Focusing attention on Discipline Disparities with Dr. Pam Fenning

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

students, school, work, school psychologist, teachers, discipline, suspension, behavior, support, families, preschool, classroom, advocate, legislation, interchanges, practices, equity, social capital, education

SPEAKERS

Amy Vujaklija, Pam Fenning, Joi Patterson

Pam Fenning: 00:03

Almost all referrals are not because of safety. They're because of minor kinds of infractions class disruption, loud noise? Can I really say hey, is this in line with my values? And can this wait until later?

Amy Vujaklija: 00:14

This episode was originally released under the podcast titled teaching and learning, theory versus practice. This rebooted episode has been migrated to teaching and leading with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joi. I am Dr. Amy Vujaklija, Director of educator preparation.

Joi Patterson: 00:34

And I am Dr. Joi Patterson, Chief Diversity Officer. Our podcast addresses issues through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion, along with solutions for us to grow as educators. So

Amy Vujaklija: 00:49

join us on our journey to become better teachers and leaders. So let's get into it. Good morning, Dr. Joi.

Joi Patterson: 00:59

Good morning, Dr. Amy, how are you feeling?

Amy Vujaklija: 01:02

We're going to talk about some really challenging issues. But I'm excited because I want to challenge myself, I want to know more. And I want to understand the issues facing the children in our school systems.

Joi Patterson: 01:18

These are the topics that always make me a little teary eyed when we're talking about educational inequalities, unequal distribution of academic resources, and how students are treated based on things as little as the color of their skin. And so once again, we're talking about kids that this disparity that exists, whether it's school funding, or qualify faculty, books, technology, you know, we've been talking about this for a couple of years now, Amy, and it's 2022. And we're still having these conversations about unequal distribution. And today, in that same line, we're going to talk about how it finds its way in how students are actually treated in the classroom. This racial disparity in school discipline, I can imagine a day where we're not having these topics. But until that time comes, we're going to continue to have these topics, wrestle with them, and then see what kind of Stride we can make.

Amy Vujaklija: 02:22

And the guests we bring on the show really help illuminate and talk us through what the problems are, but also possible solutions and what we need to do at the ground level. So for policy for professional development, and resources, that's what we're here for.

Joi Patterson: 02:43

Yes. And as we go through our own curriculum of adding cultural responsive, leading and teaching standards to our curriculum at Governor State University, what does that do? What does it do for the preparation of our teacher candidates with the hope of that outcome that teachers will see all students as equal?

Amy Vujaklija: 03:05

Let me introduce Dr. Pamela Fanning, who is a professor and co director of the school psychology program at Loyola University, Chicago. She is a licensed clinical and school psychologist in Illinois and holds board certification in School Psychology. Her research and clinical work focus on multi tiered academic and behavioral interventions at the high school level, racial bias in exclusionary discipline and entry to the juvenile justice system, inequities in school discipline policy, evaluation of state level discipline, reform, and professional development of school personnel in creating more equitable and inclusive school environment, as well as school based support of military youth. She has published widely in these areas. She is a past president of the trainers of school psychologist, the chair of the National Association of School Psychologists, professional positions committee, welcome to our podcast.

Joi Patterson: 04:12

Good morning, Dr. Fenning. How are you?

Pam Fenning: 04:14

Good morning. How are you both doing today? Wonderful.

Joi Patterson: 04:18

Glad to see you on this extremely cold morning, Amy and I we were just talking about this topic of equity or inequity and the fact that no matter what conversation we're having, it seems to reveal this a little ugly head always. And it makes me a little teary eyed when we're having this discussion. However, we're going to continue to have this discussion until we don't need to have it anymore. So I am so appreciative of you, your eyes are wide open, and you're continuing to address this and be an advocate for this. We just look forward to a day when we promote equity. And when our teachers choose twin brains We're all unique backgrounds instead of shying away from it and being intimidated and being afraid and treating students differently. So we're going to talk about that as some of the work that you did. You talked about the suspension of black and brown students. And I did a presentation not too long ago. And one of the things I learned that boys are 50% of the population, even in preschool, we can go all the way down to preschool. I didn't even know that preschoolers could get suspended 78% of suspensions are for black and brown kids.

