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.