Dragon Info Head Start From Preschool to Crisis Intervention  Dealing with Challenging Kids  MAAC Staff    First Start 
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October 2002 “Why did you do that? Why did you want to hurt her?” Linda Rodriguez asked the four-year-old who had just struck the substitute teacher on the side of the head with a large wooden block, causing a visible injury. Rodriguez is now a lead teacher at the San Marcos Head Start Center in San Diego County. “Because I hate her,” responded the four-year-old, whose only interaction with the substitute could not have been more than a few minutes before the incident. “If you continue to hurt others you will have to be sent home, but I don’t want to send you home because I think you will do better here, at school,” Rodriguez said. The boy seemed to calm down, but then walked over to the play house area, picked up the toy stove, and threw it across the room. That was the last straw. Rodriguez knew things had reached the point that something had to be done.
The child’s father was in prison and his brothers were gangbangers. The four-year-old would come to school in gang attire. He would intimidate the other kids with his aggressiveness, karate kicks, and the gang language his brothers had taught him. Rodriguez had been discussing the problem with her supervisor for months, explaining that it was more complex than the teachers could deal with. Originally the program was started to help poor farmworker and immigrant kids learn the academic and language skills required to succeed in school, but in the mid-1990s things were changing. The hard-drug epidemic and the serious problems of decaying urban cultures were wearing on the community. The center was now seeing kids with mental health and severe behavioral problems. The managers at MAAC did not want to accept that the parents and kids had these severe problems. The teachers felt they were being blamed for not being able to control the kids. At one point in a heated conversation, Rodriguez’s supervisor told her, “If you feel you are not getting support, then contact the union.” So that’s what she did. Rodriguez called her steward, Sylvia Icenhour, and said she wanted to get the union involved. Icenhour is a family service worker for Head Start and works as a liaison between the teachers and the service providers at the center. She processes the applications to get families in the program and to get them additional services. Rodriguez had called Icenhour before to ask her advice as a friend, but now they needed to take it to a higher level. Icenhour put the word out that the union was launching an investigation. Many employers would ignore the pronouncement of a union investigation, but the management of MAAC is different. They are proud of running a union shop and equate the union with La Causa.
Management met with Icenhour, but as Icenhour explains, “At the time we had a procedure for problems between workers and management, but we didn’t have procedures for problems between the teachers and children or parents. The teachers often felt that management was in denial about the seriousness of the problem and would many times take the parent’s or child’s side.” The chapter president at the time was John Lopez. Lopez was a charismatic young man who grew up in the foster care system. Icenhour still refers to him as “our beloved John Lopez.” “John had a way of constantly bringing things up without pestering,” she says. He finally got management to come down to the center so they could observe the behavior for themselves. (Lopez died of AIDS a few years later.) “They hadn’t been able to accept that pre-schoolers could be so overwhelming, but once they saw the problem they moved fast to find a solution,” Icenhour recalls. MAAC contracted with a mental health agency to train the teachers in crisis management and techniques for dealing with challenged kids and their parents. From the training she received, Rodriguez devised a plan for dealing with the child. When he was angry she would take him aside and let him vent. “I encouraged him to say whatever he wanted to me, as long as he didn’t harm me. He could use language but could not throw things or hit me. When he was done I would say, ‘Okay, now let me talk.’” Icenhour remembers watching Rodriguez holding the child and gently rocking him to calm him down. Rodriguez began meeting with the family. She found out that the child was on medication and that part of the violent behavior was a side effect of the medication. She was able to link the family up with mental health services. “Yeah, Teach, Whatever” The mother was unavailable to help, but Rodriguez would meet with the brothers. “Their attitude at first was: ‘Yeah, Teach, whatever. Yeah, Teach,’ like the whole thing was very amusing to them. But then I invited them to observe from a distance how other kids were interacting with their little brother,” Rodriguez explains. She was eventually able to convince the brothers that what they were teaching their younger brother was not in his best interests. “I gave them different scenarios on how [the child] might bring a toy and the other kids could care less to see it because they felt he was a bully. Or how the other kids would refuse to be his friend because he had hurt them. One of the brothers liked to draw so we encouraged him to do that with [the child] rather than allowing him to watch violent and inappropriate movies.” Over time the child’s behavior improved. “It used to be there was never a dull moment. Something was always happening. But he changed to the point where we never had any more problems. When we first asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said “a home boy.” At the end of the year, he said “a firefighter.” Years later Rodriguez ran into the boy at her church. He told her that he was doing well in school and got citizen of the month. His brothers changed as well. They both left the gang life. One got married and is working and raising a family; the other joined the navy. People remember that incident as a turning point. Once the union got involved, everyone got involved. It took a team effort, and then there was a domino effect of good events, Icenhour recalls. Management now takes the workers’ viewpoint more seriously. The workers receive regular training and have procedures for dealing with challenged kids and their families, as well as access to crisis management professionals.
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