Implementing Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) can transform the school environment, fostering behavioral and academic success. Here’s an example of how one high school achieved this and how you can too!
Educators frequently find themselves navigating leadership and decision-making roles with little to no job-specific training in how to gain buy-in, generate innovative ideas, and build strong teams. To empower these leaders, it's essential to provide them with professional learning content that goes beyond theory, offering practical tools to initiate successful change and guide the implementation process.
For parents,* the education journey for their child can be a rollercoaster of emotions. From the excitement of new beginnings to the concerns that they are making the best decisions for their child’s well-being, every parent's heart is deeply intertwined with their child's learning experiences. The impacts of decisions parents and families must make regarding their child’s education can be long-lasting, reaching far behind students' K-12 lives.
It’s no surprise to see more states and school districts adopting a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) as their framework for supporting students across academics, social-emotional learning, and behavior for all students. MTSS is a collaborative, evidence-based approach to differentiating and personalizing instruction and intervention for all students.
About two years ago, I was a district administrator for school climate improvement. In this role, I was asked to support a group of administrators that were handling intense behaviors on their campus. The campus had maxed out its intensive support resources, and determined that they had no other option than to create a new tier of support—what they referred to as “Tier 4.”
I have noticed this trend quite often. I hear different variations of this new level of need: “Tier 4,” “deep red,” or even “too many red students.”
What does this mean?
A Multi-Tiered System of Supports is based on the three-tiered public health model. This means that we must identify the root cause(s) within our current system and identify why it’s not serving our student population. By creating an additional tier, we ignore a problem that is perforating our entire system.
There is no Tier 4. However, there is a Tier 2. And this tier is often overlooked in how powerful of an intervention tool it can be.
About six years into my career as a special educator, I attended a child’s study meeting. In this meeting, my 9th-grade student's mother encouraged the team to focus on the student's executive functioning.
Executive functioning? I remember thinking. What is that? I didn’t even know if we taught executive functioning, let alone how to begin supporting it.
From my early days as a Special Education teacher to my most recent days as a District-level administrator, I have seen first-hand the impact of "good" communication, lack of communication, miscommunication, and misunderstanding that can occur when meeting with families, and specifically, when discussing Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS). Communicating can be tricky! Are we saying too much? Too little? Are we even on the same page?
I have spent the better part of the last decade providing targeted support to schools, educators, and students requesting advice on improving engagement at their Tier 1 level. Through this experience, I have re-engaged students who are re-entering school after hiatus, coached teachers who faced chronic absenteeism, and helped schools develop infrastructures to support better staff, community, and student engagement.