Mehran Husseini - Lost at School

Book:

Greene, R. W. (2008). Lost at school: why our kids with behavioral challenges are falling through the cracks and how we can help them. New York: Scribner.

Summary:

© Scribner

Lost at School by Ross Greene is a book that deals with what to do with challenging kids in the classroom. It is Greene’s assertion that current discipline policies in schools which are supposed to reduce violence are in fact causing the violence to increase.  Greene’s solution is his Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) approach which has been successfully used in such places as inpatient psychiatric units and general and special education schools. In CPS, the work is hard, messy, uncomfortable, and requires teamwork, patience, and tenacity, especially as the work also involves questioning conventional wisdom and practices (Greene, 2008, p. 10). For this book to be useful to you, you are going to need an open mind.

We are introduced to a kid named Joey sitting at his desk, not doing his project, and bothering the students around him. During the next few minutes, Joey elbows the jaw of the vice-principal, threatens to kill a classmate, runs out of the school, and has to be chased after by staff and physically restrained in the office. When Joey’s mother arrives to the school, she is treated like a passive, permissive, uncaring, unmotivated, and uneducated parent. The school principal then starts to talk about their zero tolerance policy, and about the police becoming involved. She then suspends Joey for five days. The question is asked, who is going to help Joey and his mother? Who is going to help the teacher in this situation because she really does care about the well being of her students? If something is not done for Joey, he is likely to drop out and possibly engage in criminality.

Greene tells us that the majority of challenging kids already know how they are supposed to behave and already want to behave the right way. Kids with behavioral challenges lack important thinking skills such as being able to understand the consequences of an action before doing it. This is referred to as a developmental delay and should be treated in the same way that you would treat a kid having trouble reading. Challenging kids like Joey have difficulty mastering the skills required for becoming proficient in handling life’s social, emotional, and behavioral challenges (Greene, 2008, p. 17). Punishing challenging kids like Joey with consequences does not teach them the thinking skills that they are missing and does not solve the problems that give rise to their challenging behavior. Greene is of the opinion that it is possible to solve the problems giving rise to challenging behavior, simultaneously teach the lacking skills, and do all of this without disrupting the classroom environment (Greene, 2008, p. 17).

Before going further it is important to differentiate between good philosophy and bad philosophy. Kids do well if they can versus kids do well if they want to. The first is the right way but the second is the wrong way because you assume that the kid makes a choice to do well and that it is your job to motivate them to do well with consequences. After Greene explains a bit about lagging skills and unsolved problems (triggers), he continues the story about Joey. A psychologist named Dr. Bridgman enters the story and wants to help Joey and his mother by using the Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) model. Along the way we learn that there are three ways of dealing with people, Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. Plan A is when an adult imposes their will on a child for an unmet expectation and plan C is when the adult drops their expectation, at least temporarily. Plan B refers to Collaborative problem solving, where a child and an adult become involved in a process to solve a problem in a realistic and mutually satisfactory manner (Greene, 2008, p. 49).

Plan B has three stages: “empathy”, “defining the problem”, and “the invitation”. In the “empathy” stage, it is important to have the child express their concern and to collect as much information as possible because it will help to identify lagging skills and unsolved problems (triggers leading to challenging behavior). Next in the “defining the problem” stage, the adult brings their concern to the table. Finally, in “the invitation” stage, the child is encouraged to come up with a solution to address both concerns. You have to be careful that you do not inadvertently impose your solution on the child because that ends up being Plan A.

Meetings between Joey, his mother, his teacher, and Dr. Bridgman take place. We learn that sometimes Joey gets embarrassed and sometimes does not know what to do on assignments. Joey is considered a partner in finding a solution and he comes up with a very elegant way of letting his teacher know when he is having difficulty. Over time, the new system works and Joey becomes less of a problem until one day his teacher is sick and a substitute comes in her place. The Substitute is unaware of the arrangement with Joey and that leads to a minor incident, showing to the reader that there can be bumps along the way in this process.

Teachers at Joey’s school start to use Plan B on their other students with varying degrees of success. One teacher, Miss Franco tried Plan B with another student named Travis who was into bullying. It took her multiple attempts before she got Travis to talk to her. Joey’s teacher even figured out that Plan B could be used on an entire class and not just the challenging kids. She took on the role of a facilitator in which her students would express their concerns and come to a consensus on solutions. A community culture formed in Joey’s classroom, were each student felt safe, respected, and valued.

When the vice-principal saw the effectiveness of Plan B, he started an initiative to educate the teaching faculty in the hopes of adapting it to their discipline policy. Whenever new ideas are brought in, there is always resistance and skepticism because ideas may be seen as fads. An entire chapter is devoted to changing the culture and practice of discipline in a school. It is important to raise awareness and get people talking so that they consider the possibility that the current way of doing things may not be the best way. Parents need to be included in the collaborative effort to improve things for challenging kids in a school. Greene states in his opinion, the vast majority of adversarial interactions between parents and school personnel can be traced back to the failure to achieve a consensus on a kid’s lagging skills and unsolved problems (Greene, 2008, p.194).

Resources and Strategies:

If you identify the skills a kid is lacking, you will understand why he/she is challenging. Challenging behavior is likely to happen when the demands being placed on a kid exceed his/her capacity to respond adaptively. Some kids have the skills to avoid becoming unstable when pushed to their limits and some don’t. Teachers do not have to wait until a kid disrupts the class because they can try to solve the problem that causes the disruption in advance. In this case, the problem and disruption are predictable.

