A multiphase program (Delinquency Intervention Program in the Carbondale Community High School), aimed at developing and defining means of identifying and reorienting delinquent-prone youths in a high school-community setting, has used university graduate students as "Big Brother" type counselors to work with delinquent prone youths and to effect appropriate behavior changes in them. Concurrent research relevant to the practice itself has provided promising implications for the construction of a curriculum of training for professional careers in correction, rehabilitation, and education, and has demonstrated that this kind of activity provides a valuable learning experience for students preparing for careers in these and related areas. The basic principles used are those of differential reinforcement to bring about behavior modification, with the aim of making delinquent-prone high school students more competent to deal with their environment by correcting behavioral deficits. Results obtained by this program suggest that stating students' problems in behavioral terms and defining events in terms of their function could result in benefits both to the educational system as a whole and to individual students by allowing those involved to become more attuned to the realities of the situation. (SA)