It’s never too late to assess and make changes to the behavior structure and support you offer to your students. Natural breaks in the school year offer an opportunity to reset your approach to behavior and get your classroom or campus back on track. So, let’s talk about how to use the re-entry after a break to move things in the right direction!
It’s been an exciting, dynamic year for Branching Minds, thanks to you! The input and support of our district partners are the driving force behind every update and enhancement. We've come a long way, and with sincere gratitude, we toast our wonderful community of educators and celebrate our top improvements of the year.
At the beginning of the school year, we strategize, collect data, and form our playbook. We work with the teams at our schools to make sure we’re ready to take on any challenge. We prepare and train through high-quality professional development and effective meetings. Once the game of the school year starts, though, we can find that we’re encountering unexpected challenges, and they can start to wear down on us as the year progresses. You may find this is how you’re feeling as we approach midyear.
A well-functioning Early Warning System (EWS) plays a crucial role in helping schools identify and support students at risk of school failure. By tracking key indicators such as attendance, behavior, and course performance, EWS enables schools to intervene early and prevent students from falling through the cracks. But how can schools maximize the impact of EWS to ensure student success?
In our podcast conversation, Sarah Frazelle, Senior Researcher and MTSS Trainer at AIR, shared valuable insights into the best practices for using an Early Warning System to drive equitable outcomes for all students.
“Early warning indicator systems are about that threshold that we're going to intervene at early. It is the actionable piece to have more equitable student outcomes as well. It’s not just the kids that are on our hearts and minds that we're supporting. It's also those kids who are really quiet. They show up all the time, but maybe they're not getting good grades, you know. So we really are trying to figure out why students are struggling.”
- Sarah Frazelle, Senior Researcher and MTSS Trainer at AIR
Once upon a time, I entered the classroom as a young teacher excited to impact my students' lives. I started as a middle school teacher, so I had my class syllabus, the class rules, and the outline of what we would be doing for the year, and I presented that to my students on the first day of school. I did this because it's what my own school experience was and it's what I was told to do in my teacher education program. A few years later, I had the privilege and opportunity to attend a Tribes training, now known as Peace Learning Center. The program emphasized creating engaging learning communities. This shift from control to collaboration with students not only resonated with me but also yielded remarkable results in my classrooms over the years.
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.
As a teacher in a Title 1 school, many of my students lagged behind in meeting benchmarks each year. To teach them my grade level standards, I began by attempting to remediate missed learning. However, their progress was limited. Attempting to backtrack to their level just took too much time and resulted in frustration and disengagement. In order to achieve more within the year, I began to use the accelerated learning approach by integrating the required concepts for specific standards into the current lesson. I saw increased student engagement and achievement. And when I started using Proficiency Scales, my students’ motivation soared!
Team-based decision-making, driven by data analysis and collective expertise, is at the heart of MTSS practice. As school psychologist, author, and researcher Gary Schaffer aptly expressed, "It's about supporting the students, but it's also about empowering adults to make decisions together."
Don’t you love a secret menu? Whether it's the Animal-Style Burger or the Butterbeer Blizzard, insiders know how to get the best out of their order. At Branching Minds, we don't really serve a secret menu, but we have created lots of delightful little features that help educators get their work done. We asked our customers to share the lesser-known features of Branching Minds that make their lives easier, and they served up a host of fan-favorites!