Abstract
Ross Greene has written a follow-up to his 2008 volume, Lost at School: Why Our Kids With Behavioral Challenges Are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them. This review provides an overview of Greene’s model and compares his two approaches to covering the material.
I’ve used Lost at School as a teaching text in a school psychology Interventions class for several years. We cover the book in one class, admittedly not enough time to do it justice but sufficient to allow for some exposure to Greene’s approach. That being said, I will also provide some comments about where I think Greene’s work falls short and suggestions for further learning in this area.
As he did in Lost at School, Greene maintains that school discipline is broken, zero tolerance has been a disaster, and doing more of the same merely pours fuel on the already burning fire. The author maintains that adult-imposed “consequences” do not teach skills or solve the problems that underlie students’ challenging behaviors and maintains that the majority of bullying prevention programs have become justifications for bullying bullies. Greene’s Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS) model is intended to help resolve student problems in non-punitive, non-adversarial, skill building, relationship enhanced, collaborative, and proactive ways. His model intends to address the severity range of possible student behavioural difficulties. The author’s message is intended for all adults who might interact with these students.
According to the author, “Challenging kids are challenging because they’re lacking the skills to not be [sic] challenging.” Corollaries are as follows: “Kids do well if they can,” “doing well is preferable,” “the important stuff is upstream” (meaning that we need to look further back in time than the immediate challenging behaviour), “problem solving is collaborative, not unilateral” (Solve problems with the student rather than doing things to the student), and “understanding is the most important part of helping.”
In Lost and Found, Greene reiterates the components of his model that he outlined in Lost at School. He provides more specific instruction on how to use his Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems, and gives more detail about the nuts and bolts of using his approach. He also provides more help in organizing and sustaining the day-to-day use of his model in educational settings. Although Lost at School used Q and A sections as well as a running fictional case study to illustrate the model, Lost and Found uses the same Q and A format but instead of a running case example, a variety of fictional case examples are used to illustrate concepts. In addition, each content-based chapter ends with an “Experience Is the Best Teacher” section, which contains quotes from teachers, administrators, and counselors who have used Greene’s system. Many of the statements are powerfully illustrative and might provide “aha” connections for the reader. For example,
I was skeptical about CPS. I have a very intense behavioral background, I was steeped in the whole routine of applying consequences for undesirable behavior and rewarding positive behavior. So CPS was like learning a whole new language for me. It was like discovering that the sky was purple . . . It drives me crazy when I hear people say that kids can make better choices, because, nine times out of ten, it wasn’t a choice: it was a reaction, it was an impulse, it was the best option the child had at that moment. It wasn’t really, “Hmm, should I punch that kid in the face because he just dissed my mom, or should I talk about it?
Greene’s helping process is twofold. First, figure out what skills the student is lacking and what expectations the student is having trouble meeting. Second, solve those problems collaboratively with the student. His Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP) is the tool to be used to identify skills that the student might lack. The ALSUP also identifies the specific circumstances under which those lagging skills result in challenging behaviours. The ALSUP is not intended to provide comparisons across students and it is not normed. It is intended as a guide for a group discussion involving the adults in contact with the student in question. Greene subsequently provides guidelines on how to write the problem statement in such a way as to specifically describe the lagging skill/unresolved problem in a manner that lends itself to finding solutions.
Having gathered these data, the next steps involve establishing a problem solving plan and charting progress. Specific individuals are identified for each step, and the process is held responsible using outcome data collection. This is in keeping with Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound (SMART) format recommendations with which we are familiar. Next, the student is invited to be a partner in the problem resolution process. Three steps are involved here: the “Empathy Step,” “Defining Adult Concerns,” and the “Invitation Step.” In Step 1, the language suggested for how to initiate the conversation with the student is, “I’ve notice that you’re having difficulty with ________________. What’s up?” The author provides a strong caution against including references to specific challenging behaviors in the dialogue with the student. Resistance and a failed process are the likely result. Rather, reference is made to the unsolved problems and difficulties with the student’s meeting expectations. Greene provides eight “drilling strategies” that are intended to flesh out a mutual understanding of the problem and to find potential solutions. These strategies range from reflective listening through to summarizing. The author has borrowed heavily from the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy model and the interested reader would do well to consult some of the primary resources in this area (e.g., Steve de Shazer’s 2007 book, More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy).
After “drilling” for as much information as possible, the adult articulates their concerns in the “Define Adult Concerns” step. Greene is careful to specify that adult concerns do not trump those of the student. As well, the concern is never phrased as a, “That’s all well and good, but . . . ” statement. Concerns don’t compete or override one another. They exist in parallel. In the Invitation step, the suggested language is, “Let’s think about how we can work that out.”
