Brief summary of Ed Ford's background

After serving in the U. S. Navy from 1944 to 1946, Ed went to Youngstown College (now Youngstown State University) and then became a newspaper reporter at the Youngstown Vindicator in 1950.

In 1953 Ed joined the Industrial Relations department of the Youngstown Sheet & Tube (a large steel factory) until 1964, when he became a high school teacher.

Six years later, he left to get an MSW at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Applied Social Sciences.

In 1972, Ed  began a private counseling practice.

Shortly thereafter, he joined the faculty of the Institute For Reality Therapy and began working as a social services consultant with various schools as well as with the Ohio Youth Commission and  the Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Lima, Ohio.

Ed taught and demonstrated Reality Therapy throughout the United States and Canada.

Ed and his family moved from Youngstown, Ohio, where he was born and raised, to Phoenix, Arizona in 1976.

He taught and consulted in over 150 human resource facilities including drug and alcohol centers, corrections, mental health, residential and out patient treatment facilities, as well as over 70 school districts primarily in the Midwest and Southwest. He also served for many years as a part-time faculty member at Arizona State University’s School of Social Work.

Ed consulted for two years with Laidlaw Transit Inc, which provides school busing services for school districts throughout the United States and Canada, creating a discipline program for use on their school buses.

Ed consulted for five years with the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, teaching them how implement the responsible thinking process.
Ed was formerly business consultant throughout the United States and Canada, working for such companies as Intel Inc., Apple Computer, Smitty's Inc., InnSuites Inc., The Keg (in Canada), and various other organizations.

He served eight years as a part-time teacher at Ottawa University in Phoenix Arizona, teaching upper division courses for Professional Education Program.

Ed also consulted with Bright Oaks, a residential treatment center for sexually abused girls, ages 7 to 12.

Ed Ford is a founding member and Past President of the Control Systems Group, an organization that researches and promotes perceptual control theory.

This group is made up mostly of scientists with some practical applications people, such as research psychologists, physicists, sociologists, economists, engineers, educational psychologists, social workers, etc. He has worked as a volunteer doing group work with probationers for Maricopa County Probation Department and with women inmates at the Santa Maria Unit of the Arizona State Prison. He is presently working with inmates in the work release program at the Maricopa County jail.

 

Ed has authored and published the following books:

Why Marriage? - 1974, Argus Communications
Why Be Lonely? - 1975, Argus Communications
For The Love Of Children - 1977, Doubleday
Permanent Love - 1979, Winston Press
Choosing To Love - 1983, Winston Press
Money Isn't Enough - Self published in 1984
Love Guaranteed - 1987, Harper and Row
Freedom From Stress - 1989,
Discipline For Home And School, Book One - 1994,  
Discipline For Home And School, Book Two - 1996,
Discipline For Home And School, Fundamentals - 2004,
Creating Peace Within - 2007,

All but the first two books are now available through Brandt Publishing.

Ed was also featured in Love Guaranteed With Ed Ford, a special 46-minute production by KAET-TV, the PBS station in Phoenix. Filmed in early 1992, this show has been aired three times in the Phoenix market and was offered to other PBS stations nation wide.
 

Ed contributed Chapters to the following books:

What Are You Doing?:
How People Are Helped Through Reality Therapy.
Naomi Glasser, editor. Harper & Row, 1980; Family Counseling and Therapy. Arthur M. Horne and Merle M. Ohlsen, editors. F. E. Peacock, 1982;
 

Volitional Action.
Wayne Hershberger, editor. North-Holand, 1989

The Control Theory Approach.
Richard S. Marken, editor.
Sage Publications.
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol 4/No.1, Sept/Oct 1990, An issue devoted to: Purposeful Behavior:

Birth Of RTP

In 1993, John Champlin, national authority on school restructuring, had been given a copy of my book, Freedom From Stress. After reading it, he asked me to put together a program on discipline for families.

He afforded me the opportunity to travel to several school districts, and from that experience, I realized several things: First, the family would be the wrong place to structure any kind of effective process, and second, the discipline programs in schools seemed not to be working.

At one of Champlin's Phoenix conferences, I gave several presentations on my then ideas about an effective discipline process for schools. In the audience, among others, were two educators from Clarendon Elementary School in the Osborn School district. George Venetis, then assistant principal, and LeEdna Custer-Knight, school psychologist.

Later that same year George called me and ask if I would be interested in presenting my ideas on school discipline to the faculty and parents of his school. I accepted his invitation. My ideas were accepted with much enthusiasm, and since the district at that time did not support this venture, the teacher's union funded the faculty training.

The Responsible Thinking Process became operational on January 24th of 1994. I continued to meet and work with both George and LeEdna on a two or three times a week basis, held faculty meetings once a week to insure the proper use of my ideas and to answer any questions, and I worked often in the Responsible Thinking Classroom with Darleen Martin, the first teacher to work in that room. She is still an RTC teacher and now trainer, and is working as an RTC teacher at Villa De Paz Elementary School in the Pendergast Elementary School District in Phoenix.

George is now retired after 20 years as an elementary school teacher, and nine years as an administrator, and travels with me throughout the United States and around the world, working with me as a team to train other schools in the use of this process.