Schools That Heal: Real Life Solutions.

Lesley Koplow. New York: Teachers College Press, 2002. 231 pp. $17.95 paper. "If we value the children who attend our elementary schools and want to be realistically hopeful about the people they will become as they move through middle school and high school toward young adulthood, we can no longer leave their emotional well-being to chance," writes Lesley Koplow in Schools That Heal (p. 16).

Koplow challenges educators to make schools places of healing for children who come to school with emotional damage. She believes that teachers, principals, and clinicians have clear-cut roles in that endeavor. Koplow, a psychotherapist and the Director of the Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice at the Bank Street College of Education, has written several books on the mental health of children.

Koplow's premise is that we cannot teach children who are so emotionally bruised that they are unable to attend to their lessons. She writes about understanding children's social and emotional needs and discusses how to read children's signs of distress. For example, abused children often cast one adult as "all bad" and another as "all good." Although depression may be exhibited in "low activity levels, sleepiness, lack of interest and motivation and sad affects similar to a depressive picture of an adult," Koplow notes that "most children who are depressed also present a different constellation of symptoms. These may include teasing and provocative behavior, hyperactivity, evidence of low self-worth, isolation from peers, performance anxiety, aggression, irritability, intolerance of others, encopresis, selective mutism, reckless behavior, and suicidal and homicidal ideation expressed in the form of fantasy" (p. 26).

A unique feature of this thorough and well-organized book is a 10-session model of staff development on emotionally responsive schools, complete with handouts. Koplow also challenges policymakers to see the emotional needs of their students and to act to mend them. For example, she describes an emotionally responsive classroom as one where the teacher creates an environment in which children feel welcome to express themselves, and at the same time sets boundaries of self-expression and behavior that maintains a feeling of safety for all of the children.

This is a timely book that addresses a need of which educators have long been aware, but perhaps did hot fully understand. Koplow makes the consequences of emotional illness crystal clear. Children who have been damaged emotionally exhibit a range of developmental, psychological, and academic problems. These children often are hypervigilant, unable to concentrate or attend to neutral stimuli, and may be unable to develop trust. Children with such limitations are distinctly disadvantaged not only in school, but also throughout life. Koplow's ideas have the potential to help schools heal our children. This book should become required reading for educators and policymakers. Reviewed by Joy Varnell, Doctoral Student, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA