Lots of helpful topics covered today including adjusting the model for kids with language difficulties, drilling for information, wording unsolved problems, and more!

On the first Monday of every month at 3:30 pm Eastern time, from September through May, Dr. Ross Greene and four principals from schools in the U.S. and Canada cover a wide range of topics related to behaviorally challenging students and school discipline in general and Dr. Greene's Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) model in particular.  You can call into the program to get your questions answered or submit them via email here.  And, if you can't listen live, all the programs are archived in the Listening Library on the Lives in the Balance website or through i-Tunes.

Well, we finally had our first program of the school year, and our primary focal point -- led by our newest co-host, Heidi O'Leary, Special Education Director in Topsham, Maine -- was on how to write a CPS-flavored IEP, driven by the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP). This is big...

Applied behavior analysis (ABA) is very commonly applied for behaviorally challenging kids in schools these days...but is ABA compatible with CPS? Are we just talking different languages?

Lots of territory covered on today's program, including a discussion about school values...but at the end of the program we discussed whether reward programs work for anyone in the building. We thought not...

Kids with trauma histories may need Plan B even more than most, as it's where their concerns are heard and addressed and they begin to feel that they can influence outcomes. Of course, all kids need to feel that way.

Pardon the repetition, but crisis prevention is far superior to crisis management, and there are lots of things about Collaborative & Proactive Solutions that make crisis prevention more feasible.

If a student is highly volatile, unstable, reactive, and unsafe, there are a few things to bear in mind: (1) s/he didn't get that way overnight; (2) there must be many expectations the student is having difficulty meeting; (3) reducing those expectations -- Plan C -- is a very good way to get things stabilized; and (4) even if takes a lot of time and energy to stabilize that student, it's a lot less time and energy than that student is consuming when s/he's unstable. 

What happens when class size, systemic issues, and the overwhelming needs of students outstrip a teacher's capacity to respond adaptively? It can't be good...

If your school is implementing PBIS, you may be wondering which "tier" is the best fit for Collaborative & Proactive Solutions. The truth is, CPS is relevant to all three tiers. If that's the case, how important are the tiers?

Our first program of the new school year was recorded live at Waterville (Maine) Junior High School, which had massive numbers of disipline referrals, detentions, and suspensions during the 2015-2016 school year. This year, led by principal Carole Gilley and assistant principal Doug Frame, they'll be implementing Collaborative & Proactive Solutions, with the goal of dramatically reducing those numbers. On this program, they received some guidance from school leaders who've been there and done that.

On the last program of the school year, we were able to respond to some callers and some emailers...including one teacher who's very frustrated by her school system's approach to students' challenging behaviors and is having difficulty changing the system on her own.  

"I'm bored" could mean many different things, all of which await discovery in the Empathy step of Plan B.  What are the odds that "I'm not motivated" is the student's concern? Slim and none.

Many schools have mission statements, but not an explicit description of values. Many schools have delineated values but don't pay attention to them. But values are what should guide every decision and intervention, so it's a good idea to know what they are.

On today's program, our panel responded to an email from an anguished teacher who was looking for some guidance on what went wrong with one of her students and his parents.

As always, we covered lots of territory on today's program...including how CPS can help students who are in fight or flight mode and how to help kids who have very tough lives outside of school.

Goodness, there sure are a lot of ways to stray from the CPS model...and we heard about a lot of them on this program!

Those adult-imposed consequences that are so popular in schools these days...do we really need 'em? You can probably guess the answer...

What happens when parents and teachers skip concerns and jump straight to solutions? Probably nothing good.  

On this final program of the school year, one of our principals told us about a student whose behavioral challenges have been making life very difficult...for himself and her.  How best to get things on track?