this? It's like, how do I… how do I manage my own distress versus how do I give this child what they need? So, that's… And teachers need and deserve that support. Yeah, absolutely. What do you struggle with the most And studying what you study?

Sascha Longstreth: I think the biggest challenge… right now is that discipline has become political instead of developmental. You know, we have spent two decades building consensus from institutions of higher ed, from major organizations, from pediatricians, education departments. We've all agreed that teaching works better than punishment.

But again, this year, when we get a federal directive about common sense discipline that ignores everything that we've learned about effective practices and about the disparities that exist, then it's admittedly concerning. And there's also sort of a deeper issue, and that is we're still working with program leaders to shift the mindset from treating behavior policies like liability insurance, instead of thinking of them as guidance for how they can support children. And so we do have a lot of work to do. You know, the national statistics, especially on racial disparities persist. For example, Black preschoolers are 17% of enrollment, but 31% of suspensions, and these are just little bitty 4-year-olds. So, you know, I think that in the political sphere, there's been this framing of discipline as a choice between equity and classroom order.

But that's really a false choice, because we've actually proven that we can have both things. We can have safe, productive classrooms where every child's need is also met. So, it still feels like somehow we're having to make this case all over again, but I'm hopeful. We're… in the field, we're seeing more and more teachers and leaders who really get it. We're seeing them shift from punishment to teaching. We're seeing districts adopt these approaches. I mean, this is all progress, and we also are really grateful to the coaches that we train and work with, and the programs that we partner with, because they're advocates. They're advocates out in the community. So even with all the political headwinds, there is still a movement that's growing from the ground up. Really where it matters the most, and that's in real classrooms with real kids.

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: So, my last question is something for you to kind of amuse about or imagine, like, what would schooling look like if all your work was done? If there was nothing left for you to do, and you had to retire because you had no more work left to do. What would schooling look like? What would school policies look like?

Sascha Longstreth: Well, I think the most simple way to say this would be that no 4-year-old or no 5-year-old would ever be suspended or expelled. Every classroom would start from this understanding that behavior is communication, that social-emotional skills are taught, and again, that teachers would have what they need so that they can meet children's needs with curiosity instead of frustration, etc. 

So… you know, I think this looks like… Teachers really implementing social-emotional strategies in the classroom as a preventative measure for a lot of challenging behaviors. So, if a child's throwing blocks, maybe not just sending them to timeout, you know, instead teaching them, let's figure out how to breathe when you're really angry, let's give you words for your feelings. Let's teach you how to come ask for help when you're feeling overwhelmed. 

And for me, that means that we're treating emotional regulation the same way that we treat reading, which is everyone's gonna learn the basics. Some kids need extra practice, and a few are gonna need more intensive support. So, I really see that discipline policies, you know, they're not intended to be punishment guidelines. It's like a teaching tool in many ways.

You know, I think at the end of the day, what really matters most is that we really want every child to know that they belong. And that when they're struggling, that adults are there to help them figure it out, not to kick them out. I know that sounds very idealistic, but we've seen it happen. We've seen it happen, in fact, when programs have really committed to this approach, that everything changes. The whole culture actually shifts from one of, we're managing behavior to we're teaching skills.

That's what keeps us going, even when we have these kinds of setbacks, because we know it's possible, we've seen it happen. 

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: I just feel really grateful that you're a part of my department. And that you are a part of our college, and that you are doing this really impactful work, and I wish you lots of stamina to keep going, even when there are strong headwinds right now. So thank you so much, Sasxha. 

Sascha Longstreth: Thank you, Rachel.

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