Acknowledgments

I am indebted to my editor at Jossey-Bass, Margie McAneny, for her vision, guidance, perseverance, and boundless patience.

I am also grateful to the many teachers I've had over the years who helped me learn about the research, theories, and models of intervention that eventually gave rise to what is now known as Collaborative & Proactive Solutions, including social learning theory, family systems theory, transactional/reciprocal models of development, goodness-of-fit theory, neuropsychology, and developmental psychopathology. Those teachers include Dr. Elizabeth Altmaier (then at the University of Florida); Drs. Tom Ollendick and George Clum at the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech; and Dr. Mary Ann McCabe and Lorraine Lougee, then at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC. And that's not even close to being an exhaustive list. My own two children—Talia and Jacob—have taught me plenty. Of course, my original teachers were my father, Irving (who is no longer with us), and my mother, Cynthia, to whom this book is dedicated.

But I am especially indebted to the thousands of classroom teachers I've had the good fortune to work with and learn from over the past twenty-five years. Despite working under very difficult circumstances, often thanklessly, you've taught me what a huge difference a teacher can make in a child's life, most especially those with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges who need someone to listen to them, nurture them, and help and care about them. You have my everlasting admiration.