Countering Pushout

Drawing from the documentary Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, these professional development modules feature interactive animated video scenarios along with guidance from experts in the fields of social justice, gender equality, and educational equity. These seasoned educators give context to common disruptions experienced in schools and provide a roadmap for how to provide a positive, rather than punitive, response to student behaviors that are often misunderstood and misrepresented.

Black girls experience often enhanced school discipline for a host of reasons — many of them associated with the increasingly punitive responses to student behavior and the absence of alternatives to exclusionary discipline in schools. Using social-behavioral research, as well as before- and after- scenarios, these modules will help teachers increase their capacity to create a positive environment where all students can feel safe and cared for. These self-paced learning videos will assist teachers as they master skills and concepts that can be incorporated into their individual practices.

The videos and the accompanying guidebooks are designed for teachers of all subjects in grades 6 through 12. The sessions are intended to help increase self-awareness, gain insights into engaging directly and appropriately with students, master skills for enacting positive change and providing Black girls with the best possible experiences so that classrooms are not only places of learning but also places of healing and understanding.

Countering Pushout includes these four modules:

Pod 1: A Different Approach (20 min) gives educators tools to better engage students, recognize signs of trauma and disruption outside of the classroom, understand and discourage micro-aggressions, and create culturally-specific curricula that speaks to their particular student bodies.

Pod 2: De-Escalating Conflict (29 min) discourages the common practice of "adultifying" students, and recognizes the roles that developing minds and cultural differences play in interpersonal conflicts, which every educator will experience.

Pod 3: Technology and Tardiness (20 min) looks at one of the most common sources of classroom disruption, exacerbating in the wake of remote learning during the Coronavirus pandemic, and empathy in addressing those disruptions, rather than dismissing or addressing them punitively.

Pod 4: Why Girls Bully (22 min) looks at the root causes of belittling behavior and explores restorative justice practices, and how to best implement so that they can be of benefit to all students.

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FILMMAKER'S STATEMENT: "Looking at how our educational system serves our nation's children has been an interest of mine for some time. All of my education — from kindergarten to graduate school has been at public schools and universities (UC Berkeley and UCLA) and I believe that public education can be a vehicle for social justice.

For American Graduate — an on-going initiative from Public Broadcasting — I was fortunate enough to write and produce two documentaries that addressed some of the issues facing our country's students — Too Important to Fail about African American boys and education and Education Under Arrest about teenagers and the juvenile justice system.

When President Obama created My Brother's Keeper, I was struck by the fact that African American girls were left out of the discussion. Research into the challenges faced by Black girls in our schools brought me to Dr. Monique Morris, whose groundbreaking book, Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, is one of the most important investigations into the cultural beliefs, policies and practices that adversely affect African American girls in our schools.

It's a privilege to help tell this often overlooked and under-reported story. As a filmmaker, collaborating with Dr. Morris means we will get this important narrative 'right', honoring the way Black girls are dealing with the challenges they face in today's educational landscape while pointing out how educators can change policies and practices to make sure that as Dr. Morris says, "the punitive discipline that creates a disproportionate criminalization of Black girls and disrupts one of the most important factors in their lives — education — does not continue."