Pam Fenning: 05:33

Yes, it's really tragic. I think it was about 2014 that the US Department of Education started collecting data with preschool students. And unfortunately, we've seen racial disparities, particularly with black boys going from preschool all the way through secondary school. And so the school push out practices, unfortunately, are starting as early as preschool. So we see certainly four to five rates of disparities for particularly black students, indigenous students as well, particularly black males. However, black females are certainly suspended and expelled and pushed out in other ways when we compare this numbers basically, to white females. And then we also see these disparities playing out with students with disabilities. And when we see an intersection of identifying as a racial minority, particularly black males with disabilities, we see astronomical rates of school push out. And unfortunately, we've been looking at the same statistics since 1974, since the Children's Defense Fund. And sadly, these numbers have not budged. And these are real children's lives that we are talking about. So well, sometimes we might look at data and see numbers on a paper. These are real children's lives with really tragic, tragic consequences.

Joi Patterson: 06:51

And before we delve into the Civil War, when did this topic become of special interest to you? And what do you hope to accomplish? What would you like to see? Yeah,

Pam Fenning: 07:03

so thank you. That's a great question. When I was a practicing school psychologist, many, many years ago, in the 90s, I saw many of the same students that I was working with one on one students who had academic problems, black and brown students were the same students that were being pushed out of school through suspension and expulsion. And often what I was told was that well, this is our policy. And this is suspension because of this types of behavior. And almost every time what I saw was the behaviors were for very minor benign things. So I think unfortunately, there's a myth that black students are black and brown students engage in more serious behavior to warrant suspension and expulsion. Russki BA has done profound work, really to show us for study after study that it is just not the case. Black students, students of color do not engage in more serious behaviors to warrant suspension. In fact, most of the time when there's any differences at all, when you compare the behaviors to white students, for example, most of those behaviors are things like subjective offenses, things like class disruption, insubordination, loud noise and such. So kind of going back to when I was a school psychologist, I didn't know any of this information and data I just saw with my own eyes, that it was the same students being referred to me, who were students of color invariably, or students with disabilities or academic problems, were the same students that were being pushed out. So when I got to Loyola, and I started kind of doing more work, I was really interested in what was in those discipline policies. And what I found, with many wonderful graduate students working hand in hand with me for many years has been that we see those benign behaviors or we see behaviors that are what I would characterize as racist things like dress code, things that disproportionately impact black and brown students that lead to school push out, I saw I became very interested in thought, why are we not being more attentive as school psychologists when in fact, our job is really to make sure that we help to build equity, and that our job is really to make sure that we provide the best education possible. And we can't do that when students are pushed out of school, which also leads to certain other even more deadly terrorists, excuse me, effects, such as entry to juvenile justice systems and such. So it's not a benign event, when students are suspended, it really does lead to all kinds of other really, you know, life altering kinds of consequences dropping out of school is associated with suspension entry to juvenile justice, as I mentioned, and and those are things that are a trajectory that it's very then difficult for students and families tend to return to school in any kind of reasonable way. So the students that were supposed to be providing the most protections to I found when I was a school psychologist, are the ones that were Providing the least protections to and least support. And certainly not having families, particularly families of color involved in these conversations, who are really the best advocates for their children make the best decisions for their families and children.

Amy Vujaklija: 10:14

Let's unpack and add some transparency to this discipline policies that you were talking about what might be seemingly as simple as dress code? How does discipline policy affect classroom practice?

