A new Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated

Rickey: How? 
Teacher: Well, maybe Darren would help you write 
down your thoughts. You could sort of dictate 
your thoughts to him. 
Rickey: It’s not worth it. No way. 
Teacher: Oh yeah . . . I sometimes forget you’re 
embarrassed about how you spell. Why don’t we 
have you and Darren do the assignment as a 
team and just make sure he does the writing part? 
Rickey: You won’t tell him I can’t spell? 
Teacher: Not if you don’t want me to. 
Rickey: Darren, let’s do this thing together! 
Much better. You don’t mind a little feedback, right? 
Rickey’s writing and spelling problems are predictable. 
Let’s get that problem solved by doing Proactive Plan 
B . . . soon! 
Of course, doing Plan B with an individual student is 
a whole lot easier if you’re doing Plan B with your entire 
classroom. In other words, there’s no down side to using 
Plan B with all your students. 
It’ll be a whole lot easier if you put some energy into 
creating a community of learners. How do you do that? 
First, by emphasizing a social curriculum as much as 
you do the academic curriculum. Another curriculum?! 
Don’t put the book down just yet. Teachers who put a 
lot of energy into a social curriculum find that the com-

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The Plan B Classroom 
259 
munity of learners they’ve created actually facilitates 
the academic curriculum they need to teach. So we’re 
talking about planned and unplanned group discussions 
on hearing one another’s concerns, generating alterna-
tive solutions, coming to mutually satisfactory out-
comes. Yes, it makes sense to interrupt other ongoing 
lessons to process important social issues that have sud-
denly erupted in the classroom. All students benefit 
from such discussions but especially those who need it 
most. The teacher acts as a role model and provides fre-
quent opportunities for practicing social interactions 
and helping one another, including peer tutoring, judi-
cious seating arrangements, and cooperative learning. 
Still reading? Good. 
Your social curriculum also helps you celebrate and 
accentuate individual differences. Everyone in the class-
room has strengths that can be used to help other stu-
dents, and everyone has areas of weakness in which they 
need help. This isn’t a tit-for-tat classroom . . . in your
classroom, everyone gets what he or she needs. Indeed, 
because of the emphasis on individual differences, stu-
dents are taught that your expectation is that they will 
help one another. They learn that each classmate is an in-
tegral thread in the fabric of a community of learners. 
Each student is working on something with Plan B. 
Rather than being overwhelmed, the teacher has a sense 
about the unique emotional, social, and behavioral needs 

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260 
The Explosive Child 
of each student and a framework for trying to meet 
those needs within the context of the larger group. 
In one first-grade classroom, a visitor was observing 
one day and noticed one child (it turns out he was the 
explosive one) helping another student with her math (it 
turns out the helper was quite skilled in math and the 
helpee was not). Several minutes later, when it was time 
to switch activities (from math to music), the math whiz 
became stuck. The girl he’d been helping with math 
calmed him down, talked to him, and helped him move 
on to music (turns out she was very good at dealing with 
frustration), all within eyeshot of the teacher. Then the 
girl, apparently recognizing that the visitor might not 
have comprehended what was going on, came over and 
softly explained, “He just gets a little frustrated some-
times.” A lot of teachers who wish they could be helpful 
to the explosive student in their classroom—but feel 
they don’t have sufficient time to devote to him—simply 
need to be made aware of the help available from the 
most probable and willing candidates—the other kids.