Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them

From the renowned authority on education and parenting, an in-depth approach to aid parents and teachers to work together with behaviourally challenging students.

School discipline is broken. Too often, the kids who need our help the most are viewed as disrespectful, out of control, and beyond help, and are often the recipients of our most ineffective, most punitive interventions. These students and their parents, teachers, and administrators are frustrated and desperate for answers.

Dr. Ross W. Greene, author of the acclaimed book The Explosive Child, offers educators and parents a different framework for understanding challenging behaviour. Dr. Greene's Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) approach helps adults focus on the true factors contributing to challenging classroom behaviours, empowering educators to address these factors and create helping relationships with their most at-risk kids.

This revised and updated edition of Lost at School contains the latest refinements to Dr. Greene's CPS model, including enhanced methods for solving problems collaboratively, improving communication, and building relationships with kids.

Dr. Greene's lively, compelling narrative includes:

• Tools to identify the problems and lagging skills causing challenging behaviour
• Explicit guidance on how to radically improve interactions with challenging kids and reduce challenging episodes along with many examples showing how it's done
• Practical guidance for successful planning and collaboration among educators, parents, and kids

Backed by years of experience and research and written with a powerful sense of hope and achievable change, Lost at School gives teachers and parents the realistic strategies and information to impact the classroom experience of every challenging kid (and their classmates).

Table of Contents

A Note on the Revised and Updated Edition ix

Introduction xi

1. School of Hard Knocks 1
2. Kids Do Well if They Can 10
3. Lesson Plans 54
4. Let's Get It Started 78
5. Bumps in the Road 120
6. The Icing on the Cake 155
7. Meeting of the Minds 187
8. School of Thought 233
9. Lives in the Balance 281

Assessment of Lagging Skills & Unsolved Problems (ALSUP) 288

Problem Solving Plan 289

Drilling Cheat Sheet 291

Sources 295

Books Cited and Other Recommended Reading 299

Acknowledgments 301

Index 303

"A positive and practical approach for teachers who want to work redemptively with kids whose classroom behavior is an impediment to academic and social success."
- Carol Ann Tomlinson, EdD, William Clay Parrish Jr. Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership, University of Virginia

"We cannot ignore difficult student behaviors any longer. Dr Greene's book is a timely contribution to the literature on how schools must support all students, and his approach fits well with Response to Intervention (RTI)."
- Rachel Brown-Chidsey, PhD, NCSP, associate professor, School Psychology Program, University of Southern Maine and co-author of Response to Intervention