RTP Interview: Tim Carey, 7-4-98

Interview with Tim Carey
conducted on July 4, 1998, by Caroline Bourbon

Caroline Young's fourth interview is with Tim Carey, who was visiting Caroline's dad, Tom Bourbon, in Rochelle, Texas, over this past fourth of July. Tim was on his honeymoon with his bride, Margaret Brown Carey. They live in Brisbane, Aurtralia, and Tim is one of only two certified trainers outside of Arizona. I've never known anyone so anxious to learn. Tim's knowledge of RTP and his sense of what it is all about is truly remarkable. He has gone far beyond my own understanding of PCT and, with Tom Bourbon as his teacher, Tim continues to read, question, and think. His excitement with this whole process is truly impressive. I consider myself fortunate to have him as part of my team.

Caroline: Tell me how you got started with RTP and PCT in Australia, for those who don't know.	Tim: To give a bit of perspective, I started as a preschool teacher. While I was doing my training, one of our psychology lecturers just out of the blue talked to us about what we would need to do if we were interested in becoming guidance counselors, and the courses we would need to take. For some reason, I got interested. One of the things that you had to do to become a guidance counselor was to get into special education. So I just had that in the back of my head. I went out and had a couple of years as a preschool teacher. For the first six months that I taught, I was teaching in a really small country town that only had 350 people. I had preschool and grade one together, and grade two for some of the time. At the end of my second year I had run into this guy who was working at the high school. He was really into Rudolf Driekurs' work, and he gave me a book called Happy Children. I read that and just loved it because it talked about helping kids become more responsible, and giving them choices. I thought about how I could change my preschool program to really maximize the opportunities that kids had to make choices and be responsible for the choices they made. So I changed lots of things. We used to have an indoor time and an outdoor time, well I made it so that the whole time at preschool, they could be anywhere they wanted to be. We also used to have a language time on the carpet, where the kids would come and we would do a story, or maybe a block activity where they would have to follow instructions like find the large red square block. So we had that and a music time when we would sing songs. Well, I made those noncompulsory so if kids were involved in other activities they could continue to do those. They only came to the carpet if they wanted to. But with every choice they had responsibilities as well. So they could decide to come to the carpet, but if they wanted to come to the carpet they had to decide at the beginning, and if they chose not to come to the carpet then they couldn't come halfway through. If we were doing music, and we started to play a game the kids really liked, then someone who wasn't on the carpet couldn't come and join in the game. We also used to have a snack time when we would all sit down together for snack. Well, I changed that and just made it that the kids had a little bit of carpet outside under the awning and the kids could go there whenever they wanted and have snack. If the kids didn't behave properly, I would say things like, "I can see you are not ready to behave responsibly. You'll need to go and sit in my office. When you are ready to behave responsibly {so it was up to them} you can come out and let me know." That was a really good year,and lots of the parents told me how their kids were much more advanced than their brothers and sisters had been. I had one really interesting experience with a girl that really demonstrated to me how capable even very young kids are, and how much we underestimate them. There was one little girl who was four. Preschoolers in Australia are four turning five, but she was a very young four-year-old. It was just her and her brother in the family, and her brother was a few years older. He had been at school, and she had spent quite a lot of time at home with just her mum. For the first couple of weeks everything was fine, but then she started to cry every time that Mum left, and that is fairly common at the beginning of preschool. So I watched this for a little while, and what was actually happening was the girl would go and start playing at an activity and the mom would just be talking to the other moms. But when it was time to leave, the mother would go over and start rubbing her back, and say, "It is time for me to go now, don't be sad, I'll be back to get you in a little while," and just start working the girl up, so eventually the girl would cry. And then the mother would come over and say to me, "She's crying," and I would look over and say, "Well, yes, she is." The mother would leave and I