You watch your educators hustling at the end of the school day to create sub plans and make copies for tomorrow. You have asked your teachers to leave their classrooms in the hands of an unknown substitute to attend professional development for a new district initiative. Fast forward a few years or even months and you can’t remember what the initiative was, what the expectations were for you as an administrator or your educators, or even how to get ahold of the resources shared. Have you been there? This experience occurs far too often in education as we continue to search for the silver bullet, the initiative to end all initiatives.
So much time, money, physical, and emotional investment can be saved by planning for sustainability with your professional development implementation. Fortunately, MTSS itself holds the key — it’s a framework to support all learners. What if we applied that way of thinking to our adult learners as well?
Just as a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) systematically provides universal, targeted and intensive instruction for students depending on their needs, providing systematic MTSS learning for educators depending on their needs will have an exponential impact on your MTSS efforts over time.
Hooray! You've already laid the groundwork for MTSS success by establishing a clear vision for the work in collaboration with your colleagues. The initial hurdle of getting systems off the ground and providing basic training for staff members on board has been completed. But now, as you move toward full implementation and continuous growth, you're stepping into the big leagues.
As the end of the fiscal year approaches, schools must exhaust allocated funds, whether from local, state, or federal sources. One approach is to view these funds as opportunities for one-time investments that will yield ongoing returns for students.
Here are some practical ways to invest remaining funds for long-term benefits:
How do you get the most impact out of your MTSS efforts? Impact and effort are often competing realities, so it can be a challenge to know how to strategically approach the work. An Impact-Effort Map is a tool you can use to visualize and prioritize tasks when launching your MTSS practice or with any initiative. It's a two-dimensional matrix where impact is plotted against effort in order to identify which tasks should be done now, done later, or delegated.
Just as a pilot uses their dashboard, a farmer measures rainwater, or a nurse checks vitals, data in MTSS is a tool meant to be used for more than determining final success or failure. Data is a helpful guide in real time. Progress monitoring data provides educators with the insight they need to adjust course throughout the year and make the best use of their valuable time and resources to support students. And, school leaders play a crucial role in guiding staff with data analysis.
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.
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."
Principals, YOU are the most essential component in successfully implementing any initiative. At the same time, building a collaborative team of teacher-leaders is the key to long-term success. Just as a structural engineer collaborates with architects to build a strong foundation for a home, principals need to build a coalition of teachers to design and implement an effective Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) to meet the needs of all students.