Pam Fenning: 10:28

Yeah, that's a great question. So sometimes I have an example I can think of with one of the students who is in a certificate program on school discipline that I'm involved with. And basically, she saw it was a young student of color walking down the hall, and the student had a hoodie on. And basically, that escalated into this whole interchange that was unnecessary. And the same individual saw many students, white students, other students, maybe not necessarily being addressed code, but the black student was specifically targeted. And then that escalated into a whole kind of interchange that was really unnecessary. So in terms of school practice, sometimes, some behaviors that are prohibited in codes of conduct and such get to be escalated very, very quickly and unnecessarily into students being removed from the classroom. And then once classroom removal happens, then if the dean's office gets involved, that's a higher rate of suspension and such. So we can see that cycle beginning in the classroom, because that's where most of the discipline referrals actually start. They start in the classroom, they start with interchanges that are happening with teachers and students that get unnecessarily escalated, particularly and disproportionately with students of color. And there's been a lot of good research, for example, somebody of avarice and coal many years ago, they This was many years ago, we've had this information in literature for years, you know, kind of those interchanges, it would be sometimes a student of color that was speaking up maybe when teachers felt the loss of control or they felt fear. In the classroom, students of color are disproportionately involved in impacting even though white students are saying many of the same things. It's a trigger sometimes. And then that leads to classroom removal. As a school psychologist, and as a mental health provider and someone they trained school psychologist, I would say that really, our job is really to support teachers and to work with teachers and helping them to kind of work on you know, supporting them in the classroom. I would say as somebody with my other hat as a graduate educator, I don't think at universities, we've done enough to prepare teachers to prepare school psychologist to work with teachers on things like classroom management, and classrooms support, understanding students lived experience, building relationships, building more restorative relationships, we just don't do a good enough job. And that's one of the biggest reasons why teachers leave the field is because of classroom management. And we have known that for many years, I will take responsibility at the university level, we haven't done enough to really prepare teachers for the realities of classrooms. And so sometimes we see those interchanges play out or we see our biases come out implicit bias that we all have me included, that, you know, we see those kinds of interchanges happening and we haven't done enough work around bias, mitigating our bias, helping teachers with real on the ground strategies to de escalate, perceived problems that come up, and then we see this play out. Unfortunately, time and time again,

Amy Vujaklija: 13:32

let me follow up with you gave an example of an escalation of a situation, can you share what a de escalation might have looked like in that situation? Yeah,

Pam Fenning: 13:46

that's a great question. And so a de escalation strategy really might be behavior principles that we have all been trained to look at. So or work on. And that might be things like making sure that I'm having a private conversation with a student. If I'm yelling at a student or calling a student out in front of a whole classroom, the chances are going to be higher that that's going to escalate. So if I just literally have a private conversation, Hey, can I talk to you after class, let's have a discussion. I'm not having a whole audience of everybody else in the class that can deescalate that situation very markedly having like a close proximity to the student, and also, Kent McIntosh has done some really lovely work, he calls it a vulnerable decision point. And he calls a vulnerable decision point at a time when it's a subjective kind of behavior. So it might be a black or brown student, and my implicit bias is going to be most likely to come out when I'm tired when I'm hungry when I'm forced to make a stressful decision when there's a lot going on around me. And that pretty much describes schools and how they are particularly now but I think forever so if I can just ask myself, hey, is this a vulnerable decision point? An almost like a stop and think kind of moment to say, Do I really need to address this right now in this moment? Almost all referrals are not because of safety there because of minor kinds of infractions that we've kind of talked about class disruption, loud noise, can I really say, hey, is this in line with my values? And can this wait until later? When I'm able to make a more reasoned decision? I'm not losing face. I think anytime when I work with my students, and I'm, you know, in situations like this to the minute I'm in a power struggle, I'm going to lose, because the student is going to do whatever they can do sometimes to save face. So I wouldn't say there's simple solutions, but they're kind of a momentary response to kind of get me out of that situation so that I can think later, Hey, did I really need to write a referral for this was this something I could have handled in the classroom,

Joi Patterson: 15:49

you mentioned something about teachers not being in a good space to make decisions at that time. But that's true for students, a lot of times, that's why they're exhibiting some of their behaviors. I know when I was a middle school teacher every week, because I had a limited income too, but I would buy this huge box of Cheerios, something I could afford. And something that I knew would assist me, I had students who have come to school hungry, their behavior, and their attitude towards learning looks very different when they're hungry. So it goes both ways, right and understand the students, I want to I want to share some statistics with you and just get your reaction and your response students of color, both boys and girls were suspended three times the rate of white students, nationally, 12% of Black females are suspended in contrast of only 2% of white females. And then also, while students with disabilities make up only 11.7% of the K 12. Population, they account for a quarter of suspensions and expulsions, nearly 30% of students are even referred to the police.