would be left with this crying kid. I had thought I was going to have some problems with this girl because she seemed really young, and she didn't have good skills or good language. This pattern went on for a little while, and one day I decided to see what we could do about it. I actually took her into my office and I said to her that I was really interested in talking to her about what was going on with her and her mum because I had noticed that she was really upset when her mum left. She looked at me and said, "I don't want to talk about it," and that just blew me away. I had no idea at all that this girl would come out with anything like that, as a young four year old, and an immature four year old. I said to her, "OK, we don't need to talk about it. If it is not a problem, there is no point in talking about it, but if I see you crying after today I will know there really is a problem and we will need to talk about it." I left it at that, and she didn't cry again. She didn't cry ever again for the year I had her. That just blew me away. I didn't know RTP or PCT then, but I have always kept that in the back of my mind for how capable these kids are. After three years of preschool teaching, I did a graduate diploma in special education. I did it for the severely to profoundly multiply handicapped, so there was a lot of behavior management in that course. The thing that I really liked about the behavior management was that it seemed very mathematical. It didn't have equations or anything, but it seemed like a bit of a puzzle, and a bit of problem solving. You know, if you found out what was going on, what the right stimuli were, and then you structured them, then you could get the right response, and I found that a bit intriguing. I worked with autistic kids, Down Syndrome kids, and severely intellectually handicapped kids, and we basically taught them life skills, community things like shopping and eating out. That was fun. I did that for a year while I did the course, then went and taught in a special school. At the end of that year, a job came up as a behavior management specialist. I applied and got the job. For a while I worked with behavior management programs, I did tokens, and self-control, little stickers, level systems, and each one was more elaborate than the others. I did that for a little while, and because I was in this job, I became aware of other programs. I became aware of a whole bunch of self-esteem programs that are around, that you run for six weeks or so, and skill streaming, and others. I never really got interested in them because they didn't seem to do anything, and it never seemed to make sense to me to teach a whole bunch of kids exactly the same information for all of the different problems that they had. I also became aware of other programs like Lee Canter's "Assertive Discipline," and at that stage I was doing a lot of my own reading. One of the guys I worked with back in the late eighties went to a conference by William Glasser. He came back with this big chart that had lots of lines and pictures and colors, and it looked really impressive. I thought, "Wow, this must be a really smart guy, he has a really complicated chart." That was my first introduction to Glasser. Then, I got a few of his books and read a bit of his stuff, and I eventually started training with his organization. I did a basic week, then a basic practicum, then an advanced week, then an advanced practicum. Certification was the next step, and I finished my advanced practicum but didn't do certification because by that stage I had gotten into Ed's program. During the time I was doing that I also did other courses. I did the basic week in Albert Ellis' "Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy," and I did a twenty-one day practitioner's certificate in Neuro-Linguistic Programming. I had done a bit of family therapy, and those are a few things I had played around with. But the thing I really liked about Glasser's program was the control theory. I was bothered a little bit by the fact that he always used to say that control theory came from William Powers, who had written this book called Behavior: The Control of Perception, which was very technical and hard to understand, and you shouldn't read it. He said, "I have simplified it and you should just read my simplified versions. Just buy my books." When people tell me not to do something, that immediately becomes the thing I want to do. There was that going on, and at work we got computers and we got onto the Internet. One day I put in a search for "control systems group," or "control systems," or "control theory." The Control Systems Group came up, and it listed a whole bunch of references, and Ed Ford was in the references. On this particular reference list it mentioned his book Freedom From Stress, and it described it as a proper control theory interpretation of Reality Therapy. I tried to