Welcome to MTSS Monthlies - Issue 2

In our first issue, we shared the myths and truths about MTSS.

We shared the importance of building a culture of “collective teacher efficacy” where our motto is “all for one and one for all'.

In this issue, we want to share how you can begin to build a collective teacher efficacy culture that thrives and sustains itself.

One of the first things you may want to reflect upon is how effective are your teaching practices. Can these practices be replaced with more effective practices?

Are you working in silos where the talents, expertise, programs, and resources are not being shared with all?

MTSS is the umbrella where all programs fall under. Hence, why it’s called a multi-tiered system of support. From I&RS to BSI, Special Education, to English Language Learners, and Gifted and Talented, these programs, personnel and resources ought to be accessible to all educators, students, and parents.

How do you effectively achieve this?

Bring educators together to communicate, collaborate and share quality resources with all members of the school community. Make it a point to prioritize these efforts. Check out this video on how one school came together around this work Continuous Improvement A School Perspective .

Create an MTSS team to support the entire school community. Here are 7 steps to guide you through the process. Identify an MTSS leader who will work collaboratively with others to:

1. Explain the RTI process and protocol.

2. Acclimate RTI team by clarifying roles and responsibilities.

3. Instruct full staff on RTI process and procedures.

4. Develop schedule for and lead RTI meetings.

5. Identify meeting agenda, create norms, take notes and follow up on action items.

6. Select and refine data systems to guide the work of the MTSS teams

7. Use collaborative data analysis protocols such as the Plan, Do, Study, Act, protocol. Check out this website with a host of resources to guide you and your teams.

Continuous Improvement in Education: A Toolkit for Schools and Districts

In addition to creating an MTSS success team, ensure grade and content level teachers have weekly PLC (Professional Learning Community) meeting times to analyze student data, discuss and share best practices in order to help mitigate the issues from the student data and to build trust, open communication and collaboration.

Check out this video on Continuous Improvement- Collecting Data .

When replacing ineffective practices with more effective practices, take time to analyze the data, reflect upon the current practices, discuss more effective practices and plan actionable steps for implementation. For example, I have traveled to several schools and have seen beautiful posters hanging in classrooms reminding students to look for keywords when solving a math word problem. However, this is a very ineffective strategy for students to use to solve word problems. My good friend, Sarah Powell, just published a study where she analyzed math word problems on assessment and found that looking for keywords was effective about 50% of the time on a single step problem and much less effective on multi-step problems. Yikes, In this article, Karen Karp and colleagues explain why it is an ineffective strategy and share some more effective approaches.

In our next issue, we will share with you how to locate quality resources from quality sources for you, your teachers and the school community at large.