Dr. Ross Greene

On today's program, one of the educators at Anytown told us about a Plan B she'd attempted with a student in which the Empathy step became contentious. It turns out she had entered the Empathy step with a theory about the unsolved problem she was discussing...and that theory made it hard for her to achieve the primary goal of the Empathy step:  information gathering (rather than theory verification).

CPS is coming along rather nicely in the schools of the members of our Educators Panel...of course, there's still more work to be done.

A very interesting discussion today about "clumping" versus "splitting" unsolved problems. Listen in to see what that means!

Dr. Greene promised to do an entire program on how to use the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP), and here it is!

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...