With Thousands of Schools Curbing Suspensions, There's No Excuse for the Growing Discipline Gap

Article by Jane Stevens, ACEsConnection/ACEsTooHigh founder/editor.

"We've hit the tipping point and crossed over," says Natalie Turner, assistant director of Washington State University's Area Health Education Center. "In study after study after study, we know that ACEs are pervasive and the issue of adversity is epidemic. We're at the point in taking what we already know and have replicated, and are now saying: 'How do we get systematic change to impact these children in a different way?'...

"Belief systems are the key, how people think about kids, " says Principal Ed Gomes, who began instituting a school-wide change three years ago at Yosemite Middle School in Fresno, CA. "During the first year, it was very difficult. Some teachers told me that this is not going to work with these kids. They told me that these kids need massive discipline. Even when suspensions and expulsions dropped, the numbers themselves wouldn't convince them." Some teachers left.
"The kids are very easy," says Gomes. "The adults are a different story."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-ellen-stevens/with-thousands-of-schools-curbing-suspensions_b_3041833.html