The 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 in Phoenix. 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. I worked with the faculty in the fall of 1993, teaching the use of my ideas with the help of George and LeEdna.

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 the RTC teacher at Clarendon and now a trainer, and is working as an RTC up to the present time. 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.