Field Experience #3

Mrs. Smathers-West talked to me about one of her students who was diagnosed with ADHD but no longer on medication and I witnessed her discipline him multiple times during class.  She used high-p requests to get the student reengaged by having him handout worksheets.  Mr. Moore, the School Transformation Facilitator came in to visit Mrs. Smathers-West and I interviewed him. 

Mr. Moore is a clinical child psychologist and as the School Transformation Facilitator through Johns Hopkins University and he monitors attendance, behavior, and course performance for the 9^th and 10^th grades.  He has weekly meeting with core teachers.  When a student is identified as having an academic, behavioral or truancy issue there is a conference with the parents and teachers.  Some solutions that are applied are: daily progress reports, contracts, a check-in/check-out system (for truancy), home visits, outside community partners, and referrals to counseling or other services.  Mr. Moore stressed that immediate action is always taken as the focus is on prevention over intervention.  He stated that RTI has been the sole identifier for the need for intervention for quite a while.  His position is under the umbrella of a program called Diplomas Now which follows a 3-tiered model; the first tier (top) is the School Transformation Facilitator, the second is City Year who provides targeted student support (mentoring, tutoring), and the third tier is the school community which is a one on one approach.  Mr. Moore informed me that Diplomas Now is the only program in the nation with empirical data.  The interview was very insightful and gave me a window into a real RTI program in action.  Before the idea seemed very abstract as I only know of it through the IRIS module.