Dr. Ross Greene

Have you filled out the School Discipline Survey on the Lives in the Balance website yet? The Educators Panel members did that very thing on today's program.

Is it a good idea to identify and track at-risk students? Of course! And the CPS model provides the paperwork to help schools do it: the ALSUP, Plan B Flowchart, and Plan B Cheat Sheet.

Our friends at Anytown High School have been doing a lot more Plan B lately...and that means they're gathering a lot of information about what's making it hard for their students to learn and behave appopriately, and getting a lot of problems solved. That's about as exciting as it gets in the CPS Territories.

If we spend all of our meeting time talking about things about which we can do nothing, staff will emerge from those meetings assuming they can do nothing to help the behaviorally challenging students we're discussing.  But what if we spend our meeting time talking about lagging skills and unsolved problems with the ALSUP as our discussion guide?

Thanks to a caller, this program focused on the difficulties that can pop up when Collaborative Problem Solving is being implemented.  A very informative program! 

On today's program, the Educators Panel covered wide-ranging topics related to implementation of CPS in their respective buildings.  Things are really coming along!

The title of the program pretty much says it all, though it's not the only topic Dr. Greene covered.

Very interesting discussion about why it's so important to understand a student's concern or perspective on a given unsolved problem...if we don't achieve that understanding, then we'll be relegated to solutions that don't address the student's concerns (and that don't solve the problem either).

Anytown High School has arrived at the "hump": the point at which the lenses of Collaborative Problem Solving are starting to feel right and they're now clear that a lot of their students need CPS...but they're just getting good at Plan B...and they're starting to feel a little overwhelmed. A tempting time to go back to what wasn't working all along...but rather the time to prioritize, systematize, and help more staff become proficient at Plan B.

This show serves as a reminder of the incredible insights our Educators Panel offers on a wide array of topics related to school discipline in general and behaviorally challenging kids in particular.  If you only listen to only one program, listen to this one.

Another great session with the staff at Anytown High School today...we reviewed aspects of the CPS model the members of the core group were still struggling with and began talking about a new student who they feel would benefit from CPS.  We also spent some time talking about what happens when you assume...

Today was our first session of the new school year with the staff at Anytown High School. We met the new members of the core group, provided them with an overview of the CPS model, and answered some initial questions.  A good start...

Welcome back to Collaborative Problem Solving at School! On this program, Dr. Greene highlighted some of the stories about school discipline practices that made the news over the summer. There's bad news...and good news. How's your school doing in its efforts to transform school discipline?

What better to do on the final program of the school year than to spend one last session with the staff at Anytown High School?  We discussed the progress Anytown has made in implementing the CPS model this year, along with some goals for where to pick things up again next year. 

On today's program, we revisited the necessity of working on unsolved problems proactively and systematically, rather than dealing with problems (emergently) when they pop up on a particular day. We also focused on how to get past some of the things kids say (we called them "show-stoppers") that seem to stall the process of drilling for information.

On today's program, the staff at Anytown reported on their progress in using Plan B with two of their challenging students. One student responded quite well to Plan B. But it was the other student who helped us learn about some of the ways in which the process can run aground.

Here on our last Educators Panel of the school year, the crew tackled that four-letter word again (TIME), discussed the potent effects of another word (empathy), and thought about what can be done now (at the end of the school year) to hit the ground running with CPS next year.  Don't worry...the Educators Panel will be back next school year!

The staff at Anytown had a new student to talk about today. So we did the usual: we identified lagging skills and unsolved problems, thought about whether the unsolved problems were specific enough, figured out who was going to take primary responsibility for solving each problem, and still had time left for some role-playing.  Next comes the hard part.

Can a new principal get a school moving toward a more humane, compassionate, effective approach to understanding and helping students with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges?  On this program, you'll hear about how Carol Davison -- Principal at Forsyth Road Elementary in Surrey, British Columbia -- is doing just that.  

On today's program, the staff at Anytown High School reported on their initial attempts at using Plan B with a behaviorally challenging student...and get some feedback so they can do it even better the next time.