Students Who Drive You Crazy: Succeeding With Resistant, Unmotivated, and Otherwise Difficult Young People

"An absolutely necessary read for educators. The commonsense model assesses and outlines how to respond to challenging students, parents, and colleagues. This work is making a difference in my school."
―Bonnie Tryon, Principal
Golding Elementary School, Cobleskill, NY

Take a proactive approach with your most challenging students!

This second edition of a bestseller gives teachers a model to assess, understand, and respond to challenging students. The book also provides strategies for handling relationships with difficult parents and colleagues.

This fully updated survival guide offers additional strategies to help teachers manage difficult students, including those who break rules and those who are withdrawn, plus new tables and charts and questions for reflection. With real-life scenarios from interviews with teachers, counselors, and school administrators, this volume provides:

• More tips for developing active listening skills that improve communication with students and their parents
• Suggestions for creating caring communities in the classroom
• A new section on dealing with aggressive and violent behavior
• Information on understanding parent behavior and suggestions for building positive connections with parents and families
• Research from the related disciplines of nursing, social work, psychology, counseling, and family therapy

Use this authoritative handbook to establish healthy, positive relationships with students and maintain a supportive learning environment in the classroom.

Jeffrey A. Kottler is one of the most prolific authors in the fields of counseling, psychotherapy, and education, having written more than 90 books about a wide range of subjects. He has authored a dozen texts for counselors and therapists that are used in universities around the world and a dozen books each for practicing therapists and educators. Some of his most highly regarded works include Creative Breakthroughs in Therapy, The Mummy at the Dining Room Table: Eminent Therapists Reveal Their Most Unusual Cases and What They Teach Us About Human Behavior, Bad Therapy, The Client Who Changed Me, Divine Madness, Change: What Leads to Personal Transformation, Stories We’ve Heard, Stories We’ve Told: Life-Changing Narratives in Therapy and Everyday Life, and Therapy Over 50. He has been an educator for 40 years, having worked as a teacher, counselor, and therapist in preschool, middle school, mental health center, crisis center, nongovernmental organization, university, community college, private practice, and disaster relief settings. He has served as a Fulbright scholar and senior lecturer in Peru and Iceland, as well as worked as a visiting professor in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Nepal. He is professor of counseling at California State University, Fullerton.

Ellen Kottler, Ed.S., has been a teacher for over 30 years in public and private schools, alternative schools, adult education programs, and universities. She has worked in inner-city schools as well as in suburban and rural set­tings. She was a curriculum specialist in charge of secondary social studies and law-related education for one of the country’s largest school districts. Ellen is the author or coauthor of several books for educators, including Secrets for Secondary School Teachers: How to Succeed in Your First Year, On Being a Teacher, Secrets for Beginning Elementary School Teachers, Counseling Skills for Teachers, English Language Learners in Your Classroom: Strategies That Work, Secrets to Success for Science Teachers, and Students Who Drive You Crazy: Succeeding with Resistant, Unmotivated, and Otherwise Difficult Young People.

She teaches secondary education and supervises intern teachers at California State University, Fullerton.