locate it in Australia, but they told me it was out of print. They were able to get Discipline for Home and School. I ordered that. In the meantime, a friend of mine had a copy of Freedom From Stress, so I borrowed that. I thought it was the best self-help book I had ever read. It took me a long time to read it because I kept going over and over things. By that stage, I had also read Discipline for Home and School and thought this was a really neat program. It was the September school holidays. I wanted to buy all of Ed's books. I tried to ring him up. I kept getting his answering machine, and I didn't want to leave a message, because he wouldn't have known who I was. So I decided I would send away an order form. I woke up early the next morning, and I thought, "I'll just try one more time. Well, I phoned and Ed answered the phone. I said, "Oh, Hi Ed, I am Tim Carey from Australia." We talked for a little while, and one of my first questions to Ed was the difference in his questioning procedure and Glasser's, because at this stage I was still doing training with Glasser's institute. It seemed a bit paradoxical to me that Ed would say he was basing his process on a theory that stressed the importance of personal goals, and yet his first question was, "What are you doing?" which was about actions. Whereas Glasser's first question is, "What do you want?" which seems to have much more to do with goals. So I said to him, "Ed, why do you ask 'what are you doing' whereas Glasser asks 'what do you want?'" And he said, "At the time the kids are disrupting, I don't care what they want. What is important for them is to learn to evaluate what they are currently doing in relation to the rules and standards of the environment they are in." That to me just sounded so sensible, and it seemed like what was missing from discipline programs that I knew of at the moment. So we chatted for a bit, then we talked about the theory, and he said if I was really interested in the theory that I needed to talk to Tom Bourbon, and he was going to be visiting Ed in a couple of days time. I actually rang back in a couple of days time and spoke to Tom and Ed together. I had said to Ed while I was talking to him, "Gee, wouldn't it be great if you could come out to Australia." He said, "Yes, we would love to, when can we come." I didn't know, because at that stage I was just sort of talking to him off the top of my head. Well, the next time I spoke to him on the phone, he said, "I have spoken to my travel agent and I have made a tentative booking to come to Australia." So, after thinking, "Oh my God, what will I do, I'll have to sell my car to get them over here," we actually started planning it. Luckily, with the group that I was working with, I was employed by the Education Department in Queensland. I was in a Behavior Management team, and our managing body, which was the district behavior management governing body, we went to speak to them, to talk about Ed's program and how good it would be if Ed and Tom could come out to Australia. That group decided to put some money up to sponsor them, and to help run the conference. The support center, where the group was based, essentially organized the first conference. I would look after Ed and Tom while they were out here, and they did all of the brochures and that kind of thing. Ed and Tom came out, and I finally got to meet them after all of the phone conversations. First of all, Ed and I spent lot and lots of time on e-mail, then Tom and I spent lots and lots of time on e-mail, and we still do, just talking over issues and learning about things and really clarifying things. Ed was fantastic. A couple of times, I worked with a kid and I typed in the transcript of how our dialogue went and I'd send it over to Ed. He would kind of look at it and suggest improvements, or tell me what I did that was OK, or what I could do differently. It was a fantastic resource, and Tom was the same with the theory. Any time I was just thinking of something and I couldn't figure out an answer with the theory, I would just write away to Tom, and the next day there would be a reply. So it was great to finally meet them after doing that, and we had a really good conference. There was a lot of interest in Brisbane after that, and lots of schools wanted to take on RTP. Ed, at that stage, announced that I was his representative in Australia, and if people were interested in RTP they should work through me. That was the end of May. A few schools went away and took it on immediately, and just said, "Yes, this is what we are going to do." A few schools took a little more time. Then Ed and Tom came back in October for another conference, and I organized that one myself. Ed and Tom had a chance to visit some of the schools that said they were doing RTP, and they are planning to come out again this October. So that is the big history of RTP in Australia, in a nutshell.