Pam Fenning: 17:01

Yeah, I mean, they're very sad and tragic statistics that we've seen play out time and time again, I would say, you know, when Illinois, I think there's about 19, states, there abouts that have proposed some form of discipline legislation. And that's to really try to look at how do we mitigate the overuse of suspension and expulsion, but particularly with students of color and students with disabilities. And so I think there's thinking and there's thought around this, as I'm kind of working with different school districts and working, you know, with colleagues in Illinois, who really are, you know, really working on this topic? It's really that idea that how do we actually think about supporting schools, families and students and hearing family and student voice and supporting teachers, because what I've seen over the years, to some extent, is that we can change suspension numbers for out of school, but then sometimes what happens is then we have higher rates of in school suspension, or we have students being pushed out, a great colleague of mine doing a lot of work around early childhood legislation that passed that said, you can't expel students, it's sometimes shocking that we write legislation to say you can't expel or push students out of preschool. Yet we're having to write such legislation and what she hears a lot anecdotally the fact that it might be soft push out, it might not be on paper, but as well, I don't think your son or daughter is ready for preschool right now. And how do we tell young children particularly black and brown children, or students that perhaps there is a disability? How do we tell children that are so young in families, your child isn't ready for preschool, we know that are a really great opportunity to help provide early childhood supports. And we know that works. And so why would we engage in school push out practice at such a young age and I resonate Dr. Patterson with the statistics, because we've been looking at for decades. And it's kind of time to think about what to do about it, because for me and others have talked a lot about as a problem we've admired so much in education, we're just admiring the problem. And we're really not seeing the changes that we want to see so that we have more equitable schools. So we get to a point as you were describing in the opening comments about a time when we don't have to talk about equity anymore. We don't have to have this conversation, because it's just part of what we do. It's embedded across everything that we do in educational practice.

Amy Vujaklija: 19:24

Let's push further into legislation. What is the reality of legislation that might be well intentioned in what might be some caution you could provide colleagues

Pam Fenning: 19:38

at the State Board of Education and other partners and such are trying to work on discipline equity, although I do think that sometimes when we look at discipline legislation, like for example, Senate Bill 100, was a huge piece of legislation became effective, I believe, around 2016. And really the idea with that legislation was we cannot have zero tolerance policies which mean cuz we can't say if you fight, this is your five days suspension, you know, unless there's things like guns and weapons and such, I feel that sometimes school districts have taken the letter of that law and said, Okay, while I need to show that I've exhausted, for example, available Behavior Supports, we really haven't done enough to actually implement the spirit of that law. So while some districts may be following the letter main saying, Okay, well, I'm looking at my available behavioral interventions with respect to suspension, or I'm engaging in discussions around suspension on a case by case basis, there could be arguably perhaps that's being done by following what's on paper. But we have a long way to go on the Spirit. Because I do think things like school discipline are very entrenched in our school system, very tied to systems of historical marginalization and oppression. And so while we may have perfunctory changes, we haven't really changed the climate. We haven't changed the environment. I'm hopeful for a day when we have a lot of infusion of support and resources. And we do a better job of preparing our future educators and working with our current educators to really wrap their hearts around really how harmful our school discipline practices can be with real children and real lives. So while I think a lot of our legislation is very well intended by a lot of really well intended individuals, including myself, I think sometimes we don't really have the support in school districts to really implement that legislation. So it becomes like a checkoff

Joi Patterson: 21:39

that defending who are the school advocates or students who find themselves being pushed out of the classroom. And what's the administration role? How does administration work with

Pam Fenning: 21:51

them? Yeah, it's a really good question. So I really think the number one advocate are the families and the students themselves. However, I think we set up schools and systems and structures to prevent families from advocating for their children are we haven't provided information and support to them, we've made it virtually impossible for families, particularly families of students of color, and students that have intersected disabilities and such to be true advocates for their students. But I think our obligation as mental health providers, school psychologists, school social workers, and such, and other educators are that we really need to support our families, so that they can be in a position to advocate for their children and support their children. Administrators play a really pivotal role, I would say in school discipline, and sometimes their administrators will get a little caught between maybe what they perhaps feel in their heart is best for their families, and then kind of feeling like maybe they're not supporting their teachers. And so hopefully, we can get to a time when everybody's really around the same page as what's equitable for students. As