Theoretical musings are few, and Greene does a good job of providing fictional case dialogue to illustrate the process. For new users of his model and for more experienced practitioners who might be reviewing their practice with a critical ear, Greene’s illustrations are realistic and educational. His “Do-Over” approach in “The Pitfalls” chapter does a great job of illustrating the subtle difference between acting truly collaboratively and forwarding an adult agenda. I also appreciate his examples of how a non-judgmental, inquisitive manner can be very productive. The interested reader might access online episodes of the old Columbo TV detective series for an entertaining model of curiosity-based inquiry.
Greene acknowledges that his system doesn’t actually have a specific “flight plan.” This may be disconcerting to those looking for a cookbook approach to working with students experiencing difficulty. The author emphasizes that flexibility and creativity are musts in this process.
Greene’s books provide a basic philosophy and structured approach that is straightforward, accessible, and founded in the tenants of Solution-Focused and, to some extent, Client-centered therapy. Greene presents strong opinions with respect to what he sees as the shortcomings of many current school discipline approaches, and he makes strong arguments for the need to approach things from a different angle. The strengths in Greene’s work are his straightforward style, his use of rich examples, and his avoidance of cookbook intervention strategies.
I think Greene’s work falls somewhat short in a few areas. First, the author makes strong statements about broken discipline in U.S. schools, and he provides numbers illustrating his points, however; no supporting references are provided. Sources and recommendations for further reading are provided in Lost at School. Including similar information in Lost and Found would have been helpful.
Second, Greene places a strong emphasis on using “drilling strategies” to determine the root causes of a student’s difficulties during the “Empathy Step.” This is all well and good, however; therapeutic empathy is much more than simple reflection of what one’s client says followed by a rapid-fire series of clarifying questions. Such a strong emphasis on questioning runs the risk of alienating any client and is particularly ineffective and off-putting for adolescents. The psychotherapy outcome literature is virtually unanimous in concluding that no theoretical approach or therapy style is superior to any other. The essential ingredient across styles is that the client feels safe, connected, and deeply understood by the helper (see David Martin’s, Counseling & Therapy Skills, 2016, for a review of this literature). Martin provides a great primer on how effective therapy is done, and his video examples of real-life therapy are powerful and impactful. Reflection of content is a great start and information gathering is important. The skills involved in connecting with client’s feelings are essential in making that helper-client connection. (See also, Mark Young’s Learning the Art of Helping: Building Blocks and Techniques, 2013.)
A third point I’d raise is with respect to Greene’s “Invitation” step. In many ways, this is where the rubber truly hits the road. The 20 billion dollar U.S. diet industry thrives on telling people that they have a problem that “should” be addressed. Admittedly, excess weight is not health promoting but neither is setting goals for others before they are ready. Greene does not do this but I would suggest that more care needs to be taken with the assessment of student readiness to initiate change. Despite our best intentions, moving to change talk prior to full readiness risks setting the stage for failure. I would refer the reader to the work of Halifax-based psychologist, Michael Vallis. His videos and PowerPoint presentations under the auspices of The Behaviour Change Institute are available free online. Dr. Vallis presents strong, research-based arguments for the need for helpers to respect client readiness (or unreadiness) for change. He provides practical tools for assessing readiness for change prior to moving with clients to actual behaviour change.
Given Greene’s emphasis on collaboration with students, I found the absence of student input in the initial assessment stages to be problematic. The absence of any student comments in the author’s “Experience Is the Best Teacher” section is also noteworthy. I also noted that all ALSUP items identify an area of “difficulty.” This lack of strength-based thinking is acknowledged in one of the author’s Q and A items. The questioner describes the ALSUP as “kind of negative.” Greene’s response is that strengths do not contribute to difficult episodes . . . lagging skills need to be addressed. Greene further comments that his approach is a vast improvement over punitive approaches. I agree that Greene’s approach is an improvement. I wonder whether more up front identification of a student’s resources might be a valuable adjunct in the remediation of lagging skills.
Ultimately, both Lost at School and Lost and Found would be eye-openers for anyone still operating from a perspective of “logical consequences,” punitive approaches to student discipline, and/or stuck in narrow-focused analysis of antecedent-behaviour-consequence. Given Greene’s attention to sourcing his material in Lost at School, that’s probably the book I’d recommend if I were hoping to shift someone’s thinking. For better coverage of what to say, what not to say, examples of how things can go astray and how to bring things back on track, I’d chose Lost and Found.
If the reader is looking for additional resources to foster real impact about the inadvertent damage being done by uninformed school discipline strategies, consider switching media and refer to the three-part CBC Radio “Ideas” series, “All in the Family,” produced by Mary O’Connell. Not many can speak to these issues louder than a school principal with decades of experience being one of the “good guys” who doled out “fair” consequences, who comes to grips with the notion that he’s been doing things wrong for all this time . . . and deciding to do something about it. The series is truly engaging and very powerful.