Lost at School

From a distinguished clinician, pioneer in working with behaviorally challenging kids, and author of the acclaimed The Explosive Child comes a groundbreaking approach for understanding and helping these kids and transforming school discipline. Frequent visits to the principal's office. Detentions. Suspensions. Expulsions. These are the established tools of school discipline for kids who don't abide by school rules, have a hard time getting along with other kids, don't seem to respect authority, don't seem interested in learning, and are disrupting the learning of their classmates. But there's a big problem with these strategies: They are ineffective for most of the students to whom they are applied. It's time for a change in course. Here, Dr. Ross W. Greene presents an enlightened, clear-cut, and practical alternative. Relying on research from the neurosciences, Dr. Greene offers a new conceptual framework for understanding the difficulties of kids with behavioral challenges and explains why traditional discipline isn't effective at addressing these difficulties. Emphasizing the revolutionarily simple and positive notion that kids do well if they can, he persuasively argues that kids with behavioral challenges are not attention-seeking, manipulative, limit-testing, coercive, or unmotivated, but that they lack the skills to behave adaptively. And when adults recognize the true factors underlying difficult behavior and teach kids the skills in increments they can handle, the results are astounding: The kids overcome their obstacles; the frustration of teachers, parents, and classmates diminishes; and the well-being and learning of all students are enhanced. In Lost at School, Dr. Greene describes how his road-tested, evidence-based approach -- called Collaborative Problem Solving -- can help challenging kids at school. His lively, compelling narrative includes: . tools to identify the triggers and lagging skills underlying challenging behavior. . explicit guidance on how to radically improve interactions with challenging kids -- along with many examples showing how it's done. . dialogues, Q & A's, and the story, which runs through the book, of one child and his teachers, parents, and school. . practical guidance for successful planning and collaboration among teachers, parents, administrations, and kids. Backed by years of experience and research, and written with a powerful sense of hope and achievable change, Lost at School gives teachers and parents the realistic strategies and information to impact the classroom experience of every challenging kid.

Ross W. Greene, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and the originator of the innovative, evidence-based approach called Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS), as described in his influential books The Explosive Child, Lost at School, Lost & Found, and Raising Human Beings. He developed and executive produced the award-winning documentary film The Kids We Lose. Dr. Greene was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School for over twenty years and is now founding director of the nonprofit Lives in the Balance. He is also currently adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech. Dr. Greene has worked with several thousand kids with concerning behaviors and their caregivers, and he and his colleagues have overseen implementation and evaluation of the CPS model in countless schools, inpatient psychiatry units, and residential and juvenile detention facilities, with dramatic effect: significant reductions in recidivism, discipline referrals, detentions, suspensions, and use of restraint and seclusion. Dr. Greene lectures throughout the world and lives in Freeport, Maine.

Introduction 1. School of Hard Knocks 2. Kids Do Well If They Can 3. Lesson Plans 4. Let's Get It Started 5. Bumps in the Road 6. Filling in the Gaps 7. Meeting of the Minds 8. School of Thought 9. Lives in the Balance Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP) Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) Plan Sources Books Cited and Other Recommended Reading Acknowledgments Index