Avoiding School Suspension: Exploring of a Trauma-Informed School Intervention

Background and Purpose: Youth in the foster care and/or juvenile justice system (i.e., court-involved youth) often have traumatic histories and disproportionately experience school suspension/expulsion, especially among racial/ethnic minority populations.  This further impedes school success, contributing to the school-to-prison pipeline. However, female students among this population remain understudied.  Therefore, this study examines court-involved, female students’ use of and experiences with the Monarch Room (MR), a trauma-informed alternative to traditional school suspension/expulsion.  The primary quantitative research question is: Have students demonstrated statistically significant changes in time spent in the MR over the school year?  The primary qualitative research aim is to explore students’ lived experiences with the MR and their perceived impact of MR use on student functioning.     

Methods: The intervention takes place at a public, single-gender, high school during the 2014-2015 school year. Participants were in grades 9^th-12^th and were primarily African American.  Quantitative service utilization data were extracted from daily MR tracking logs, providing student usage for each MR visit made throughout the school year. This study used a repeated measures analysis of variance to explore whether students (N=71) demonstrated statistically significant changes in time (i.e., total minutes) spent in the MR over the school year. Qualitative data were gathered via focus groups, where participants (N=23) were audio recorded, transcribed, and data were analyzed for themes using a critical hermeneutics process. Final themes and subthemes were derived through dialogue and most commonly reported themes were included to describe the essence of students’ lived experiences with the MR intervention. 

Results: Quantitative findings demonstrate that student use of the MR increased over the school year (F(2, 140) = 11.44, p < 0.01), which may have contributed to the lower-than-normal rates of school suspension.  A Bonferonni post hoc test indicated increases in mean time spent in the MR from the beginning of the year (M= 24.79, SD= 32.76) to the midpoint (M= 53.00, SD= 54.78), p < 0.01.  The post hoc test also indicated decreases in time from the middle to the end of the year (M= 39.20, SD= 35.30), but was not statistically significant.

Qualitative findings illustrate positive student perceptions of the MR intervention. Major themes included: 1) “It helps you stay still”; 2) “It’s a good thing to have the Monarch Room here [at school]”; 3) “You gotta learn to work out your problems”; and 4) “It’s up to the girls” [to develop buy-in]. Participants discussed the usefulness of the various sensory-integration tools and attachment-oriented techniques utilized in the MR, as well as recommendations for improvement.  

Conclusions and Implications: Students’ reportedly positive experiences with the MR intervention may indicate promise for trauma-sensitive disciplinary alternatives as a response and resolution to eradicating the inequities prevalent in the school-to-prison pipeline. Trauma-informed school discipline may provide female, court-involved students with greater opportunities for academic success, and schools should explore non-exclusionary, trauma-sensitive methods of addressing negative student behavior.