Introduction
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Welcome to Lost and Found. This book is intended as a follow-up to my earlier book Lost at School, which was first published in 2008. In that book, I described the manner in which the model of care I originated—now called Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS)—is implemented in schools. The response to Lost at School has been heartening; the book has been translated into seventeen languages, and many thousands of schools across the world have relied on the book for guidance in transforming the ways in which students with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges are understood and treated.

So why write another book on the same topic? Because many of the very same educators and parents who found Lost at School to be helpful have told me they wanted more: more instruction on using the assessment instrumentation of the model (called the Assessment of Lagging Skills & Unsolved Problems [ALSUP]), more help in using and guiding others in the use of Plan B, and more information on organizing and sustaining the effort to transform discipline practices and implement the CPS model in a school. Those are the ingredients you'll find in the ensuing pages. Even if you haven't previously read Lost at School, all of the details of the CPS model are included in this book as well.

But the most exciting aspect of this book is that you'll be hearing from some of the amazing, courageous, visionary educators who have implemented the model in their schools and classrooms and with whom I've had the incredible privilege of collaborating. At the end of each chapter, there's a “Experience Is the Best Teacher” section that contains their wisdom. They're designated by their first names in each chapter; here are their full names:

  1. Tom Ambrose, assistant superintendent in MSAD 52 in Maine (encompassing the towns of Greene, Leeds, and Turner)
  2. Anonymous school principal, large urban school system
  3. Kathy Bousquet, second-grade teacher, Central School, South Berwick, Maine
  4. Alanna Craffey, second-grade teacher, Central School, South Berwick, Maine
  5. Nina D'Aran, principal at Central School, South Berwick, Maine
  6. Carol Davison, principal at Jessie Lee Elementary, Surrey, British Columbia, and former principal at Forsyth Road Elementary, Surrey
  7. Susan Forsely, educational technician, Central School, South Berwick, Maine
  8. Ryan Gleason, assistant principal, Falmouth (Maine) Elementary School, and formerly at Durham (Maine) Community School
  9. Katie Marshall, learning center teacher, Central School, South Berwick, Maine
  10. Susan McCuiag, principal at T. E. Scott Elementary, Surrey, British Columbia, and former principal at Betty Huff Elementary, Surrey
  11. Ryan Quinn, principal, Kennebunk Elementary School, Kennebunk, Maine
  12. Vicki Stewart, director of communications at MSAD 35 in Maine and former principal at Central School
  13. Brie Thomas, school counselor, Central School, South Berwick, Maine

They represent a small fraction of the many educators who have embraced the CPS model and have helped many thousands of vulnerable, at-risk children in the process.

The mission is no different than it was eight years ago: understand and help behaviorally challenging students in ways that are nonpunitive, nonadversarial, skill building, relationship enhancing, collaborative, proactive, and—most important—helpful. In too many schools, those ingredients are still missing. That's why rates of detention, suspension, and expulsion are still way too high, why schools in nineteen states in the United States still employ corporal punishment, why restraint and seclusion procedures are still employed hundreds of thousands of times in schools every year, and why there are still so many kids who feel disenfranchised, marginalized, disheartened, hopeless, and lost. To bring them back into the fold, we need to find our way to new lenses and new practices. And this needs to be a priority for every school.

The task is not made easier by the fact that classroom teachers have been given the very strong message that their job performance and security will be judged by how their students perform on high-stakes tests. While standards are a wonderful thing, the obsession with tests hasn't been good for classroom teachers or administrators or parents or behaviorally challenging students or any of the other students. But, as you'll be reading, many schools have accomplished the mission despite all the obstacles.

If you're brand new to the CPS model, many of your assumptions and practices may be called into question by what you read in the ensuing pages. That's OK; our knowledge of behaviorally challenging kids has expanded dramatically over the past forty to fifty years, and it turns out that a lot of what we were thinking about those kids—and doing to them—doesn't square up with what we now know about them. If you're already familiar with the CPS model, this book will take you further.

Finally, because this book is relevant to children of both genders … and because it is cumbersome to read he or she, him or her, and his or her throughout the book … and because I didn't want to write the book in one gender … entire chapters are written in alternating genders. I've drawn on a multitude of real kids and educators I've known and worked with in the dialogues in the book, but they are composites; any resemblance to people you may know is purely coincidental (but not necessarily surprising).

I'm looking forward to spending some time with you in the next nine chapters.

Ross Greene
Portland, Maine