Lost at School (10 page)

Does this mean you’re supposed to drop all your expectations so a kid won’t exhibit challenging behavior? No. But, again you may find it productive to let go of some lower-priority expectations so you and the kid aren’t overwhelmed by the large number of problems that need to be solved. Moreover, sometimes Plan C makes sense as a matter of timing. In other words, you may feel that it would be better to discuss a given problem at a more opportune moment, which sometimes means Plan C now and Plan B shortly thereafter.

PLAN B

Plan B involves Collaborative Problem Solving. Plan B helps adults clarify and understand a child’s concerns about or perspective on a particular unsolved problem, be it excessive badgering of other kids, refusing to work, pencil sharpening, incomplete homework, or class disruptions. Plan B also helps the kid understand the adult’s concerns about the problem. And Plan B helps adults and kids work together toward mutually satisfactory solutions so that both parties’ concerns are addressed, the problem gets solved, and, as will become clear as we move forward, lagging skills get taught.

Is the kid going to need help for the rest of his life? Actually, the reason you’re helping him now is so he won’t need your help for the rest of his life.

This next part is important. There are two ways to use Plan B:
Emergency B
and
Proactive B.
When I first describe Plan B, it’s common for adults to come to the erroneous conclusion that the best time to use Plan B is at the precise moment when a kid is beginning to show signs of challenging behavior. That’s Emergency Plan B, and the timing is actually not the best because the kid may already be upset or heated up and because, if you’re a teacher, you’ve got a lot of other things going on in your classroom at that moment. Few of us do our clearest thinking, resolve difficult problems, and learn new skills when we’re already upset, so crisis
management
is not your best long-term strategy. You’ll go much further with crisis
prevention.
As I mentioned
earlier, because challenging behavior tends to be highly predictable, you don’t have to wait until a kid is in the midst of a challenging episode to try to solve the problem that caused the episode. The goal is to get the problem solved or the skill taught
proactively
—before it comes up again. That’s Proactive Plan B.

When Mrs. Woods threatened to send Joey to the assistant principal because he wouldn’t come up to her desk, that was Plan A. Could she have used Emergency Plan B instead? Yes, and Emergency Plan B would have worked out a lot better for Mrs. Woods, Mr. Middleton, Joey, and the other kids in the class. But if Mrs. Woods had previously observed that Joey became confused on assignments and was easily embarrassed in front of his classmates, then Proactive Plan B would have been even better. Will anarchy ensue in Mrs. Woods’ classroom if she doesn’t use Plan A? No, it won’t.

By the way, there’s another reason to be using Plan B instead of Plan A: If you want to help a kid, you’re going to need a helping relationship to accomplish the mission. Time and time again, research (and practical experience) has shown that the most reliable factor leading people to change—by far—is the relationship they have with the person helping them change. And while you may have thought that helping is the sole domain of professional helpers—medical doctors, mental health professionals, clergy, and the like—educators often find themselves in a position to help kids who are in distress.

Why would kids need the help of a teacher on nonacademic problems? Because, either in their own eyes or the eyes of others, they are involved in problem situations they are not handling well. What is the goal of the helping relationship? To help kids not only better manage a given problem, but to apply the learning to sorting out other problems and to preventing problems from occurring in the first place. Helping provides kids with tools to become more effective self-helpers and more responsible “agents of change” in their own lives.

As noted by Dr. Gerard Egan, author of
The Skilled Helper: A Problem-Management and Opportunity-Development Approach to Helping,
helping is messy. Helping is a working alliance, a two-way collaborative process, and a two-person team effort. Helping is not something that teachers do to kids; rather, it is a process that teachers and kids work through together.

In trying to forge a helping relationship with a challenging kid, it can be useful to think about the qualities you’d seek in someone you were hoping could help you. Are you seeking someone who cares? Whom you feel you can trust? Who takes the time to listen to you? Who asks the right questions and truly tries to understand your concerns? Who has the wisdom and know-how to help in ways that are effective and durable? Who involves you in the process? Is this the type of relationship you’re forging with the challenging kid you’re trying to help?

Plan B is a relationship-building process. Plan A pushes kids away.

Q & A

Question:
Doesn’t helping kids with behavioral challenges take a lot of time?

Answer:
Yes, helping, especially the kind that involves teaching skills and solving problems durably, takes time. But perpetually dealing with kids’ challenges in ways that aren’t working takes much more time. And don’t forget, Proactive Plan B is taking place at opportune moments, not under emergent conditions.

Question:
Like when? Don’t forget, I have twenty-five kids in my class, I’m the only one in there, and I have a bunch of kids who are on special education programs and need my attention.

Answer:
Most teachers find that Proactive Plan B can be done during the times they’re devoting individual attention to other student problems (for instance, academic challenges), such as before school, after school, during recess, or during lunch; whenever they can spare five or ten minutes. I’ve also found that most principals and assistant principals are happy to arrange coverage so that a classroom teacher has the time to do Plan B with a kid. You’ll probably want to devote your initial Plan B efforts to helping the kids whose challenges are most severe and who are disrupting the classroom process the most. Then move on to the rest of the kids who need Plan B. You’re devoting a lot of time to the kids with behavioral challenges already. While
Plan B takes a little extra time and planning up front, my experience is that it dramatically reduces the amount of time you’re spending on challenging behavior overall.

Question:
You said that this model doesn’t require that adults suspend all of their expectations. Care to say more about that?