Caroline: How did you get started with your discussion groups? Did you start immediately after your first conference, how did that evolve?	Tim: The discussion groups started pretty slowly, but just lately they have been really successful. I guess what happened, with the interest after the first conference, there were lots and lots of schools saying they were doing RTP, and there still are in Queensland. I used to get really annoyed about that because what a lot of schools say they are doing, and what Ed has written in his books, are very different. Some schools have read his books once and say it is great, then say they are doing RTP. I really wanted a way for schools to get together to discuss what they were doing that I could be a part of, and a way for schools or school personnel to access me that wasn't going to be really costly. So at the second conference, actually, people were talking about how could they get me out to their schools, what could they do, and was there any way they could get this going, or they could get more information about this. So I decided then that I would see what interest there was about the discussion groups. I asked a few people if they would be interested in coming to a discussion group, and they said they would. At the second conference Ed announced that he was certifying me as an RTP trainer, so by that stage I felt a bit more qualified to talk about the process and the theory. After that conference in October, I sent a notice out to some people who had indicated they were interested. I limited the discussion group to a maximum of ten people, just because I thought that would facilitate conversation better. I said that it would go for an hour, between 7:30 and 8:30. We would meet once a fortnight, and it would be twenty dollars per person. I put on tea and coffee and supper. We probably had three or four meetings last year, and in Australia we have our summer break at the end of every year, so we finish school in early December and don't go back until the end of January or early February. So we broke then, and started again at the beginning of this year. What I thought I would do when the discussion groups first started was have half the time on RTP and half the time on PCT. It didn't work out that way, and it also didn't work out to be an hour. Often people got talking, and it would be 9:30 before people went home. It was going for two hours per night. The people that come are RTC teachers, behavior management specialists, or RTP administrators, and some classroom teachers. They really just talked about what was happening in their schools, and "I've got this problem, how do other people deal with that." It is a real sharing time, and I am able to teach aspects of the process throughout those discussions. What I was doing was starting with RTP and then doing PCT at the end, and what I found was happening was that PCT was being left off. By the time they had finished talking, people had had it. So what I started doing about three discussion groups ago was talking about PCT first of all. That has just become hugely popular. People are really interested to know about the theory, and I have done that for three discussion groups in a row now. People get really excited and energized by the theory and want to know more about it and how they can do the process better so it will reflect the theory better. We have been doing lots of activities and exercises that teach aspects of the theory, and then applying that to the RTC, or I'll ask people in the group if they have got anything that has been a problem in the last fortnight or so that they particularly want to talk about and we'll use that as an example. The discussion groups have been really good. The people that come seem to get a lot out of them and have a bit of support with each other for what they are doing in schools.
Caroline: In the chapter that you wrote for the revision of Discipline for Home and School, you wrote that you thought that what was so unique and beneficial to you about how you were trained in RTP is that it was geared toward what you needed to know. It was what you wanted to know and what you were interested in, of course a lot of that being because it was through e-mails and phone conversations, but that it was geared towards answering your questions. It sounds like now you have been able to turn around and do that for the teachers and administrators who are using the process in Australia, and provide that for them, based on what they need to know, using the problems they are having, but teaching the theory through that.	Tim: That is a good point, I hadn't thought about it that way, but that is certainly how I learned. It was really me asking questions of Tom and Ed, and a little later Tom would flip them back and ask me questions that I had asked him.
Caroline: He is pretty good at that!	Tim: Yes, so I would get a whole bunch of questions back after I had asked him a question. But again, I really think that is what the theory would suggest, and I really think that is what RTP is on about. It is really on about each individual getting what they want in a given environment, bearing in mind the perimeters of the environment. I use the example a lot that it would be pointless to go into a Chinese restaurant and order lasagna. You can't have a goal of eating lasagna if you find yourself in the environment of a Chinese restaurant. Your goal and the environment you are in are going to be at odds, and if you stick with that goal you are going to be frustrated. I think part of the brilliance of Ed's program is that the process is teaching people that the way to live a happy life is to define the goals that you have in terms of the perimeters of the environment that you find yourself in. So the way I learned RTP and PCT was very much at my own pace and about what I was interested in, but it was still about RTP and PCT. It would have been pointless to ask Ed and Tom questions about growing roses, or about Lee Canter's "Assertive Discipline," or any of those kinds of things, because those weren't the perimeters of our conversation. At times I would ask them about Glasser or Canter or things like that, but it was always in comparison with PCT or RTP, such as, "They say this, what would RTP say?" So that is a good point about the discussion groups, that those people are able to learn that way, and I say to them that I am going to be up front. If they are doing things that I don't think are aligned with the process, then I will ask them questions about how they see it is aligned, and I see it as my job to ask those questions and to challenge them. Because those are the perimeters of those discussion groups. You know, we could all sit there and have a jolly time and just chat about any old thing, but no one is benefiting from that. It is interesting. Sometimes people say more than other nights, and sometimes they say less. Sometimes people just want to sit and listen, and other times they really have a lot to say, because something is on their mind. After every second discussion group I put out a newsletter, so it comes out once a month. I write about one aspect of RTP on the front, and one aspect of PCT on the back, and I also try to have some little column about a good idea that I have heard happening in a school, or keeping people up to date, or a quote. I generally send those out to schools I have worked in or people who are interested in the process. What I try to write about is things that have come up in the discussion groups.
