African American students have been historically targeted for exclusionary discipline practices and as a result have had severely impacted by the amount of missed instruction. Zero tolerance policies have curated the phenomenon known as the School to Prison Pipeline which has disproportionately criminalized student behaviors and funneled them into the juvenile justice system. KIPP Baltimore has experienced a spike in suspensions. This study examined teachers' perceptions, beliefs and practices that contribute to student's missed instruction. The primary focus of this study was to understand teachers' perception of behaviors and the discipline policy designed to address behaviors. To do this, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 KIPP middle school teacher participants. Purposeful sampling was used to identify teachers who taught at KIPP for three or more years and have been in the teaching profession for five or more years. Constant comparison analysis was used to analyze teachers' responses. The findings highlighted the need to consider importance of teacher beliefs and experiences in shaping their work as educators as well as their interactions with students. The results suggest teacher inclusion in policymaking in an effort to transform culture and the need to provide in-depth, meaningful, and consistent professional development opportunities to teachers. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]