Answer:
It would be impossible to teach, parent, or help kids without having expectations. The CPS model does not involve dropping all expectations. But since you can’t fix everything at once, it makes sense to eliminate
some
low-priority expectations (in other words, use Plan C) and focus on the higher-priority expectations and problems that remain. Just because you’re eliminating a given expectation now doesn’t mean you won’t come back to it once some higher-priority expectations have been met.

You will want to consider whether your expectations for each kid are truly realistic, and grade level and chronological age typically are not great indicators of a kid’s developmental readiness for a particular expectation. We often place expectations on kids that we know they can’t meet, and then punish them when they handle our expectations as poorly as we suspected they would. An unrealistic expectation is a challenging behavior waiting to happen.

Question:
You also said that simply communicating an expectation to a kid is not the same as using Plan A. Can you explain that again?

Answer:
This is an important point to clarify. You’re not using any Plan when you’re communicating or reminding a kid of an expectation, and you don’t need a Plan if a given expectation is being met. The three Plans represent your options for dealing with
unmet
expectations. That said, there’s definitely such a thing as “style points” in how adults go about communicating or reminding a kid of their expectations. In other words, it’s possible to communicate expectations in a way that will send some of the more volatile kids right over the edge.

Question:
So when Mrs. Woods let Joey know that she wanted him to get back to work and stop disturbing his classmates, that wasn’t Plan A?

Answer:
No, that was Mrs. Woods reminding Joey of her expectations. She moved into Plan A in imposing her will when her expectation remained unmet. But the most important point is that Joey’s difficulty getting started on assignments was a predictable problem, and one that would have been possible to clarify and address proactively.

Question:
Isn’t this model really just a sophisticated form of battle picking?

Answer:
Plan B isn’t a choice between battling and not battling. It’s about getting concerns identified and addressed, solving problems, teaching skills, reducing challenging behavior, and forming a helping relationship. Prior to learning about Plan B, many adults thought they had only two options: impose their will or drop their expectations. If those are your only options, then picking your battles is precisely what you’re doing.

Question:
Does the CPS model mean there’s no such thing as setting limits anymore?

Answer:
“Setting limits” means adults have concerns they want to ensure are addressed. With Plan A, adults are making sure that their concerns are addressed (through imposition of adult will) but are disregarding kids’ concerns. As you’ve read, there are significant drawbacks to this approach to setting limits because, as noted above, Plan A teaches no skills, solves no problems durably, and, in certain kids, increases the likelihood of challenging behavior. Even in “ordinary” kids, Plan A is just an application of “might makes right.” Isn’t “might makes right” the wrong turn that society took a long time ago? If there’s another way to help kids meet adult expectations without teaching them that might makes right, shouldn’t we be interested? With Plan B, adults are making sure that their concerns are addressed—the adults are setting limits—but are equally committed to ensuring that kids’ concerns are also addressed. So long as the concerns of one party go unaddressed, the problem is not durably solved. But you’re setting limits whether you’re using Plan A or Plan B.

Question:
Yes, but how will the kid be held accountable for his actions?

Answer:
It depends on what you mean by “accountable.” For some
folks, holding a kid accountable for his actions simply means making sure he pays the price for his challenging behavior. In the CPS model, holding a kid accountable means that the kid is participating in a process in which he’s identifying and articulating his own concerns or perspectives, taking yours into account, and working toward a realistic and mutually satisfactory solution. One could make the case that Plan B is actually more effective at holding a kid accountable than Plan A, since the kid is participating in and actually thinking about a plan to reduce his challenging behavior (and taking your concerns into account) rather than merely being on the receiving end of endless adult ingenuity.

Question:
Is it safe to assume that you’re not too enthusiastic about zero-tolerance policies?

Answer:
As noted in the Introduction, I believe zero-tolerance policies are a great example of a very fascinating and counterproductive human tendency to add more Plan A when it’s clear Plan A isn’t getting the job done.

Question:
Is the CPS model a good fit with Response to Intervention (RTI)?

Answer:
There is significant congruence between the goals, structure, and practices of RTI and the CPS model. For the unfamiliar, RTI represents an effort to move away from IQ-achievement discrepancies in identifying learning disabilities and permit schools to put in place intervention procedures for addressing a student’s learning needs as soon as they are identified by a classroom teacher and confirmed with supporting data. Recent federal legislation—No Child Left Behind and the most recent reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Act—mandates that RTI methods be applied to practices for instructional and behavioral intervention in classrooms.

In their 2005 book,
Response to Intervention: Principles and Strategies for Effective Practice,
school psychologists Rachel Brown-Chidsey and Mark Steege note that the impetus for RTI comes, at least partially, from the recognition that the needs of many students receiving services in special education could be met in general education classrooms. As such, the first and most important school personnel
to implement intervention are classroom teachers. The CPS model is an excellent fit with RTI in this regard.

RTI also represents an attempt to introduce scientific, data-based methods into school classrooms to guide the selection, use, and evaluation of academic and behavioral interventions. Though it is a relatively new model, in many respects CPS is a good fit along these lines as well. The basic elements of the CPS model are well described in books, chapters, articles, and research papers. The research supporting the positive outcomes achieved by CPS
¹
is understandable and fully described, has been conducted in a range of settings—families, schools, inpatient psychiatric units, and juvenile detention facilities—and is published (or in press) in peer-reviewed journals. These studies have been conducted using both experimental (randomized) and quasi-experimental designs. The effectiveness of CPS is being independently studied in multiple settings in North America and Europe. Among the most ambitious are a five-year National Institutes of Mental Health–funded study at the Virginia Tech Child Study Center and a three-year study in the seven public schools in Sanford, Maine, funded by the Maine Juvenile Justice Advisory Group.