Caroline: So right now, what you do is visit regularly with schools that are using the process? Are you providing training for those schools on regular intervals, or on an as-needed basis?	Tim: I visit in the way that schools want me to visit. At the moment schools still have the idea that you can just do a day's training and live happily ever after, that you never have to see anyone again, that you never have to read the books again, that not all the teachers have to read the books. There are a couple of schools that are exceptions to that, but I can only talk about the schools that I have actually worked in. The exceptions are few and far between. Minimbah is an obvious exception to that, and at that school I go regularly and work in different ways. Sometimes I spend the time in the RTC, sometimes I spend time with the administrator, sometimes I have worked with kids during class discussion groups, and sometimes I will go to a staff meeting, do a staff training, or train people who missed out on the initial training, like supply teachers, people who work in the cafeteria, the groundsmen, that kind of stuff. It is really up to schools. I recommend things, but I guess I don't do a lot of follow-up. I don't ring schools up and say, "How is it going, do you want me to come out?" Because I really think it is up to the schools. Just like in an RTC we would wait until the kids say they are ready to plan, I really think schools have to be ready to say we want you to come out and do some more. That means it doesn't always happen the way I would like it to happen, either.
Caroline: But then it is truly applying the process with the school personnel.	Tim: Yes, and it is about what the school people are controlling for when they do the process. The last time I was speaking to George Venetis, he was saying that he is not doing this process because it reduces disruptions, or because it increases teaching time, or for any of those reasons. At a fundamental level he believes in the process because he believes it is just the right way to treat other human beings. If we believe the theory is an accurate model of human nature, then this is the best way we have so far of how to interact with other human beings in a school environment. That is what I like to keep in my mind. But not all schools have that. There are schools in Queensland that I have had things to do with who are using the process to make the kids tow the line, or to make the kids learn better. Sometimes the intentions are good, they want to reduce violence, but their focus is still a bit off. Their focus is still about changing kids' actions to be a particular way that they want them to be. And I think while they have that as their intention, RTP will never be the program that it can be.
Caroline: It is like what we all talk about with the make-or-break point with frequent fliers. Every school is going to have frequent fliers, it is how you deal with it. Do you see it as a threat, that here are these kids and we can't get this to work, so we have to put something else in over this? Or, do you see it as, look at all of the kids who have never used RTC or have only used it once, and here is this handful of kids? As Margaret and I talked about it, she said it is like their controlled variable is just really hidden. These are the kids that we are saying, "OK, now here we can really work with this to find out how to help them."	Tim: I really see a lot of this as exactly the same as any curriculum area. If a kid was having trouble learning math, you wouldn't say, "Oh well, tough luck kid, you don't get any more math. You haven't learned that, you don't get any more." That seems to be what happens in some RTCs. I have experienced places where, such as in one school I was working at, the kids were in the RTC and they were monkeying around, so the administrator sent them out of the RTC and told them they weren't going to plan any more because they had abused the privilege of planning. There seems to be this notion of what can we do to kids. Whereas if a kid was having trouble learning math, what schools I know of would do is to look at how they could support this kid to help him learn math better, to help him learn the skills he needs to do well at math. That is exactly how I see it with RTP. If a kid is taking a bit longer to learn the process, schools that have a good handle on what RTP and PCT are all about just look at, "How can we help support this kid, to be successful at school? What level of support does he need in order to experience success at school?" And I really think that is what it is all about. It is not about, like you said, looking at what can we do to this kid. This is where I think some people miss the point, people focus on the punitive side and it is not good to punish kids. But I think the do-gooding side is just as damaging. "I'll be your friend, kid, so you will do this," or, "I'll praise you, love and nurture you." If it is any of those things so that the kid will behave and act in a particular way, I think you have missed the point of RTP. It is really about looking at what support does this kid need in order that he will experience success, at his own pace and when he is ready to, leaving the decisions and the control in his hands.
