Location:Home » Caribbean » Development » Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them
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Avg. Customer Rating:(based on 15 reviews) Sales Rank: 5340 Category: Book
Author:Ross W Greene Publisher:Scribner Studio:Scribner Manufacturer:Scribner Label:Scribner Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published) Media: Hardcover Edition: 1 Number Of Items: 1 Pages: 320 Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1 Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 1.2
Product Description 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.
Well thought out, well written November 26, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There is so much conflicting information out these days about education, discipline, and parenting, it's nice to find a book that makes sense and supports it's theories. This book does a good job of discussing kids with behavioral challenges, and ways to address their needs that can work.
Not the Usual "fix my kid" Book: Deeply Humane and Engaging November 22, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you are a real teacher (or principal or dean) in a real school, this humane and engaging book will surprise you with its combination of practicality and idealism. It will inspire you to change things and to believe in the possibility of change.
After teaching for eight years, I have spent the last three as "the discipline guy", Dean of Students, in a small, rural middle school. As both teacher and now as dean I have developed a deep suspicion of a certain sort of books. You know the ones: written by theoreticians or one-on-one therapists who have never had to juggle a roomful of 25 actual young human beings with not enough time, not enough resources and far too much of paperwork, testing, and ringing bells; and more and more deeply-troubled youngsters. These are the books that anxious or angry and frustrated parents bring to meetings that tell them how you should be meeting the needs of their unsuccessful or disruptive child. These books make things far worse for everyone involved.
"Lost at School" is different; and that's clear from the beginning. After a brief introduction which pulls no punches in saying "school discipline is broken" the book launches into a story! Every teacher I know likes a good story - and this one feels so much like real (school)-life from the beginning that it sets the hook for the rest of the book. The different thing about this story is not the characterization of the troubled and challenging kids, but of its inclusion of the realistic range of adult personalities that combine to make education what it is - and sometimes isn't. The book sets out to follow the path of a handful of youngsters and another handful of fictional teachers and administrators who are struggling with the limitations of their own range of personalities and world-views as well as the real constraints of what schools can and cannot do. It is quite eye-opening and, in my opinion, dead-on accurate.
Now don't let me give the impression that this book is just another entertaining "Up the Down Staircase" or "Room 222" or even merely another inspirational "Stand and Deliver". "Lost at School" is ultimately focused on a suite of methods for understanding children who exhibit challenging behaviors in school and for working with them to help them change. The "storyline" serves as an opportunity to view those methods in action as used by some fictionalized but well-drawn characters.
The core assumptions of Greene's approach are that behaviorally challenging youngsters (a) "know how we want them to behave" and (b) "want to behave the right way". They don't need us to keep depriving them of privileges or offering them rewards to learn these two bits.
The basic premise of the book is that these youngsters lack specific thinking skills which make it difficult or impossible for them to behave in circumstances that come up too-frequently in their school lives. Much as education has come-around in the past 20 years to acknowledge that cognitive deficits, learning disabilities, must be acknowledged as part of a youngster's learning of reading or mathematics, we need to move to a similar approach with behavioral difficulties.
The goal, then, for educators, parents and the students, is to identify these missing or lagging cognitive skills and help students develop them - as central parts of their education. Greene provides an inventory which will remind educators of the sorts of rubrics we use frequently, for instance, in assessing students for attention or hyperactivity disorders. Some of these skills may well have come up in your conversations about a difficult student, e.g. "difficulty handling transitions". Some of them have probably been parts of conversations about students without the notion that they ought to be taught, e.g. "difficulty considering likely outcomes or consequences of actions". And some of them might just not have occurred to you as loci of behavioral challenges, e.g. "difficulty taking into account situational factors that would suggest the need to adjust a plan of action". Rarely, though, have you or I managed to systematically think about what to do with these anecdotal observations.
