Solution Focused Brief Therapy in Alternative Schools

Ensuring Student Success and Preventing Dropout

Cynthia Franklin, Calvin L. Streeter, Linda Webb, Samantha Guz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351736510
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Behavioural Management
• Index: Psychology

Solution Focused Brief Therapy in Alternative Schools (SFBT) provides a step-by-step guide for how school social workers and counselors can work with other school professionals to create an effective solution focused dropout prevention program. Along with illustrative cases and detailed explanations, the authors detail the curriculum and day-to-day operations of a solution focused dropout prevention program by drawing on the experiences of a school that uses this approach.

1 Creating Alternative High School Programs that Are Solution Focused

Imagine a high school where students are in control of their destiny. Imagine a high school that believes that environment and past history do not have to decide a student’s future. Imagine a high school that teaches that a student’s family problems or neighborhood do not have to dictate personal success in school or work. Imagine a high school that considers a student’s personal adversities and life difficulties to be strengths that can be harnessed for the better. Imagine a high school that inspires hope and teaches that the small steps a student takes can lead to big changes in life. Imagine a high school where each principal, teacher, counselor, social worker, and staff member is convinced that every student has capacities that can be built upon to assure a positive outcome for that student. Imagine a high school where at-risk and dropout youths attend school, graduate, and successfully transition to college and work. Imagine a solution focused alternative high school where dreams come true.

Introduction

Alternative education programs encompass public alternatives, charter schools, and other alternative educational programs that fall outside the normal K-12 instruction. They are more relevant than ever, given the current focus of education policy on school choice options. Parowski et al. (2014) report that 48 states and the District of Columbia offer alternative education programs and that the majority of these schools serve students at the middle and high school levels. Studies indicate that alternative school students are more likely to have faced adverse childhood experiences, to be traumatized, and to experience mental health symptoms and behavioral problems. Many alternative school students also experience marginalization and oppression due to discrimination and their ethnic minority and low-income status than students in traditional public schools (Escobar-Chaves, Tortolero, Markham, Kelder, & Kapadia, 2002; Grunbaum et al., 2000). The most common problems of alternative school students are behavioral health, academic underachievement, and truancy (Foley & Pang, 2006). Socioeconomic stress, family issues, and problems such as substance use, adolescent pregnancy, child-rearing, and unstable living arrangements are also common among alternative high school students (Bornsheuer, Polonyi, Andrews, Fore, & Onwuegbuzie, 2011; Breslau, Miller, Chung, & Schweitzer, 2011; Lehr, Tan, & Ysseldyke, 2009).

This book aims to show school administrators, teachers, counselors, social workers, and all other school staff how they can create a solution focused alternative high school that uses the therapeutic change techniques of Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) to graduate at-risk high school students who are also ready for college. This book draws on both research and practice experiences that demonstrate how to implement SFBT in alternative education. The research comes from a growing body of evidence that shows that SFBT is an effective intervention with children, adolescents, and young adults in schools, clinics, juvenile courts, and child welfare settings (Bond, Woods, Humphrey, Symes, & Green, 2013; Franklin, Kim, & Tripodi, 2009; Franklin, Trepper, Gingerich, & McCollum, 2012; Jordan et al., 2013). The practice experiences come from actual work using SFBT within an alternative high school: Gonzalo Garza Independence High School (hereafter referred to as “Garza”), located in Austin, Texas. Garza has been using SFBT since 2001 and is referred to as a solution focused high school because all of the staff there use SFBT practices to help at-risk students graduate.

The beginning chapter of this book describes the origins of SFBT and how it is used in schools. The change processes and techniques of SFBT are also described and illustrated. This chapter further demonstrates how the change techniques embedded in SFBT can be translated into an alternative high school program by carefully adhering to a set of solution focused principles that can be used by everyone in the alternative high school. When school staff practice these principles, a team and school culture is created that helps at-risk students graduate.

SFBT in Schools

SFBT was developed by an interdisciplinary team of mental health professionals led by two social workers, Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, at the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the early 1980s (de Shazer, 1985; de Shazer et al., 1986). The interdisciplinary-team approach took center stage in the development and practice of SFBT. With the aid of a one-way mirror, different therapists and researchers interacted with one another and with children, adolescents, and families who came to the clinic in live consultations. Many families come to therapy with personal traumas and a multitude of problems, such as homelessness, child abuse, mental illnesses, and substance use as well as frequent contacts with social services and court systems. The Milwaukee therapy team found that having conversations with family members about their strengths and resources, past successes, and goals and future hopes worked better than exclusively talking about their past problems and trying to develop strategies to solve those problems. This strengths-based and future-oriented way of helping people solve their problems became core to the therapeutic change processes of SFBT. Over time, therapists and researchers improved and studied the therapeutic techniques of SFBT and demonstrated in research studies that it is an effective method for working with children and adolescents (Franklin et al., 2012).

Counselors and social workers started using SFBT in schools during the early 1990s, and from that work, conceptual and practice publications followed (e.g., Berg & Shilts, 2005; Kelly, Kim, & Franklin, 2008; Kral, 1995; LaFountain & Garner, 1996; Metcalf, 2008; Murphy, 1996; Murphy & Duncan, 2007; Sklare, 1997; Webb, 1999). Research studies showed that SFBT was a useful approach to ameliorating emotional and behavioral issues, such as anxiety, depression, and substance use; conduct problems; and academic problems, and that it helped with dropout prevention (e.g., Bond et al., 2013; Franklin, Biever, Moore, Clemons, & Scamardo, 2001; Franklin, Moore, & Hopson, 2008; Franklin, Streeter, Kim, & Tripodi, 2007; Kim & Franklin, 2009; Newsome, 2004). SFBT has been used effectively in schools with underserved, economically disadvantaged, and ethnic minority students (Kelly & Bluestone Miller, 2009; Newsome, 2004), and research studies demonstrated that SFBT can be effectively used among diverse populations (Fong & Urban, 2013; Hsu & Wang, 2011; Kim, 2013).

