UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Scars of Suspension: Narratives as Testimonies of School-Induced Collective Trauma A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Education by Tunette Michele Powell 2020 © Copyright by Tunette Michele Powell 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Scars of Suspension: Narratives as Testimonies of School-Induced Collective Trauma by Tunette Michele Powell Doctor of Education University of California, Los Angeles, 2020 Professor Kimberly Gomez, Chair The school-to-prison pipeline is typically framed by researchers and scholars within academia as a “youth problem.” While it is true that youth are the bodies that are being targeted, are the direct participants and experience the immediate punitive impact with respect to the loss of school day(s), the impact of school discipline has a much broader impact. In this dissertation, I argue that like the spread of radiation after a nuclear bomb, the impact of school suspension permeates not only the child but the parents, siblings, grandparents and others in the kinship circle. Historically, in Black communities, the family structure is such that the child cannot be bracketed out from the framework of kinship. A consequence of this is that the burden of disproportionate school disciplinary measures that affect Black students also deeply impact their families, especially families of young children. I argue that the disproportionate use of school disciplinary measures ii such as school suspension creates a collective trauma for Black families. Considering this, this dissertation analyzes the experience of trauma and documents the narratives of Black families who have experienced trauma. Using qualitative methods that include the analysis of narratives from a cross-country sample of 14 Black parents presented through a combination of short stories and hip-hop verses, I theorize that the scarring of a young child’s school suspension on the immediate family be considered trauma. Keywords: school-to-prison pipeline, early childhood education, trauma, Black families iii The dissertation of Tunette Michele Powell is approved. Karida L. Brown Louis Gomez Tyrone Howard Kimberly Gomez, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2020 iv Table of Contents List of Figures ............................................................................................................ vii List of Tables ............................................................................................................. viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................... viii VITA ........................................................................................................................... xii TRACK 1: INTRODUCTION..................................................................................... 1 A Problem Born ............................................................................................................ 2 A Problem Birthed ........................................................................................................ 4 Beyond the Pipeline ...................................................................................................... 6 Dissertation Overview ................................................................................................ 12 TRACK 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................... 14 Disparities Revealed ................................................................................................... 15 The Souls Behind the Statistics .................................................................................. 16 Early Childhood Education and School Suspension ............................................... 18 The Reverberation of Trauma ................................................................................... 20 “Looking for Scars” .................................................................................................... 21 Collective Trauma ...................................................................................................... 22 Collective Trauma Scholarship ................................................................................. 25 Collective Trauma and School Suspension Disparities ........................................... 27 TRACK 3: METHODOLOGY ................................................................................. 29 Introduction................................................................................................................. 29 Research Design and Approach ................................................................................ 31 Altar Call: Participant Recruiting and Sampling.................................................... 31 Data Collection ............................................................................................................ 38 Data Analysis ............................................................................................................... 40 Track 4: Testimonies of Collective Trauma ............................................................. 51 Presenting through Hip Hop Music .......................................................................... 54 The Scars of School Suspension................................................................................. 56 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 96 TRACK 5: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS ................................................. 98 v Discussion .................................................................................................................... 98 Collective Trauma in Educational Research .......................................................... 100 School Suspension and Black Families ................................................................... 101 Suspension in Early Childhood Education ............................................................. 102 Implications ............................................................................................................... 103 vi List of Figures Figure 1. The Reverberation of Trauma ......................................................................................... 9 vii List of Tables Table 1. Number of parents who experienced one or more scars of school suspension ............... 56 viii Acknowledgements We believed I could, so I did. To the Village that reared me – thank you for your consistent and unconditional love. To my family, especially my brother Bo: we were my first case of collective trauma, but we were also my first case of collective healing. Thank you for pushing me to tell and share these necessary truths, so that space could be made for others to heal. This is for us. To my Aunt Tandy, in a world where learning is most often thought to be something that happens primarily in the classroom, thank you for the countless hours you spent on the phone schooling me – even if unintentionally – on qualitative research. It was through our every- other day phone calls that I learned the art and science of interviewing, which in turn allowed me to produce the rigorous qualitative study presented here. To my father, you were the first to tell me I was a storyteller. Thank you for speaking life into me all those years ago. To my mother, my first editor, thank you for always being willing to read, edit and provide feedback on my work. To my husband, I still recall the day – about year out from graduation – when I told you I was tired. Your response to me was to stick with it because the championship was coming. Thank you for loving me and for sticking it out with me. To my sons, JJ, Joah and Jordan – this is for you! I hope that in between these lines are messages of hope, comfort and affirmation that I will always advocate for you. To my advisor, Dr. Kimberly Gomez, in what has been said to be the city of angels, thank you for being just that. You saw the value of my work from the very beginning, well before I ever saw it. Thank you for your unwavering support and guidance. I am thankful for the rest of my dissertation committee: Drs. Louis Gomez, Tyrone Howard and Karida Brown. To Dr. Gomez, thank you for believing in this work. Your belief in me has pushed me and inspired ix me in unthinkable ways. Dr. Howard, thank you for your scholarship on race and education. Your scholarship coupled with our one-on-one conversations throughout the years have greatly influenced this dissertation. And to Dr. Brown, thank you for bringing me back to myself. Your mentorship – both for this dissertation and beyond – has forever changed my life. To Dr. Pedro Noguera, though you were not on my dissertation committee, I am thankful to you for treating me as your own and always making yourself available throughout this PhD process. Additionally, I would like to thank Drs. Jaye Darby, Mike Rose, Marjorie Orellana, Thomas Philip, Kathryn Anderson-Levitt, Annamarie Francois, Sibyll Catalan and Tonikiaa Orange for their support and investment in my development. To the UCLA staff, especially Dr. Amy Gershon and Harmeet Singh, thank you. The staff at UCLA are some of the most caring, selfless and hardworking people I have ever had the pleasure of working with. I appreciate each of you for playing a major role in my success. To the incredible doctoral students that I shared space