Joi Patterson: 22:59

a school psychologist, so back in your days, when you were actually in the school, how did you balance your relationship from being that advocate for the student and being that employed? Yeah,

Pam Fenning: 23:10

it's a very good question. Dr. Patterson, it's like a challenging one that I experienced. And then I see my students experiencing, because it's really easy for someone like me to sit in a chair and say, Oh, advocate for families and be that person. And so it was often a walking a line between being that school employee and knowing the thing about I'd say, being an educator, being a school psychologist, is that we are internal to the school. So we continue to work with the teachers and the administrators. And so I can think of examples where maybe students will refer to me for emotional behavior disturbance. And I knew in my heart, they did not qualify, quote, unquote, or they didn't have that diagnosis. And it's a serious diagnosis to put on a student. And so I would often get pressure from for example, discipline, Dean's, it would say, Hey, here's my stack of discipline referrals, how you come in with your evaluation. And I would often have to say, you know, just because you see these discipline referrals, that is not saying that's an underlying emotional behavior to service and they didn't love that because they wanted that student pushed out of school. I've talked a lot about discipline, but certainly their school push out into therapeutic day schools, you know, other alternative school placements and sites that sometimes have very questionable academic supports for students. So it was often a thin line. I do see my own students, and we all struggle with that. But for me, it was also finding internally some allies and had kind of similar thinking as well. So it might be those couple of teachers that see what's going on, or it might be a fellow of a social worker. It's a tough situation. And because we are employed by schools, ultimately that administrator is our boss. The thing that's kind of tricky is often our training is very different than our administrators.

Amy Vujaklija: 24:56

We are talking to Dr. Pam Fenning a professor and Co-director of the school psychology program at Loyola University in Chicago, and we're discussing the disparities in discipline policy and the inequity that still exists in our school systems today, let me follow up on support for families, when we're talking about these supports, we may need to consider what has been referred to as social capital. Could you define for our listeners, what social capital is? And then specifically, what is social capital for students?

Pam Fenning: 25:32

Yeah, I think social capital is something that families that are in privileged situations or identity. So if you look like me, and you're white, and you're middle class, I've had, you know, different interviews I've done, and my colleagues who look like me as well, they might be a social worker, they might be a school psychologist, they'll walk into a school and they will get very deferential treatment that will be very different than the families and the parents who really are the primary individual that should be making decisions for children, particularly parents and families of color. And students of color will be essentially dismissed in schools. And so So I see social capital along racial lines, I see it sometimes around lines of income, I see it sometimes around you know, students who also are considered quote, unquote, on a fringe of a school, I see that sometimes play out with students that identify as LGBTQ plus, that's where maybe some of the dress code discussion came out earlier. So I think it's maybe it's social status. I think families and students that possess quote, unquote, social capital will be deferred to and really things like discipline and stuff will sometimes be brushed under the rug. Or sometimes there's parents that will advocate for extended time on tests because of a section 504 plan. Someone Dan Lawson has done a lot of really interesting work where he looked at districts where they were a high percentage of students of color, very few fiber for plans for students having accommodations. But then in much wealthier white suburban school districts that I know of a school district, they have their own section 504 person full time. So we see those inequities play out with respect to access to resources, and then school push out practice that we see the disparities play out on discipline on classes for students that are in gifted classes, as well, we see a dearth of students of color identified for gifted classes. And so some of the assessments we use are tied to family social capital and pushing for accelerated classes and such. So we see it play out, I believe, across the whole spectrum of education,

Joi Patterson: 27:43

when a child has an IEP, so a child has a special need that IEP comes with a certain amount of funding. And depending on how many disabilities that child has, that's additional funding, gifted funding is less than special education funding. And then when we talk about Bible for accommodations, there's no money associated with that. So many schools do not want to spend the resources for students that actually need these accommodations, because money's not attached to it. So what are the implications to this disparity?

