Our first program of the new school year was recorded live at Waterville (Maine) Junior High School, which had massive numbers of disipline referrals, detentions, and suspensions during the 2015-2016 school year. This year, led by principal Carole Gilley and assistant principal Doug Frame, they'll be implementing Collaborative & Proactive Solutions, with the goal of dramatically reducing those numbers. On this program, they received some guidance from school leaders who've been there and done that.

On the last program of the school year, we were able to respond to some callers and some emailers...including one teacher who's very frustrated by her school system's approach to students' challenging behaviors and is having difficulty changing the system on her own.

"I'm bored" could mean many different things, all of which await discovery in the Empathy step of Plan B.  What are the odds that "I'm not motivated" is the student's concern? Slim and none.

Many schools have mission statements, but not an explicit description of values. Many schools have delineated values but don't pay attention to them. But values are what should guide every decision and intervention, so it's a good idea to know what they are.

On today's program, our panel responded to an email from an anguished teacher who was looking for some guidance on what went wrong with one of her students and his parents.

As always, we covered lots of territory on today's program...including how CPS can help students who are in fight or flight mode and how to help kids who have very tough lives outside of school.

Goodness, there sure are a lot of ways to stray from the CPS model...and we heard about a lot of them on this program!

Those adult-imposed consequences that are so popular in schools these days...do we really need 'em? You can probably guess the answer...

What happens when parents and teachers skip concerns and jump straight to solutions? Probably nothing good.

On this final program of the school year, one of our principals told us about a student whose behavioral challenges have been making life very difficult...for himself and her.  How best to get things on track?