Crash Course: A Head of School, His Son's Addiction, And Lessons For Schools and Families - Softcover

Pratt Ph.D., Michael D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1484848659 ISBN 13: 9781484848654

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

Synopsis

Michael Pratt is a distinguished educator who served for ten years as Head of the prestigious Brentwood School in Los Angeles. In his very first semester at the school he came face to face with one of the most pressing issues affecting education today – adolescent alcohol and drug use. Only in this case the student using and abusing drugs was Pratt’s son, David. Until that moment he had no idea his son was an addict.

In Crash Course Pratt describes David’s struggle with addiction, its impact on their family, and the numerous setbacks his son experienced on the road to recovery. It's a common enough story except this was a journey both personal and professional. In addition to the private crisis any parent goes through when finding out his or her child is experimenting with drugs and faces school disclipline, the situation represented an enormous professional challenge for Pratt. He was responsible for protecting the integrity of the school while simultaneously supporting his son.

The impossibility of separating the personal and professional aspects of the story proved to be a blessing in disguise. Drawing on his experiences both as the father of an adolescent addict and as a Head of school, Pratt developed a more humane and balanced approach for Brentwood to student alcohol and drug use that included a mix of new policies and a series of prevention programs. In sharing his and David's story he hopes to help other schools and parents mitigate adolescent alcohol and drug use and support those students who run off the rails. Get to know the author, Michael Pratt, by checking out his exclusive interviews on CBS News Weekend Roundup with Dan Raviv http://bit.ly/1di0ISE and mOppenheim.TV http://www.moppenheim.tv/crashcourse/

About this title

About the Author

Michael Pratt, Ph.D., is currently serving as Interim Head of School at St. John's Episcopal School in Orange County, CA. He previously served as Head of the Brentwood School in Los Angeles, CA; taught history at an independent school and a university in the Washington, D.C. area; served as a Program Officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities; and was Academic Dean at Menlo School in Atherton, CA. Pratt consults with schools around the country to help them create thoughtful programs and policies aimed at preventing alcohol and drug use among students while simultaneously offering incentives to seek counseling and therapy for those students who do use. Michael serves on the Napa County Board for Alcohol and Drug Programs and on the board of the Wolfe Center, which provides alcohol and drug prevention and treatment services to adolescents.

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1484848659
• ISBN 13: 9781484848654
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 126