I Almost Didn’t Write This.
- Jackie Frangis
- 7 hours ago
- 3 min read
But After 4 Years in Schools, I Can’t Stay Quiet Anymore.
it’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog post.
Not because I didn’t have opinions, but because I didn’t feel like I had anything new to contribute that would truly make a difference. Education doesn’t need more noise. It needs clarity that actually helps schools function better for teachers and students.
After four years of deep MTSS coaching, classroom modeling, and applied research https://mtss4success.org/ across very different school settings, I finally feel ready to say this out loud: there is a consistent instructional message schools need to hear — and it’s showing up everywhere I go.
Over the past few weeks alone, I’ve worked in a parochial school, a charter school, and a suburban public school. Different systems. Different constraints. Different communities.
Same instructional challenge.
In every building, teachers were asking some version of the same question:How do we make WINN (or intervention time) actually work?
And what I noticed wasn’t a lack of effort or professionalism. Teachers were doing what we’ve asked them to do — respond to data, meet student needs, and close gaps. The issue was that intervention time had quietly become the place where everything was supposed to happen.
When I looked closely, the pattern was clear. When WINN felt overwhelming, the lesson was trying to address too many skills at once. When WINN worked, the instruction was intentionally narrow, explicit, and calm.
That observation has held true across every context I’ve coached in. Faith-based classrooms. Charter schools. Traditional public schools. The setting changes, but the instructional moves that work do not.
The strongest intervention lessons shared a few consistent characteristics. Teachers grouped students using fresh data, not assumptions. They focused on one skill, maybe two, rather than a long list of needs. They modeled the thinking explicitly instead of hoping students would “figure it out.” And the work itself felt simple, safe, and achievable — which meant students were actually willing to engage.
Over time, I realized I kept coaching toward the same core idea: intervention doesn’t improve when we add more structures. It improves when we get clearer about instruction.
That clarity is what I now refer to as F.O.C.U.S ( in my next blog where I unpack F.O.C.U.S for you!) — not as another initiative or program, but as a way to protect instructional time and teacher capacity. When teachers find the need using current data, limit the instructional target, model intentionally, keep learning simple and secure, and release responsibility gradually, intervention starts to work the way it was intended to.
This matters for school leaders.
WINN and MTSS are not scheduling problems. They are not compliance issues. They are instructional design challenges. And when those challenges are addressed with clarity instead of complexity, we see increased student confidence, stronger responses, and teachers who finally feel that intervention is manageable rather than exhausting.
I’m sharing this now because after four years immersed in MTSS coaching and classroom-based work, I believe this message is worth contributing to the broader educational community. It’s grounded in practice, not theory — and it’s consistent across systems.
I’ll also be submitting this piece elsewhere and will share those details at a later date. For now, I’m putting it here in the hope that it resonates with school leaders who are asking the same questions I keep hearing in classrooms.
Clear targets.Simple instruction.Purposeful teaching.
That’s when intervention actually works.
Helpful links:
Happy Reading,
Jackie Frangis
Elevate Educators Founder and Facilitator
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