Pam Fenning: 28:18

I mean, the implications are broad reaching, I mean, if we are pushing black and brown students out of preschool, I mean, right there that we see this whole trajectory at preschool, which is really unbelievable, but very sad and true. And so the implications are just a complete absence of receiving a proper education. We also see when school push out practices play out students and young people in the community with time on their hands and lots of opportunities to engage in lots of other kinds of things that we really don't want them to be engaged in. And so we see higher rates of criminal activity. But we also see connections of school discipline to school based arrest. And so we see really entry to juvenile justice systems. Unfortunately, we see school dropout, we see a lot of information about if you're having just high school education. I talked with our colleagues at one of our panels about the digital divide, just even having access to proper education. And so we're seeing those racial disparities play out. I see with my own eyes, my own young adult children, I mean, young people that are going into STEM fields and getting technology related jobs is this divide is getting even more vast. And so I'm sorry to say I'm scared about these inequities becoming even greater than what we've been talking about since 1975. One of my students did a project or dissertation and she looked at reentry practices, so school reentry practices for young people that have been involved in the juvenile justice system. I will say as a school psychologist, we have been completely absent in this conversation. Very few school psychologists are even looking at school reentry practices. And when she spoke to young people who had been engaged and kind of caught up in the juvenile justice system, just being able to get back to school was like an unbelievable Herculean task. I do think our school, sadly, will sometimes not be at all open to students coming back after being engaged in juvenile justice because of being labeled and targeted as a troublemaker, although not justified, you know, I think the push out practices, they're not benign. I mean, they're very life altering. And then to try to return there's so many barriers, I mean, things like credits and things that I never imagined would even were on my radar at all. And I think it's really listening to young people. And when she spoke to young people, they can tell better than me, they've experienced this or they can say better than me, the families can talk about really dismal outcome. And we have a responsibility in schools to stop this because this is where it starts. I mean, it's school to prison pipeline. So it starts in schools.

Amy Vujaklija: 31:02

I want to ask another question about the juvenile justice system. I'm wondering how many students have experienced trauma that lead to become involved in the juvenile justice system?

Pam Fenning: 31:15

It's a great question. And my students are studying How are teachers even receiving training on trauma? If we even think about a student's horrifically being handcuffed in school that is trauma, and certainly trauma in communities, children witnessing other children being murdered in front of them? I think it Nadine Burke Harris has done such beautiful work with respect to trauma and her work as a pediatrician. I mean, I think many are arguing it's and I agree, it's a public health crisis that has been completely on address. And so when we see triggers, you know, we have that fight or flight kind of response. And so with a teacher kind of in our face, or you know, teachers, I think are experiencing trauma as well. It's kind of primed for lots of escalation and misunderstanding.

Joi Patterson: 32:01

I want to speak for the teachers for a moment, as a school psychologist, your train to deal with some of these behaviors. And teachers think that they're going in the profession to teach and to educate children educate young minds. So when a student is hurting from trauma, like we're discussing, oftentimes, they're going to exhibit negative behavior, what would you say to teachers, and even administrators, but specifically teachers, what kind of teacher do instead of recommending that a student is expelled as a

Pam Fenning: 32:33

school psych person, we have to do a better job working with our teachers, and not just doing a one time professional development here, check off you had your training for an hour about trauma, even just helping students in identifying and looking for triggers of trauma, like when a student might be a little bit more set off by something. Dr. Patterson, you had talked about a student, they're coming in maybe hungry, you know, none of us are available to learn anything. And so teachers I've worked with, or my colleagues that are social workers, I can think of an example of just really supporting teachers to kind of see when there might be particular triggers, or when students are starting to escalate. Because I think, if we can identify trauma triggers, then we're much better likely if we can intervene earlier, like once the issue happens, we're less likely like, I can think of examples working in therapeutic day schools. Once a child turns a chair over and they've escalated, we have to react, you know, and then then we're really in a situation where everybody's watching us, and work sometimes with students to understand when their stress levels are going up, I think we can do a better job in School Psychology of working with teachers to develop a plan for students to start identifying when they're starting to escalate teachers as well. And doing kind of a cross check. Even giving a little space away, or even a few minutes break can make a big difference. Teachers sometimes can work out little cues with students like, Hey, if you think this is, you know, getting a little heated here, or if I'm asking you a question, and you're not really sure what the answer is, I'm going to mark out a little signal with you or I might stand right next to you, when I'm going to ask you a question so that you're comfortable, and you can respond to me. So sometimes those are little things that can make a big difference. Let's return

Amy Vujaklija: 34:15

to the responsibilities of educator preparation programs and institutions. You are in the school psychology program. What can we do better to develop our future educators into student advocates?

