#95: Streamlining MTSS: Effective Strategies for Supporting Struggling Students

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Systems are really important.
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We hear a lot about them in business and education, but what exactly do we mean by the MTSS system?
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That's what we're going to talk about today.
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Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling Learners.
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I'm a boy mom and a veteran teacher.
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You're listening to the Reaching Struggling Learners podcast, where we talk all about helping students succeed academically, socially and behaviorally.
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Thank you so much for tuning in.
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Thank you so much for tuning in.
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System is really just a fancy word for the process or the steps that we take to do something.
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We use systems all the time in teaching, in our classrooms, in our offices.
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For example, there is a system to adding or subtracting fractions with like or unlike denominators.
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There's a system that you use every day to sign in at work, check your mailbox, go to your classroom, check your emails, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah Just about everything that we do.
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We have a system for A lot of the systems that we have.
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We just kind of naturally do.
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We don't have them written down.
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Another example of a system could be, honestly, just the habits that we have.
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When you walk in a room and it's dark, you turn on the light.
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That's your system for fixing that it's too dark in the room.
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Mtss is just another system, but it's an overarching system or process the steps that we take to identify and help the students who are struggling in our schools.
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It incorporates a lot of smaller systems in it so that we can get the kids the very specific help that they need.
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Now we'll talk about the specific processes over the next few weeks, but when we're looking at MTSS as a system in general the real way we look at it is that there's three steps.
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We call them tiers, but there's three steps to the system of MTSS and we've talked about that in previous podcast episodes.
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But the first step that everyone in the school is at is tier one and that is everyone.
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That's the baseline curriculum that everyone in the school gets.
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If they're struggling with that, then we have some clues, some like red flags that come up that say, oh, we need to do a little bit more here.
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And even at tier one, still within that tier one, some of those flags could be oh, this child is struggling with reading, so we're going to put them in a differentiated reading group.
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Maybe they're struggling with some math in the classroom and so the teacher gives them extra math facts to do to practice their math fluency.
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That can all be at tier one, as long as everybody at that group, that tier the classroom level has access to it.
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Now if those the differentiation or the extra practice that's at that same level, isn't enough and the student is continuing to fall behind, we have flags that go up If the student fails a class or maybe is failing or performing poorly on a state assessment or our pre-mid-post, our formal assessments throughout the year, that could be a red flag that says, uh-oh, we really need to give extra, more specific practice.
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So the system of MTSS is everybody gets the baseline curriculum.
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If these flags are noted, then they go at this higher level, tier two, where the child would get a little bit more intensive practice on specific skills that they missed at the tier one level.
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Over a certain length of time we perform interventions, we collect data and then, based on that data that determines whether the child doesn't need tier two anymore, can, just, will do fine in tier one.
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Or maybe the data throws up some more red flags and says, uh-oh, we need more, this child needs more intensive than what they've been getting here at the tier two level.
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When the system noted notes, went through the meetings and all that, that the child is still struggling at tier two, that's when we get to tier three and it's even more intensive, individualized, focused help.
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Given more intensive, individualized, focused help.
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Of course it goes on from there.
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There's other red flags.
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For example, if they've been in tier three for an extended length of time, if they're not making the progress that the team believes should be possible, then you have other flags, for this starts the we need to look at maybe evaluations, flags for uh-oh, this starts the we need to look at maybe evaluations.
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Or maybe we need to look at sight testing, hearing testing, those kinds of things.
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So all along the way through those tiers, there are flags or things that start the process for something else, and within that, of course, there are different, smaller systems that we incorporate, but MTSS as a system is just the overarching.
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This is how we do things in a general way, and then there's smaller systems within MTSS that can get a little convoluted and a little crazy, honestly.
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But there are smaller systems within MTSS that can get a little convoluted and a little crazy, honestly.
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But there are smaller systems within that that help us to figure out should the student move on to Tier 3 or do they not need Tier 3 anymore?
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There's very individualized for school or districts ways to figure out where we need to go from there.
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It incorporates a series of formal meetings and, of course, there's a system to those meetings.
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You can have an agenda and you can have a.
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Maybe you do a school-wide data chat and that's how you figure out that these are the kids that we need to be working on.
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So you can see there's hundreds of smaller systems or steps, processes that we use to figure out how to review the school data, how to review classroom data and then, specifically, student data.
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Honestly, let's look at it.
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If we think about just one student, we don't just look at Susie Q and say, oh, your hair's nice today, we should put you at tier three.
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We don't do that.
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That would be ridiculous.
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We sit with the data and we look at it systematically.
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We look at the pre-med post information, we look at previous year's information on a specific test, we look at grades, we look at attendance, we look at behavior, we look at all of these different things and, let's be honest, we give a little bit more weight to some things over others, depending on what the concerns are for the student.
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But there really is, and there should be, a system to that Meaning there should be steps, specific steps that we know we're going to take to address the data, look at the data and figure out what are our next steps.
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If we're just taking a binder full of information and throwing it on the table and haphazardly looking at it and going, oh, I think the kid needs tier three, no, they really need special education, that's not helping the student.
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We do need to have steps that we take to figure out what is the best course of action for each student, and of course we also.
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Part of that is figuring out what interventions should the student have and what type of progress monitoring would be best for a child.
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For example, our students that are high anxiety, we probably shouldn't be doing a whole bunch of timed testing.
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That's not going to help them and it's probably not going to give us accurate information on what they actually know.
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We could do, you know, for students that have anxiety, we could do some other things to help them reduce their test anxiety.
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For time tests, there's lots of different things we can do.
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But when we're just starting out and the student we know has high anxiety for taking tests, we don't want to give them really crazy high intensity time tests.
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That would be ridiculous.
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It's not going to give us good data.
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But again, there are steps, systems that we can take to figure that kind of stuff out and a lot of it is just ingrained.
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When you're sitting with your teacher besties and you're figuring out what would work best for your child or your students or your classroom, everybody in their head has their own little system that they're going through check boxes, if you will.
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In their head they're going oh, that program would be good, it would take the right amount of time, it would hit the right skills for that goal, but it's all timed.
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I don't think that would be good for that anxiety, that student that has anxiety, next program Okay, and they go down the check boxes.
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It's the exact same thing.
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So over the years, taking all that into account, I've really come to develop a framework that encompasses the large processes and the smaller parts, because it can get overwhelming, convoluted, intimidating honestly, included, intimidating honestly to look at the whole system and try to break it down.
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And all that especially if you're an administrator or a teacher who's going into MTSS and you know you have to follow the process, you have to follow the systems, but there's just so much to it, there's so much breadth to it, and so I've, over the years, just kind of slowly developed my own framework that I use to help smooth out the process, make the smaller bites more manageable, and over the next coming months I'm going to be sharing some of that with you, just because I feel like obviously I developed this framework to make it easier on myself to understand and to follow the steps, so hopefully it'll also make it a little bit easier for you in your classroom or your school your teachers, however it is.
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If you have any questions, please feel free to message me.
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You can message me on Instagram or on Facebook at Teaching Struggling Learners.
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Also, my website is teachingstrugglinglearnerscom.
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I'm always there ready to answer questions and, yeah, over the next few months we're going to talk about the different systems that you could put in place, just basically the checkbox systems that you could put in place, just basically the checkboxes that you can put in place to help streamline your MTSS process, your system, so that it's more manageable, it's not taking as much time and, probably most importantly, it's actually creating impact for your students, because you can focus on getting the kids what they need instead of figuring out what the steps are that you need to take.
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So, until next time, may your coffee be strong, your students calm and your summer break fast approaching Bye.