Having worked through the assessment of lagging skills, the next task is to "teach" these skills. In this regard Greene shifts gears and does not provide a "curriculum". Instead he provides an approach - a way of communicating with behaviorally challenging youngsters that he terms "Collaborative Problem Solving" or CPS. Some might find this unsatisfying. I did, at first; hoping for a "methods" approach to teaching this as any other group of skills. But I found Greene's system ultimately satisfying and revealing instead. He gives us CPS and weaves his ongoing story of sixth-grader Joey into its explication
The CPS approach is interesting because it sounds so simple. Greene calls it simply "Plan B"; distinguishing from "Plan A" - wherein the teacher or institution imposes its will on the student, and from "Plan C" in which we "drop an expectation completely, at least temporarily". I have to compliment Green on boldly sticking to such a simple naming scheme instead of coming up with typical ed-psych jargon to describe his schema or its alternatives. But the real power of such a simply-named approach is that describing it reveals how much we are all rooted in bouncing between poorly-implemented versions of plans A and C as part of school discipline. The "Plan B" or CPS approach assumes and requires listening to and the meaningful participation of the student -- and that is revealed to be a deeply-buried skill of even the well-intentioned educators in the storyline. But it can be learned and is the key to making things work.
Greene is very open to all the ways things can go awry in dealing with real kids in real school environments. He peppers the book with "Q&A" sections, and sample dialogues. But central to his acknowledgement of the "real world" is his fictional one! He weaves in, throughout, the ongoing tale of Joey and Mrs. Woods; of the Assistant Principal who got knocked in the jaw by Joey back in chapter one; of Joey's anguished mom and even of Mr. Armstrong, the "these kids just have to learn how to behave" guy, whom seems so familiar to any educator. This side-story becomes in many ways a central one as all of these people move through a year of struggle and transformation.
I won't tell you how it ends but will reassure you that it does end, as most school years to, not with a bang of disaster or triumph but with a deep breath and a look ahead as all the good but flawed folks involved anticipate the next year's labors. In this Greene manages to honor the motives and efforts of everyone who chooses to work in the often thankless business of education while he deftly reminds us of how much better we could and should be doing with these youngsters.
lost at school- a great resource November 17, 2008 I have really enjoyed reading this book and found it to be straightforward and easy to follow. I have been an educator for many years, first as a classroom teacher and now in an alternative setting (a juvenile detention facility). For many years now we have been told to differentiate our teaching, to understand that children learn in different ways and we, as educators, should be sure to address all children's learning styles. It makes sense that we should also understand that behaviors need to be addressed differently. As I read through this book I could "see" children I had taught in the past, children who seemed to be unable to control their behavior. I believe this would be a valuable tool for a classroom teacher and for parents of a child who is having difficulty in school.
I don't think this book will solve every problem for every child, but I do believe that the methods set forth in this book could be a godsend for many teachers, parents, and especially for many children who are getting lost in the shuffle.
I highly recommend this book for parents and teachers dealing with children who are struggling with behavior issues.
"Imagine," "Revolution," And Bringing Hope To Education And Helping Kids: A Revised Academic Review of "Lost at School" November 9, 2008 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
PLEASE NOTE: The following review is a DRASTIC, ninety degree turn from my previous review of "Lost at School," which was entitled "Theoretically Interesting--Practically Unrealistic." (Nov 8, 2008)
NOVEMBER 28, 2008:
I got "Lost at School," because the description of the book led me to believe that it might offer "easy," well defined ideas that I could implement to increase interaction with my sons. When I got the book, I quickly concluded that the book would do anything but provide "easy" solutions. That the book was not what I was hoping for, that I did not read the book as carefully as I should have, that I allowed my own biases about the subject matter to filter what was being said, and that I allowed introductory comments to unduly influence my comprehension culminated in my misunderstanding "Lost at School." This misunderstanding resulted in my original review, that was a less than favorable review of "Lost at School." My second reading, without my biases to interfere, led me to a completely different understanding of what "Lost at School" is really about: viewing children from a completely different perspective than typically used by most people today; respecting the humanity of all individuals; educational "imagination" to escape the bonds of current theories; and a scientific "revolution" to change society's current paradigm for social interaction. Thus, while "Lost at School" is not a quick "fix," I cannot say enough to recommend this book to others.
I owe my new appreciation of "Lost at School" to those [including the author, Dr Ross Greene,] who read my initial review and wrote to me with questions for clarification about what I said in my review. So, THANK YOU READERS for taking the time to reply, as I requested at the end of my review, and for emailing me your comments to ensure that I got them. Hopefully, this new review will answer these concerns and questions.