Caroline: I like the analogy with the math class, because sometimes I hear about classroom teachers who say something like, "That kid is spending too much time in RTC so he isn't learning."	Tim: What are they learning when they are in RTC? They are learning how to get on with other human beings. They are learning how to formulate goals, and to make plans to help them achieve goals. I think it is a wonderful thing to learn. I think it would be great if a lot of adults had to do that. It would have been helpful to me going through university. I think if a kid left school with nothing other than that, they would be all the richer. If every kid in every school just left school with the ability to think about how they were getting on with other human beings, and to think about the goals that they have in relation to the environment they are in, I think society would be a better place. I think the curriculum stuff is really secondary to how people are treating each other. I don't think it matters how smart you are if you are a horrible person. No matter how bright you are, if you are a horrible person, you will not lead a very happy life.
Caroline: When you were talking about how the "feel-good" part can be equally damaging, I agree with that. Margaret brought up something earlier that I had never thought about in this way. I think one of the things that is so profound for many kids about this whole process in the RTC is that it is a respectful, non-punitive interaction. It is not a power struggle, it is just a questioning process. But, that doesn't always mean that it is comfortable. Because for a lot of kids, coming in and having to deal with some of these issues might be very uncomfortable, and that might be a time when the RTC teacher is going to back off, then come back at that child's pace. But for that child to function within the perimeters of that school, within that setting it is a respectful process. It is not always comfortable, and not always about having to make it smooth and easy, but still that level of respect is there to the point that you have kids who self-refer, or kids who come for a cooling-off, because they know that even if it has not always been easy for them, it has been a respectful situation.	Tim: Absolutely. I think that is where knowledge of the theory is so important. I have seen so many teachers, RTC teachers and other teachers, really jump in and when kids are upset, really try to comfort them, and really try to remove them from their upset feelings. I think if those people understood the theory, they would understand that it is necessary, not only is it occasionally going to happen but it is actually necessary, if the kid is going to change at all. Here this is more for the frequent fliers, for those kids who really need to make some quite significant changes in the way they see the world. I think the most lasting way of doing that is by trying to get the reorganization process happening. If that is going to happen, there will be a period of discomfort. It has to be there. As I was learning this stuff with Ed and Tom, I was working in a secondary withdrawal unit. It had nothing to do with RTP at all, but we were able to work in a way individually that we wanted to work, so I was able to use some of this. The thing that struck me the most about these kids, and we were getting kids sent to us from secondary schools and they were at risk of being suspended and excluded, these kids had no error about what they were doing. They were telling teachers off, throwing things, not doing any work, and that did not bother them at all. If we are going to help them be in schools successfully, then there has to be some error there. If they are going to stop controlling for what they are controlling for currently and begin to control for something else, then there has to be some kind of error. And often what we would do is, if school wasn't important to them, and learning wasn't important to them, we would dig around for something that was important to them. Often, being with their friends was important to them. So then we would just talk to them about how they can keep themselves in school so they can be with their friends. It suddenly became much more meaningful to them. Sometimes, even if their friends weren't important, we would talk to them about if they wanted to get a job when they left school, and a lot of kids wanted to do that. We talked to them about how likely it would be that they would get a job if they treated their boss like they treated their teacher. The error signal is actually necessary in some cases, and that is why I think the theory is so important. To know the theory, and to know what is going on and where you need to go next. I think sometimes you need to be a disturbance with the kids. But I think what happens is that perhaps you are that disturbance initially, but I think in schools that use RTP well, kids come to see teachers, and particularly the RTC teacher, as part of their feedback function in that the teachers and the RTC teacher are a part of how kids successfully control perceptions at school. Particularly with good RTC teachers, I think kids really see them as someone who can help them make it. That idea of respect comes through really strongly. If you don't have the theory, I think you would probably find it really distressing to see a kid crying. You would want to soothe them and comfort them. But you have really go to ask yourself, "if I stop them being upset, what am I doing? Am I helping them learn what they need to learn in order to make it in school?" You are probably not.
