Dr. Ross Greene

In this program, Dr. Greene interviews Dr. Craig Murphy, school psychologist in the Newton, Massachusetts Public School system. As part of a 3-year, federally-funded project overseen by Dr. Murphy, many of the elementary schools in Newton have been implementing the Collaborative Problem Solving approach. Dr. Murphy describes the challenges and successes in helping classroom teachers understand challenging behavior as a form of developmental delay and embrace Plan B as a viable option for helping students with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges.

In this program, Dr. Greene talks about the importance of having a "vision" for what discipline should look like in a school building. Having a vision starts with understanding that challenging behavior is a form of developmental delay...continues with using the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP) in a school's assessment procedures...and continues with creating mechanisms for school staff to become skilled at using Plan B. Along the way, it's also necessary to create mechanisms for school staff to communicate well about at-risk students.

How do you get the ball rolling on implementing Collaborative Problem Solving in your school? That depends on where your school is at in terms of recognizing that the students with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges -- and their teachers and classmates -- aren't being well-served by disciplinary programs that rely heavily on rewarding and punishing. In this program, Dr. Greene describes some of the key ingredients for achieving a more accurate, compassionate, productive understanding of these students' difficulties and responding to those difficulties in ways that are more effective.

This is Dr. Greene's first program, so be prepared for some pauses as he adjusts to new technology! But this program provides a nice overview of the Collaborative Problem Solving approach -- first articulated in Dr. Greene's book The Explosive Child and more recently in his book Lost at School -- and what it takes to implement Collaborative Problem Solving in a school.