Our new book, Responsive School Discipline: Essentials for Elementary School Leaders, by Chip Wood and Babs Freeman-Loftis, has just arrived! It's been in the works for a long time, and we are so excited that now we can finally share it with you.

Responsive School Discipline is a practical guide for school leaders. Just as the discipline practices of the Responsive Classroom approach help teachers support children's positive behavior and productive learning in their classrooms, this new book offers strategies for school leaders who are working to create a positive school climate, reduce problem behaviors, and build their staff's skills in managing student behavior.

We sent an advance copy to Richard Ackerman, Professor of Education and Human Development at the University of Maine and author of The Wounded Leader:  How Real Leadership Emerges in Times of Crisis, and he sent back this ringing endorsement:

"In Responsive School Discipline, Chip Wood and Babs Freeman-Loftis describe, with extraordinary precision, grace and wisdom, what responsive leadership looks like in matters of discipline in schools. They do so by taking school leaders deep into the lives of children, teachers, and parents and into the kind of school they envision: a school which values a human and caring education.

Schools are constantly embroiled in a thicket of disciplinary issues. No other function is more universally associated with school leaders than monitoring and shaping the behavior of students. Most people agree about the goals of school discipline: the aim is to make the school a safe and fair place—and thus a place where students can concentrate on learning and teachers can concentrate on teaching.

However, how these goals are to be achieved is far more complex than the world envisioned in most school rules, and the systems of thinking that underlie them. Here, finally, is a book about school discipline for school leaders, which understands the essence of the rules governing behaviors in schools as well as the conditions that generate those behaviors.

Through their extraordinary wealth of tested experience, Chip and Babs offer a remarkably illuminating book on a subject that deserves their thoughtfulness and expertise. This book is an elegant affirmation of leadership capacity. It represents an engaging and vivid account of the day-to-day possibilities of the school leader's role in creating a climate that enables academic and social growth in students, and in making the school a just place for all.

A striking premise throughout the book is that the work that supports children's positive behavior and productive learning is not only the leader's work, it is everyone's work. The comprehensive repertoire of knowledge, skills, and strategies found in this book will provide school leaders a powerful energetic field in helping all adults in the school community think and act in a morally responsible way so that children experience a just and responsive environment."