Lost at School by Ross Greene.

My Leadership team and I are reading Lost at School by Ross Greene. It is the first of his that I have read, although since mentioning it to colleagues, I understand that he has written a lot worth reading. 

I chose this book because of the extreme behaviours that we find ourselves coping with on a daily basis. I find that this new school of mine, contains people with some differing views to mine on how we should support our children's behaviour, especially extreme behaviours. This book delves right into the heart of the matter about why children behave the way they do. It aligns really well with our current move in education towards trauma informed practice. There is a lot of ministry information now about the need to minimise distress in children and we have been looking into these documents as well. I hoped that reading and discussing this book together might help us align our differing views into a shared viewpoint which might then have a flow on effect down the school. If Leadership isn't on the same page then how can we get consistency of practice across the school? 

The first few chapters of the book are quite explicit in terms of where the child is coming from. In a nutshell; "Children do well if they can". This is a provocative statement. How many times have we heard ourselves say. "You are choosing to act this way," or even, 'Was that a good choice?" Taking that one statement on board has had quite an impact on me. When I am helping students de escalate their behaviour or conducting a restorative chat, I now avoid the conversation about 'choice'. I also look at a child and try hard (yes, in the moment!) to think that this child would do well if they could. So what is the problem that the child needs to solve? What need is not being met? 

This book is gold.