Caroline: Besides RTP, or by expanding on RTP, what else do you see yourself doing in schools in the future, as further applications of PCT?	Tim: Any kind of group that was looking at improving the way individuals relate to each other in whatever organization I think could use aspects of RTP. But I think there are also aspects of the theory, perhaps, that could be emphasized more in schools. One would be the test for controlled variables. I would really love to see some guidelines for people as to how to work with that. Particularly for RTC teachers, I think part of their training could be in how to search around for the controlled variable and how to get some idea of what is going on for them. As part of my Ph.D. work, what I want to research is what bullies are controlling for when they bully. A lot of the literature at the moment suggests that they are bullying because they want to hurt, or cause distress or harm or fear, with other kids. I don't think it is that at all. Well, I think it might be that, but none of the research at the moment is testing to see whether it is that. It could equally be something like, they just want friends, or they want to feel important, or they want other people to do what they want. I think that is a huge untapped area to explore what kids are controlling for when we see them act they way they do. So I think that is something that could really be explored a lot more. I would also like to see more work done with the levels, I think that is an area that really hasn't been explored a lot yet either. I think schools provide a really good opportunity to look at just the whole hierarchy, and to look at how a preschooler's hierarchy is and a kid in high school, and the differences there. When do you develop certain references? What are the stages that you go through? And to see if the stages that we think at the moment are important, to see if that maps on to any changes in the hierarchy. Like adolescents in puberty, there is a lot of talk about how identity issues become really important in adolescence. I think schools provide a wonderful place for exploring whether that actually is associated with a change in a kid's systems concepts and the references they have at that level. Whether they start to develop references about peer relationships, and intimate coupling sorts of relationships, such as boyfriend-girlfriend and dating relationships. That would be interesting to explore. I also think that the RTP process, the questioning process, gets kids moving up and down the levels a little bit, but I think we could explore ways of doing that a bit more efficiently and elegantly. I don't thing the RTP questions facilitate that as much as they could, and I don't think it is important for a lot of the kids. But I think for the frequent fliers, particularly, they might benefit from exploring their own perceptual hierarchy a little bit by moving up their own levels, thinking about the problems that they are experiencing in different ways. I also would like to see some kind of conflict work done. Again, RTP deals a little bit with that, but I think we could look at, again in terms of the levels, just exploring where conflicts occur and how they might be resolved more easily by just considering them from a different perspective, having a different viewpoint. I could also see, as part of RTP training, another area we could spend more time on, is using the way that adults in schools interact with each other. Again, George Venetis is very skilled at using the process with his staff, but I don't think there are many other people like him, and I think that would be a good thing to explore.
Caroline: I think it was Joe Sierzenga who said that we so often use the process with the kids, then try to go right back into these controlling patterns with other adults. That would be really interesting to further explore. Where RTP works well, you can see this process happening with the adults.	Tim: But even where it works well and it is happening, it still just seems to happen, it doesn't seem to happen as a systematic planned thing. Planning, for example, is something I thing teachers could be encouraged to do. And administrators. But that is still seen as something that the naughty kids do, or the kids who have disrupted. I think it is something that everyone in a school could do, and could be encouraged to do. I think the nondisruptive kids would benefit just as much from learning how to plan, as the kids who disrupt. Ed and George have talked about that, as well. I think George it talking about having every kid in the school learn how to plan and go through the whole planning process. Recently I made up a questionnaire, and it was basically just ten questions. It went through different aspects of the process, and it was for the staff. Under each question it had a scale of one to ten, with two scales. One scale was for where you actually are at the moment, and the other was for where you want to be. So it was the actual scale and the desired scale. They were questions like, "How well do I negotiate plans with kids," so they would circle where they are at, and where they want to be. There was a question about administrators driving the program, about, "How consistently do I ask the questions," "How often do I ask rather than tell," ten questions like that. Then, on the back, I actually have a planning sheet where I say, "Choose one of those items that you would most like to improve, come up with a measurable goal, and then make the plan for how you might achieve it. When will you reevaluate this goal, who will you report to?" I can actually see staff members teaming up together to work on projects. You could work through the questionnaire, and change the items, but I think that is a part of this process becoming the way everybody in a school operates, thinks, and works with each other.