If you are ready to read about a true alternative to the existing policies guiding how our society deals with problems in general, and "behaviorally challenging children" specifically, "Lost at School" is a book for you. "Lost at School" is an attempt by the author to outline, in as simple of terms as he can, steps for implementing policies (for dealing with children) that are radically different from those generally used today by most social structures (e.g., schools, hospitals, families). These policies are founded upon completely different--not new, but DIFFERENT--assumptions about social interaction and, more specifically, socialization. At its most basic level, a key difference between Dr Greene's "model" (or "Plan B" as it is frequently labeled in the book) for helping others, is the notion that "kids WILL do well if they can" (emphasis added). Such a tenant is drastically different than the more commonly held assumption of many people (e.g., parents, teachers, other kids, adults) that "kids do well if they WANT to" (emphasis added). I have emphasized the key word that imbues the meaning of each notion, because the differences are more than semantics and lexicon. "Will" is internal, proactive, optimistic, and assumes that subsequent responses are founded upon the individual thinking about AND deciding what "action" to take. "Want" is (generally assimilated from) external, reactive, pessimistic, and assumes that subsequent responses are founded upon the individual discriminating between options for the least aversive or most favorable "behavior."
Another crucial difference being offered in "Lost at School" is how a person must interact with the (behaviorally challenging) child. This difference--in my opinion--is not adequately emphasized or delineated in the book; especially given the importance of one aspect, EMAPTHY, to the author's model. In general terms, this means a person must interact as "humanistically" as possible, taking a "subjective" approach to interactions. Specifically, the first step of interaction requires empathy: "understanding of a kid's concern or perspective." Without true empathy, the model for change presented in "Lost at School" WILL NOT WORK. PERIOD.
The biggest difference proposed by "Lost at School"--and a basic assumption for employing empathy and will--is that everyday life involves social interactions, not habits and behaviors. It is the root concept of Dr Greene's proposed model for changing "challenging" children, and from which the author derives the name for his model: Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS). Without social interaction you cannot have collaboration; without "will" and "empathy" you cannot have collaboration. And as already stated, without empathy [and will] this model will not work and change will not happen. What will happen is reversion to the "acting out" of undesirable behaviors and habits.
From a scholarly and scientific perspective, the ideas of the CPS program are founded upon entirely different theories and philosophical perspectives than those held by a majority of people today, both within and outside educational systems. In academic terms, "Lost at School" is a presenting a totally different paradigm of how and why things are they way they are in the world. Unfortunately, in order to keep "Lost at School" simplistic enough for those not interested in the "grander" and more "academic" aspects of the "program," the book more "covertly" presents these aspects to the reader. This covert presentation was HUGELY problematic for me, because it prevented me from clearly recognizing what was being said in my initial reading of the book; ergo, my original review title "Theoretically Interesting--Practically Unrealistic."
As I see it, "Lost as School" is three essays, in one book. There is the main text of the book, wherein main concepts, points and conclusions of the book are addressed. The "second essay" of the book is the "Q & A" [Question and Answer] sections, which theoretical questions that a reader (or audience member) might ask the author. The "third essay," which starts with the opening of chapter one initially lead me to view this part of "Lost at School" as an extended exemplar of what the author was saying in the text. In fact, this "third essay" is more than an exemplar, as it presents some very critical points through its discourse that are not covered in, or I missed in my first reading of, the main text. However, reading this part of the book (the "third essay") is necessary to understanding the substance of "Lost at School" because it is within this "essay" that the "covert" content is made most clear. Hence, my failure to read this part of the book the first time resulted in my complete misunderstanding of the book's importance. Interestingly, while reading this running story narrative, two songs kept popping into my mind: "Imagine" by John Lennon and "Revolution" by the Beatles. When I finished reading "Lost at School" I found that these two words--and the context of the songs themselves--best described Dr Ross Greene's book.
