Adam Holland, PhD, a technical assistance specialist at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG), has a background in k-6 education. After earning a degree in elementary education from Wake Forest University, he taught elementary school in Raleigh, NC, for a number of years before returning to Carolina to pursue a master’s degree in education with an emphasis on early childhood, intervention, and family support and, later, a PhD in education.

As part of our FPG Voices series, we’re highlighting his book, Thinking Outside the Prize Box: Navigating Challenging Behaviors in Today’s Classrooms.

In this book, Holland draws on personal experience, research, and years of coaching educators to offer practical, relationship-centered strategies for navigating challenging behavior.

From classroom experience to practical strategies

The ideas behind Holland’s book began with his own childhood experiences. He remembers spending time in the corner at school, often unsure what he had done to prompt his teachers’ sending him there. Years later, when he became a teacher, he found himself relying on some of the same ineffective behavior-management tactics—until influential mentors helped him find a different path.

With experience, Holland shifted his focus from short-term compliance to children’s long-term success, grounding classroom management in connection and respect. His doctoral studies helped him understand why that approach worked and introduced him to additional strategies for responding to behaviors that adults often find challenging. Since leaving the classroom, he has refined those ideas while training and coaching thousands of teachers across the country.

Thinking Outside the Prize Box brings those lessons together in an accessible guide to helping children thrive while recognizing the stress educators face. “This book is a collection of everything I have learned to date about how we help children become the best that they can be,” said Holland, “in a way that preserves our own sanity in a field where stress and challenge are commonplace.”

Through practical stories and humor, Holland offers strategies intended to make challenging classroom moments more manageable—and to help educators support children with greater understanding, connection, and care.

To learn more about Holland and his work at FPG, please read this installment of the FPG Profile series.