Caroline: When you were talking about bullies earlier, I was thinking if you really look into what that kid is controlling for, and you find out that he thinks the kid he is hitting is his friend and that is what friends do, you get into a whole other set of social skill issues. How different would that "contract" be if you knew that. When you start getting into what the child is controlling for, how very different that situation becomes. I see that all of the time, the huge assumptions that are made, because somehow, "I am a teacher and I can read these kids' minds and I know exactly why they are doing these things to me!"	Tim: How often do you hear teachers say, "He is just doing that for attention?" Maybe he is, maybe he is not. Maybe he was keeping you occupied so his friend could nick your purse, anything. There is no conception at the moment of testing for controlled variables in any sort of organized way. That is something that we talk about in the discussion groups, and they are really interested in that at the moment. For me the biggest part about RTP, and one of the things that I continually stress to the schools that I am currently working with, is that this isn't a program that I feel I need to sell at all, and I would rather see it in no schools, than to see it in a school where it is being done badly. I am really not interested in working with schools where they don't want to know about the theory, or they are not interested in doing just RTP. Schools that want to do a bit of RTP but have, say, levels also, I am really not interested in being there, and it is not even because I think necessarily that RTP is the best way or the only way to do things in a school. There may be a better way, but I don't know it. The way that I know at the moment is RTP, and I want to work on getting better myself at knowing RTP and being skilled in the processed of RTP, and in teaching RTP, so that it can be the best program that it can be. I really don't think the potential of the process has been anywhere nearly realized, such as in terms of what we have spoken about before, staff using the process, and all of the kids in the school using the process, and it just becoming a part of everything. I really think this process has the potential to revolutionize the way we think about education, and what schools are for. I think we have the opportunity to dramatically change our standards of what we can expect from kids. I don't think we really know yet what kids' abilities are. Because I feel that strongly about it, I am really not interested in schools who aren't also that interested. If they want to do a little bit of this but also bring in penalties and incentives for frequent fliers, then they can do that, but I don't want to be a part of it.
Caroline: Especially if they are looking for another bag of tricks without any interest in the theoretical basis behind it, and why this program is what it is.	Tim: And the bag of tricks really comes out with the frequent fliers. Tom talks about this sort of thing a lot, once a school gets frequent fliers, and they are going to get them. It is like air, you are going to have it, and the frequent fliers are just going to be there. It is really how school personnel handle the frequent fliers that indicates how well they have got a handle on the process. I think if schools could just have that frame of mind, that they could view frequent fliers as challenges and as people who are helping identify where the weaknesses in their program are, they would be well on their way to supporting frequent fliers in the way they need to be supported.
Caroline: Is there anything we haven't covered yet that you want to throw in here?	Tim: Just how important the theory is, and I think we individually need to think all the time about how we are doing with the theory and the process, and about how closely aligned everything we do is to the theory. Do we talk about people making us do things, for example? Also, to try to impress on kids the theory and the process. I think in terms of how kids experience us, and then the reference they develop from that about adults, I think who we are in the schools and what we do is really important. Kids watch us all of the time, and if we ask some kids questions but don't ask others, or if we really treat them with very little respect, or we have lots of double standards, that places the integrity of the program at risk.