My philosophical viewpoints too often lead me to quickly criticize things that are not what I perceive to be holistic, and this resulted in my stating in my first review that the model reduces "behaviorally challenging children to kids that need to learn to behave properly." I originally perceived the book's theme "that behind every challenging behavior is either an unsolved problem or a lagging skill" as reducing how one dealt with challenging children to operantly teaching kids in one or two specific skills listed in the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP)--an inventory provided in the book for assessing "lagging skills." However, while the model presented in "Lost at School" for dealing with "challenging children" currently focuses interactions on teacher to student involvement, it is not reducing it to teaching specific behaviors as I concluded in my first review. To be blunt, I misunderstood the role of the ALSUP inventory--partially because I skipped the "running story"--when I read "Lost at School" the first time; and I was looking at it out of context. As I initially read the inventory I concluded two things: 1) these were skills that were intended to be operant (behaviorally) conditioning for kids; and 2) that the iventory was too limiting in its scope and did not take into consideration family or culture.
Another error that I made upon my first read of "Lost at School" was the role of cognition as practically applied by the program. As several people pointed out in emails, I recognized that the ideas in the book had at least some foundation in social cognitive theory. As such, they could not understand how I concluded that the program presented in "Lost at School," known as the CPS model "doesn't factor cognition into what you are trying to do." Dr Greene put it most clearly, when he wrote to me: "My model is all about changing the way challenging kids (and the adults who work with them) think, so I'm similarly confused about how you've come to the impression that the CPS model 'doesn't factor cognition into what you are trying to do' and is therefore 'nothing more than a new trick for people to learn (also known as conditioning).' Nothing tricky about it...changing how adults think about and interact with challenging kids is a far cry from models emphasizing conditioning. So it sounds like you and I may be thinking very much alike!"
In the final analysis, "Lost at School" is a book that starts out asking the reader to "Imagine;" imagine if classrooms were...imagine if there were no "behavioral" problems...imagine if all students were learning and felt safe... imagine if everyone did this...imagine, just as John Lennon's lyrics challenge listeners. But, "Lost at School," after getting you to imagine the possibilities of living in a world of will, empathy, collaboration, and interaction, turns around and basically says, "I want to start a revolution." (Beatles, "Revolution" on their White Album). In my youth I took these words, these ideas, and randomly tried to abide by them; tried to get others to "see" the world from the perspective (often labeled symbolic interactionism and/or transcendentalism) that incorporates the notion that people really can think, and, more importantly, act and interact rather than behave or play out habits.
While the CPS model presented in "Lost at School" can be breathtakingly refreshing and full of promise, one of my initial impressions (laid out in my first review) is still valid: "While I believe that users of the collaborative problem solving model feel it is truly effective, I would argue that they most likely have been fortunate to 'work' in an environment willing to fully endorse and cooperate with the program. That is, this program is fully dependent upon all parties agreeing to take the extra-ordinary time, patience, practice, and collaboration to assess the difficulties, develop a realistic program, implement it, AND, most importantly, FOLLOW THROUGH TO THE 'END.'" Reading "Lost at School" in fact does injustice to this reality--especially the running story, which makes it seem all so "easy."
PLEASE NOTE: If and when this review is posted, I will post my original review under the comments for those who are interested. I will also post the comments left to that review.
As always, if this review was not helpful to you, I would appreciate learning the reason(s) so I can improve my reviews. My goal is to provide help to potential buyers, not get into any arguments. So, if you only disagree with my opinion, could you please say so in the comments or email me. Please don't impute the review system by not indicating why the review was not helpful. And of course, I would appreciate it if you would not indicate that my review was not helpful simply because you disagree with the opinions in my review. Thanks. Karl
necessary and needed November 4, 2008 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a comrade in the effort to make the care of challenging kids humane and healing, I can not say enough about Dr. Greene's work. The collaborative problem solving model is the first truly effective model of care and conceptualization for these kids I have seen in nearly 25 years of work, and is the only model that uses the best of the people who really give the care-the teachers, the parents, the staff-to make a difference.
Lost at school is not only for educators but for anyone who cares for troubled kids. For caregivers using the Collaborative Problem Solving model, Lost at School develops and deepens understanding of why kids have problems and how they can be helped. Since school is the primary work of childhood, anyone who works with children needs the wisdom of this book.
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