Pam Fenning: 34:29

I agree, we higher ed, I take responsibility we should do doing a much better job. One thing I can think of and I just think we haven't gotten here, I can speak at Loyola. And I think we're open to and I think sometimes we just don't know how to think a little differently is why are we not doing more to co train, for example, teachers and school psychologists together, because ultimately, we're going to work together in education in schools as a team, and so even just working hand in hand with teachers like I may Have some behavior training. But if I get into the schools, I'm working with a teacher, and they haven't had any real training and functional analysis of behavior. I don't think that's the be all end all. But I think it's a starting point. How can I work with that teacher and consult with that teacher? If I haven't had any kind of interaction with that teacher even in my graduate preparation program? For example, in the first year? How can we work with our school psychology students to then work hand in hand with teachers like right off the bat in their first year, first month of school, so that teachers get a sense of what school psychologists even do. I mean, we're like a secret in School Psychology, a lot of teachers don't even know we exist. My colleague Sylvia Rosenfield talks about this, I use her words, which is retraining people to be team members. We're not training people to be expert in any particular topic. And that always has resonated with

Joi Patterson: 35:50

me, we certainly appreciate you being an advocate for equality. So glad that you joined us today. Can you talk about the work that the Illinois Black Caucus is doing on this topic? And then what are you planning to continue to do as it relates to these inequities?

Pam Fenning: 36:09

Yeah, the Illinois Black Caucus is doing some really beautiful work around diversity and equity. So they really have come up with a multi prong approach. And they're really looking at discipline equity, they're looking at mental health equity. And they're really taking a very comprehensive and integrated approach it really supporting students of color, particularly black students. So there's a lots of really beautiful work being done. There's a lot of collaboration with the Illinois State Board of Education. I'm involved somewhat in a project with Illinois State Board of Education called the discipline equity project. And that's actually with colleagues at University of Illinois Springfield. And really, the focus is taking some of the federal money and such and really working on discipline equity, but in a more professional not professional development, one and done but more ongoing, integrated professional development and support. Illinois State Board of Education, which I think is the most remarkable thing that they've done is they have a student advisory council, I had the privilege of being able to listen to what the student advisory council like young people had to say in questions. They had many students of color, who really, if we just listen, they can tell us exactly what their needs are. They don't need like experts. In a way it all really to say what needs to be done. I think we just need to listen. And they've done a really beautiful job supported by the Illinois black caucus state board of education. I'm hopeful, I guess for me, I really just want to keep getting into schools more, and really starting to look at things like restorative practices, but to see how that plays out. In schools, I think my thinking is it's not a one size fits all approach. It's every school is unique and has almost their own personality. So for me, I want to spend the rest of my time here in my career, really helping working in schools and really learning from school people who are on the ground, trying to implement all kinds of other practices and just try to be as supportive as I can be in these efforts. A

Amy Vujaklija: 38:09

bring up exactly what we all should be doing. Listen, I think that's the foundation. We need to listen to our families, listen to our students, and just keep an open mind at what those needs are. Wow, I have taken numerous notes. As you've talked today, we will be sharing references in our show notes. We look forward to hearing more about what you're doing in the schools. So I see a need for a follow up conversation. Be

Pam Fenning: 38:37

happy to I've just enjoyed and thank you both for speaking with me and and the good work that you're both doing as well and education. It's a whole team. I really believe that it's great to continue to talk and collaborate. We

Joi Patterson: 38:49

got to get involved. We got to do the groundwork. And you're right. We have a huge job to do in preparing our candidates, our teachers, our school psychologists, our school counselors, administrators, culturally responsive and leading standards. We know that we're implementing it in our curriculum right now. You're implementing it in your curriculum at Loyola. And we're hopeful that it can start to make the difference. Yeah,

Pam Fenning: 39:15

that's honestly I believe where the rubber meets the road.

Amy Vujaklija: 39:19

Thank you for listening to teaching and leading with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joi. Visit our website at govst.edu/teaching and leading podcast to see the show notes from this episode.

Joi Patterson: 39:36

We appreciate Governor State University's work behind the scenes to make publishing possible. Stay tuned for more episodes with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joi