Discusses two key components in successful schools which should be applied to alternative schools for at-risk youth: keeping students from failing, and giving students warm, interpersonal support. Some successful strategies include individual curricula and evaluation, evaluation based on progress rather than normative grades, joint projects that…

Explains the context of the theme issue: the title is from Martin Gold's pioneering research on effective alternative schools for troubled students. The issue revolves around creating a learning atmosphere where no one is rejected, regardless of behavioral problems, and students can get the education they need. (JPS)

Describes Preventive Discipline Project, which uses self-control curriculum keyed to school situations that require students to demonstrate self-control. Focuses on five foundations of self-control: controlling impulses, assessing social reality, managing group situations, coping with stress, and solving social problems. Concludes that social…

Presents Life Space Interview, effective intervention strategy for use during crisis work with troubled students, as it was applied to case of Andy, 14-year-old black male student who had been taunting low-functioning deaf student. Describes Andy's background, the incident itself, and the Life Space Interview. Concludes with instructional comments…

Presents Life Space Interview (LSI), intervention strategy for use during crisis work with troubled students. Focuses on New Tools Salesmanship, special category of LSI in which interviewer helps student see failed connection between student's intention and behavior. Presents New Tools Salesmanship interview with fourth-grade student who…

Education programs in institutions for young offenders often focus on the medical or deficit model of treatment. Youth are diagnosed, and then traditional content and methodology is administered in settings determined by structure and policy, and not the needs of the students. Suggests reclaiming the rich history of proactive prison education.…

Focuses on Reality Rub Interview, one type of Life Space Interview (LSI), effective intervention strategy for use during crisis work with troubled students. Presents actual Reality Rub Interview, used with students who have "social blindness, social myopia, and tunnel vision" and who, when upset, misinterpret words and behaviors of…

Explores common reactions that family members experience from living with a depressed child, reviews the family assessment of a depressed child or adolescent, and highlights specific therapeutic issues that typically arise in working with families of depressed children and adolescents. (NB)

Troubled children are often described solely in terms of their deficiencies, rather than in terms of their strengths. Educational efforts for these youth are therefore aimed at minimizing weaknesses rather than emphasizing potentials. By presenting troubled youth with tasks not engaging or worthwhile, their ideas of their own failure are…

Briefly reviews Positive Peer Culture (PPC) program employed in residential treatment centers, group homes, and schools, that focuses explicitly on peer group to create therapeutic community with unified staff and student goals. Presents question-and-answer session with six adolescent male participants in PPC program. (NB)

Describes Life Space Interviewing (LSI) as effective and exciting intervention strategy for use during crisis work with troubled students. Presents teaching LSI from one of Institute of Psychoeducational Training graduates that involves fight between new student and student who is attributed group leader. Following LSI presentation are reactions…

Briefly reviews Project Re-ED (Re-education of Emotionally Disturbed Children), created by Nicholas Hobbs as an approach to emotionally troubled children and youth that builds on the concepts of normalcy and health rather than deviance and illness. Reviews key principles from Hobbs' 1982 book "The Troubled and Troubling Child." (NB)

Notes that special education policymakers have debated whether to exclude conduct-disordered students from special education services. Sees mandate for special educators and mental health professionals to find methods of teaching and counseling antisocial students. Notes that number of gang members who present problems in community would meet…

Examines nature and scope of group violence among children in schools on both sides of Atlantic Ocean. Reviews studies of student attitudes about victimization and offers suggestions for prevention and treatment of bullying. Focus is on studies on bullying undertaken in Europe, mostly Scandinavia, and in United States (Author/NB)

Notes five ways that teachers can help students in single-parent families. Advises teachers to make no assumptions; teach about differences; facilitate parental connections to the school; share good news with parents; and alter written communications and record keeping. Discusses how to implement each of these strategies. (NB)