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 9th and 10th 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.