As a result of over 30 years of study, SFBT is now an accepted intervention in school social work and counseling, and is being applied across disciplines (e.g., counseling, school social work, and psychology) within schools in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, South Africa, Korea, and in the provinces of Mainland China and Taiwan (e.g., Daki & Savage, 2010; Fitch, Marshall, & McCarthy, 2012; Kelly et al., 2008). It is an appropriate intervention for schools because it can be used in Tier 1 interventions by teachers in the classroom as well as in Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions by counselors and social workers, and other mental health professionals (Franklin & Guz, 2017; Metcalf, 2010). SFBT interventions have been applied at different grade levels and with varying groups (e.g., teachers, parents, and students). Research has also shown that it can be delivered in different modalities, including individual, group, classroom, family, and even organizational-level interventions.

The Importance of Teachers Learning SFBT

Teacher-student relationships are important to all school mental health interventions and ultimately to the success of schools (Paulus et al., 2016). Research shows that teachers commonly address the majority of challenging behaviors in the classroom (Barnes et al., 2014), making their role with at-risk students in alternative education especially significant for ensuring success. A strength of SFBT is that it can be taught to all instructional personnel in an alternative high school and not just to specialized instructional support personnel who have more training in counseling. Even though no one expects teachers to become therapists, anyone in the alternative high school can be taught how to have a solution-building conversation with at-risk students and to follow the basic change processes and techniques of SFBT. Research shows that teachers are effective in the delivery of Tier 1 mental health interventions in the classroom, but many of the interventions are highly structured and are presented as curriculums on social skills and so forth (Franklin et al., 2017). While structured curricula can be useful, SFBT offers a more flexible approach by helping teachers learn how to have a conversation with students using its change processes and specific techniques, which include knowing how to listen and ask the right kinds of questions. Solution focused conversations do not depend on a lesson format but instead can be held spontaneously when problems arise. Even in unexpected crisis situations, teachers will know how to respond using SFBT practices. SFBT interventions are also structured enough that they can be built into other counseling interventions and daily academic processes within the classroom, such as identifying student strengths and setting daily and postgraduation goals.

Understanding the Change Processes and Therapeutic Techniques of SFBT

SFBT has firm grounding in scientific research within the social and psychological sciences, and uses proven methods from communication and cognitive sciences, sociology, and psychology. Since this book is intended to be practical, we will not discuss in detail the theoretical basis of SFBT but instead refer interested readers to authors who have discussed the theoretical origins and research basis for SFBT practice (e.g., Bavelas, 2012; Dejong, Bavelas & Korman, 2013; Franklin, Guz & Bolton, in press; Kim et al., 2015, Lipchik, 2002). Some basic assumptions of SFBT, however, are essential to a foundational understanding for how it works to help at-risk students.

Theoretical Assumptions of SFBT

SFBT views individual change as being relational and contextual, and focuses on the whole student and all the systems that envelop him or her (e.g., family, neighborhood, school, work). SFBT views problems as interactive, which means that problems are defined and solutions happen in social relationships between people. School problems are solved when people communicate, work together, and agree that solutions have been demonstrated. Such assumptions are foundational to brief family systems therapies, therapies based on social constructionism and communication sciences, and other counseling approaches that rely on ecological systems theory. No one solution is believed to fit everyone or every problem. In fact, the same solution may work with different problems or result in novel outcomes. At the same time, very different and unique solutions may lead to the same desired outcomes. For this reason, school staff work with an individual student and relevant systems to individualize and personalize resources and curricula to develop goals and academic solutions.

SFBT believes that it is important to focus on the strengths and resources of people, and to remove negative labels. This means not pathologizing student behavior and avoiding talking in ways that are absolute and offer no choices or ways out of problems. This is sometimes referred to as no option talk or talking in a way that does not acknowledge choices and possibilities for student progress. In a solution focused perspective, not pathologizing student behavior involves avoiding labels, such as hyperactive and troublemaking, as absolute terms or in ways that define that person. Instead, the student would be discussed as being more than that label, and conversations would be directed toward helping them choose ways of acting that can improve their life, even though they may have some limitations. By not directing labels or negative descriptions at students or using these in the presence of a student, teachers and other staff are letting students know that staff value who they are and what they bring to the classroom. No option talk includes words such as never, always, and can’t. Examples of no option talk would be “She never sits in her seat” or “He can’t stay organized.” No option talk focuses on the problem rather than the solution and does not fully describe and accurately portray what the student does. For example, “She sits for ten minutes in art” is a far more accurate description than “She never sits in her seat.” For the student that “never” seems organized, it is important to take note of the fact that although he has difficulty bringing his homework in for this afternoon class, he does okay in the morning for first-period class. The focus on strengths and the removal of negative labels and stigmas are related to social constructionism and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Creating Alternative High School Programs that Are Solution Focused
• Chapter 2 Strategies for Creating a Solution Focused Alternative High School Program
• Chapter 3 How to Build Cooperative, Solution Focused Relationships
• Chapter 4 Creating Goals, Positive Expectancies, and Positive Emotions for Success
• Chapter 5 How to Create a Solution Focused Student Support Team
• Chapter 6 Curriculum and Instruction
• Chapter 7 Sustainability and Success Over Time
• Index