Alternative Programs for Troubled Youth


Book Description




Help at Any Cost


Book Description

The troubled-teen industry, with its scaremongering and claims of miraculous changes in behavior through harsh discipline, has existed in one form or another for decades, despite a dearth of evidence supporting its methods. And the growing number of programs that make up this industry are today finding more customers than ever. Maia Szalavitz's Help at Any Cost is the first in-depth investigation of this industry and its practices, starting with its roots in the cultlike sixties rehabilitation program Synanon and Large Group Awareness Training organizations likeest in the seventies; continuing with Straight, Inc., which received Nancy Reagan's seal of approval in the eighties; and culminating with a look at the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs-the leading force in the industry today-which has begun setting up shop in foreign countries to avoid regulation. Szalavitz uncovers disturbing findings about these programs' methods, including allegation of physical and verbal abuse, and presents us with moving, often horrifying, first-person accounts of kids who made it through-as well as stories of those who didn't survive. The book also contains a thoughtfully compiled guide for parents, which details effective treatment alternatives. Weaving careful reporting with astute analysis, Maia Szalavitz has written an important and timely survey that will change the way we look at rebellious teens-and the people to whom we entrust them. Help at Any Cost is a vital resource with an urgent message that will draw attention to a compelling issue long overlooked.




Helping Students Graduate


Book Description

This book describes the fifteen strategies identified through research reviewed by The National Dropout Prevention Center and Network at Clemson University. Each chapter in this book was written by a nationally recognized authority in that field. Research has shown that these 15 strategies have been successfully implemented in all school levels from K - 12 in rural, suburban, and urban centers; as stand-alone programs or as part of systemic school improvement plans. Helping Students Graduate: A Strategic Approach to Dropout Prevention also covers No Child Left Behind and its effects on dropout rates; Dealing with Hispanic dropouts; Differences and similarities between rural and urban dropouts. These fifteen strategies have been adopted by the U.S. Department of Education. They are applicable to all students, including students with disabilities.




Troubled


Book Description

An award-winning journalist's breathtaking mosaic of the tough-love industry and the young adults it inevitably fails. In the middle of the night, they are vanished. Each year thousands of young adults deemed out of control--suffering from depression, addiction, anxiety, and rage--are carted off against their will to remote wilderness programs and treatment facilities across the country. Desperate parents of these "troubled teens" fear it's their only option. The private, largely unregulated behavioral boot camps break their children down, a damnation the children suffer forever. Acclaimed journalist Kenneth R. Rosen knows firsthand the brutal emotional, physical, and sexual abuse carried out at these programs. He lived it. In Troubled, Rosen unspools the stories of four graduates on their own scarred journeys through the programs into adulthood. Based on three years of reporting and more than one hundred interviews with other clients, their parents, psychologists, and health-care professionals, Troubled combines harrowing storytelling with investigative journalism to expose the disturbing truth about the massively profitable, sometimes fatal, grossly unchecked redirection industry. Not without hope, Troubled ultimately delivers an emotional, crucial tapestry of coming of age, neglect, exploitation, trauma, and fraught redemption.




Violent Juvenile Crime


Book Description




The School Practitioner's Concise Companion to Preventing Dropout and Attendance Problems


Book Description

This title gives busy social workers, psychologists, and counsellors a quick guide to accessible, proven solutions for their students' most common problems. Here, readers will find an overview of the factors that put students at risk for missing school and dropping out with strategies to improve school attendance and engage students.




The School Services Sourcebook


Book Description

This comprehensive sourcebook covers every aspect of school service delivery, arming practitioners with the nuts and bolts of evidence-based practice. Each of the 114 chapters serves as a detailed intervention map, beginning with a summary of the problem area and moving directly into step-by-step instructions on how to implement an evidence-based program with distinct goals in mind and methods to measure the outcome. School-based professionals in need of ready access to information on mental health disorders, developmental disabilities, health promotion, child abuse, dropout prevention, conflict resolution, crisis intervention, group work, family interventions, culturally competent practice, policy, ethics, legal issues, community involvement, accountability, and funding can now find high-quality and easy-to-implement strategies at their fintertips. A concise, user-friendly format orients readers to each issue with a Getting Started section, then moves smoothly into What We Know, What We Can Do, Tools and Practice Examples, and Points to Remember. Quick-reference tables and charts highlight the most important information needed for daily reference, and lists of further reading and Web resources guide readers in gathering additional information to tailor their practice to suit their students' needs. Each chapter has been specifically crafted by leaders in their fields with the ultimate goal of giving school-based practitioners the tools they need to deliver the best mental health and social services possible to students, families, and communities. This is a must-have reference for all school-based social workers, psychologists, counselors, mental health professionals, and educators.




The School Services Sourcebook, Second Edition


Book Description

The School Services Sourcebook covers every aspect of school service delivery, arming practitioners with the nuts and bolts of evidence-based practice. The second edition has been significantly revised with a new structure including 73 chapters divided into five Parts across thirteen Sections, with an additional six chapters included in an online section found on the book's companion website. Fifteen new chapters cover key topics such as implementing an RTI framework, positive behavioral supports, school climate, functional behavioral assessment, the integration of ethics, Autism and suicide, school engagement, military families, Latino immigrant families, classroom management, transition planning and several chapters that speak to assessment and accountability. Each chapter serves as a detailed intervention map, quickly summarizing the problem area before presenting step-by-step instructions on how to implement an evidence-based program with clear goals in mind and methods to measure the outcome. The concise, user-friendly format from the first edition has been retained, orienting readers to each issue with a Getting Started section, then moves smoothly into What We Know, What We Can Do, Tools and Practice Examples, and Key Points to Remember. A new section, Applying Interventions within Response-to-Intervention Framework, has been added to each chapter to facilitate the implementation of an RTI model. Quick-reference tables and charts highlight the most important information needed for daily reference, and annotated lists of further reading and Web resources guide readers in gathering additional information to tailor their practice to suit their students' needs. Each chapter has been specifically crafted by leaders in their fields with the ultimate goal of giving school-based practitioners the tools they need to deliver the best mental health and social services possible to students, families, and communities. This sourcebook is an invaluable reference for all school-based social workers, psychologists, counselors, mental health professionals, educators, and administrators. Visit the companion website for more information and to access additional book content: [URL]




Positive Peer Culture


Book Description

This revision of an important and path-breaking work holds to its central argument that troubled young people can develop self-worth, significance, dignity, and responsibility only through commitment to the positive values of helping and caring for others.An enlarged and revised edition of the authors' pioneering work on building positive youth culture, Positive Peer Culture retains the practical orientation that made the original attractive to teachers and youth workers, while adding new material on positive peer culture (PPC) in schools and community settings, research on PPC, and guidelines for maintaining program effectiveness and quality. Concepts of positive peer culture have been applied in a wide variety of educational and treatment settings including public and alternative schools, group homes, and residential centers. Vorrath and Brendtro describe specific procedures for getting youth "hooked on helping" through peer counseling groups, and for generalizing caring behavior beyond the school or treatment environment through community-based service learning projects.The authors contend that the young people who populate our nation's schools are in desperate need of an antidote to the narcissism, malaise and antisocial life-styles that have become so prevalent, and that this book seeks to provide a way of meeting their increasing cry to be used in some demanding cause. On publication of the first edition, Richard P. Barth, Frank A. Daniels Professor for Human Services Information Policy, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill called Positive Peer Culture "a significant contribution to the field."




Understanding by Design


Book Description

What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.