Getting a diagnosis from a mental health professional does not identify the lagging skills a kid has. Too often there is an attitude towards medicating kids with challenging behavior which might suppress a symptom but not fix the actual problem. For example, medication would not help a kid that has been bullied or having an unrecognized learning disability. Therefore, teachers need to be more informed about the cognitive factors that can set the stage for behavioral, emotional, social challenges.

Pay attention to language processing and communication skills difficulties because they are often ignored in challenging kids.  The book gave an example of a girl that was very quiet and avoided answering questions. We later find out that she needs more time to organize her thoughts to form an answer and that the other students keeping their hands up while she was trying to answer was distractive.

Adult imposed consequences only serve to punish a kid and alienate them from their peers. Kids already know how they are supposed to behave because adults tell them. They simply do not have the skills to put into practice what they know about behavior. Using CPS, you are able to help kids understand how their behavior is affecting others, which provides a more reliable framework for kids to do the right thing without adult assistance. When you identify the kid’s unsolved problems (triggers), you can work with him/her to solve them, and eventually the challenging behavior will disappear. Behind every challenging behavior is an unsolved problem and a lagging skill (Greene, 2008, p. 31).

There are two variants of Plan B. The first is Emergency plan B which is used the moment a kid starts to show signs of challenging behavior and occurs in front of the other students. The other is Proactive Plan B which has a goal of getting the problem solved or the skill taught proactively before it comes up again (Greene, 2008, p. 51). Only use Emergency plan B only when you have to.

The stronger the relationship between the teacher and student, the more easy it is to promote a change in the student. If a challenging kid feels that you care, listen to their concerns, can be trusted, are wise and pragmatic, and genuinely wanting them to be involved in the solution, then he/she will be more receptive to Plan B. If a kid’s concerns about a problem remain unidentified and unsolved, then the kid will have no motivation to work with you and the problem will remain unsolved. Plan B takes time, practice, and perseverance (Greene, 2008, p. 96).

It is important not to rush through the empathy step of Plan B or you will have only a vague notion of the problem which will lead to a vague and ineffective solution. The steps of Plan B cannot be done out of order nor can you end up with two solutions during the first two steps of plan B. Just because teachers are adults, it does not mean that their solutions take priority over the kid’s. If a kid is not okay with a solution, or it doesn’t address his/her concerns, the problem is not durably solved and will resurface (Greene, 2008, p. 108).

Just because you are having difficulty succeeding with a challenging kid, it doesn’t mean you should stop trying to use Plan B. It may be that the challenging kid has been mistreated by schools for so many years, that it is going to take time to build trust and wipe out those unpleasant experiences. You are methodically trying to attack the unsolved problems and teach the lagging skills that have been setting the stage for a kid’s challenging behavior for a long time (Greene, 2008, p. 123).

Plan B does not waste time, it saves time. An unnecessary amount of time is wasted on class disruptions, and administering consequences. When Plan B is being used with kids to solve problems, skills are being taught simultaneously. For example, kids learn to identify, articulate, and clarify their concerns. They also learn to take into account the perspectives of other people and work towards realistic and mutually satisfactory solutions.

When trying to identify lagging skills and unsolved problems, you can use the ALSUP (Assessment for Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems) sheet and the other support documents.

Recommended Readings:

Amstutz, L. S., & Mullet, J. H. (2005). The little book of restorative discipline for schools: teaching responsibility, creating caring climates. Intercourse, PA: Good Books.

Charney, R. (1992). Teaching children to care: management in the responsive classroom. Greenfield, MA: Northeast Foundation for Children.

Danforth, S., & Smith, T. J. (2005). Engaging troubling students: a constructivist approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Gibbs, J. (2001). Tribes: a new way of learning and being together. Windsor, CA: Center Source Systems.

Greene, R. W. (2005). The explosive child (New ed.). New York: Quill ;.

Heifetz, R. A. (1994). Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Kohn, A., & ebrary, I. (2006). Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community, 10th Anniversary Edition.. Alexandria: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Lightfoot, S. (2003). The essential conversation: what parents and teachers can learn from each other. New York: Random House.

Tomlinson, C. A. (1999). The differentiated classroom responding to the needs of all learners. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Critique:

Lost at School is structured very nicely so that the concepts are easy to understand and apply. Each chapter is comprised of a theory section, a question and answer section, and a story section that focuses on Joey or another challenging kid. The writing style is entertaining and the language used throughout the book is easy to understand unlike “Ideology and Curriculum” written by Michael Apple. The author constantly repeats concepts so as to ingrain them into the philosophy of the reader which is necessary considering its anti-consequences approach to discipline.

The book matches most of the material covered in our psychology course. In one of the articles we read by Alfie Kohn, it was mentioned that kids are more interested in things they do when they have a say in it. This directly supports the theory behind Proactive Plan B. In the section on community building in the classroom, Lost at School mentions that students are likely to succeed in a place that makes them feel safe, respected, and valued. This again matches the material that we encountered in the course. The chapter on “Fostering a Sense of Togetherness” that we had to read was by far the heaviest concentration of overlap with the material in Lost at School. Things like encouraging kids to express their opinions, and having teachers and students work together to solve problems, are all characteristics of Plan B. The only minor flaw in Greene’s books was the absence of any discussion about “play time” or “connecting with nature”.

In conclusion, Lost at School is a valuable text for helping challenging kids. Its concepts are based on well founded research that Greene has referenced throughout the book. There are enough examples of how you would use CPS in real life, with the only limitation that it requires practice to perfect. With the increase in bullying and gun violence in schools, it is obvious that current practices of discipline are not working. Greene has provided us with a more humane and compassionate solution to a very serious problem affecting our schools.