Lost and Found. Ross W. Greene

Lost and Found - Ross W. Greene


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about getting, escaping, and avoiding in such a maladaptive manner. And now you have the answer, thanks to the mountain of research: because he's lacking the skills to get, escape, and avoid in a more adaptive fashion.

      What skills does the research tell us kids with concerning behaviors are lacking? For the time being, we're going to sacrifice precision for efficiency: flexibility/adaptability, frustration tolerance/emotion regulation, and problem solving. Concerning behaviors typically occur when those skills are being demanded. And those skills are being demanded when (you now know this) kids (and the rest of us) are having difficulty meeting certain expectations. You'll be learning how to identify those lagging skills and unsolved problems in chapter 4.

      You may not have known this, but educators are in one of the helping professions, right there alongside medical doctors, mental health professionals, and other helpers. Therefore, your role in the life of a student who is struggling can be summarized in one word: helper. There are two criteria for being an effective helper:

      1 Helpers help. In other words, helpers—like medical doctors—abide by the Hippocratic Oath, which goes something like this: don't make it worse.

      2 Helpers have thick skin. In other words, helpers don't take things personally. Although helpers are entitled to their feelings, helpers bend over backward to ensure that those feelings do not interfere with helping.

      In many schools, the interventions that are still being applied to kids with concerning behaviors are making things worse. And in many schools, inaccurate beliefs about the difficulties of these students are interfering with helping.

      So now one more question before the chapter ends: if the ways in which your school is assessing and dealing with students with concerning behaviors aren’t helping, are you ready to begin the journey?

      Many of the developments and initiatives that have come down the pike in education in the last twenty to thirty years have made it much harder for educators to fulfill the role of helper.

      My population is 95 percent African American and Hispanic, 80 to 85 percent male, and between 25 and 50 percent special education. The fact that we have criminalized discipline in our school system—especially with students who have certain profiles—helps explain why we lose these students. School becomes a puzzle they cannot solve. There is a huge drop in suspensions after the tenth grade only because many of my students never get past their sophomore year.

      —ALEX, FORMER SCHOOL PRINCIPAL

      This goes without saying, but if a school isn't using punitive, exclusionary disciplinary strategies, then it won't be disproportional in the application of these strategies.

      One of the most important doctrines governing interventions for students who receive special education in US public schools is the principle of the least restrictive environment. A similar doctrine—the least toxic response—should be applied to interventions for students with concerning behaviors. Detention, suspension, expulsion, paddling, and restraint and seclusion fall into the most toxic response category.

      Doesn't a suspension at least give the teachers and the well-behaved students a break from students with concerning behaviors? Sure, for about three days. Then she's back, and with all of the same problems that caused the concerning behaviors that prompted the suspension in the first place. Along with, eventually, an attitude, which is what most of us would have if caregivers who were supposed to be helping continued to apply interventions that not only weren't helping but had the primary effect of pushing us away.

      “Suspending kids doesn't help build a relationship with them; it says, ‘We don't want you here.’”

      —CAROL, PRINCIPAL

      Classroom teachers have historically been among the most important socialization agents for children in our society. But when we force teachers to become disciplinary and test-prep robots, we make being a helper more difficult.

      Using psychiatric diagnoses as the gatekeeper for services, placement, and funding also makes it harder to help. Many kids with concerning behaviors don't meet diagnostic criteria for any particular psychiatric disorder but badly need help. They don't receive the help we already know they need because they don't fit into a specific diagnostic bucket. And those diagnoses—which are just long lists of concerning behaviors thought to cluster together—are actually distracting, because they cause us to focus on behaviors rather than on the lagging skills and unsolved problems that are contributing to those behaviors.

      The special education referral process often makes things harder. For many classroom teachers, a psychoeducational evaluation often feels like the only option for obtaining additional information about a student's difficulties. But the evaluation process can take a long time, and it is often geared toward determining only whether a student qualifies for special services, so the teachers are often disappointed in and underwhelmed by the information they receive. And such evaluations frequently don't pinpoint the specific expectations a student is having difficulty meeting.

      By the way, the shifting sands have not only affected the field of education. Many of the societal shifts that have occurred over the past forty to fifty years have worked to the disadvantage of kids in general and kids with concerning behaviors in particular. As an example, it now takes two incomes to maintain the lifestyle that one income previously supported. As another example, the rate of kids living in single-parent homes has doubled in the last fifty years, so a lot of kids don't have the level of contact and interaction with their parents that they might have had three or four decades ago.

      Yes, there are many obstacles to helping students with


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