Project #2 INTE 6999 Melissa Whyman! RTI Process and Form! ! !

I decided that I would use my knowledge from Leadership in Technology

Innovations to better my school environment. I saw a need for there to be a process and a form that can be used in all grade levels for our Response to Intervention. Therefore, I did research on what different school districts had implemented, and I used that information to create a document that would be reproducible in all grade levels so that our struggling students could be documented and monitored. !

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I work with students that have Learning Disabilities (LD) in Special Education. I

work at the middle school level. Every week we have Student Review Boards (SRB). The general education teachers, dean, assistant principal, counselor, LD teacher, and school psychologist are all present for these meetings. We discuss students that we are concerned about in regards to academics, mental health, behavior, or other factors that might need attention. At these meetings we discuss concerns and next steps for students as well as teachers. The general education teachers and other support staff are very confused about the Response to Intervention (RTI). They go from zero to Special Ed in two meetings. Our Special Education team has done 6 initial stafngs for Special Education eligibility this year alone on kids that were brought up at SRB meetings with concerns. Of those 6 students, only 1 student qualied for Special Education and that was a stretch. It is because of this lack of RTI process at my school that the Special Education team is being inundated with testing for students that dont qualify for Special Education. We are dealing with struggling learners that does have disabilities, they just have gaps in their learning. These gaps can be lled with intensive research based interventions. !

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I have been trained in intervention. With the right program/curriculum and

instruction most students can make growth and ll the gaps they have in learning. It is with this knowledge that I have from my Special Education background that I needed to devise a way to inform the staff about a process for helping our struggling learners. It

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was also detrimental that we had a reproducible form that could be accessed and used electronically in any grade level at the school. It would need to be user friendly and follow the RTI process in detail. First, I scoured our school database for any and all RTI data and research I could nd. I emailed people that worked in the district ofce and administrative ofce. I went to our staff professional development library and dug up information that was valuable for my research. When all was said and done I had a good foundation of information that I could then piece together for my staff. ! ! The weaknesses we had in our so called RTI process where: a need for progress monitoring, a need for intervention ideas, and a place to store data. I wanted to be able to explain my ndings in an easy to understand format, so I created a simple document that I stored on the staff share drive on our intranet at school. I also was able to go to SRBs and teach the people involved what I knew about the RTI process. This sparked some more discussion and we have a meeting set January 9th to form an RTI sub committee that will oversee the new and improved RTI process. ! ! I needed to create a form that could be stored on the staff share drive at school for all to be able to access. This was the tricky part for me. I didn't want to use google forms because I wanted to make sure we had a very safe and secure document. I was able to use the internet and youtube to teach myself the aspects of creating a form in Word. This form needed to be llable and have a feature to lock the document so as changes couldnt be made to differ the document from all the others that would be used. After watching instructional videos, I was able to add the developer tab to Word and begin creating forms. I learned that you can create tables and insert text boxes. Then you can lock the page so that only those with a pass code can enter and alter. All of this was a trial and error process. I had a sketch of what I wanted the documents to look like then I just needed to create them. !

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I had a few obstacles to face in this challenge of creating a process for RTI and a

document to be used to monitor the ndings/results of interventions. The hardest part was getting the staff to realize we had a problem. We had a lack of instruction for students and a push for them to be Special Ed without having any documentation or data to prove why we should assess them for a disability. Then, I had to determine all of

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the important aspects of the RTI process that my school had somehow lost along the way. Every school district seems to do things a little different. Even schools within my own district do RTI completely different. Sorting though all of the research to nd what I thought would be the best for our school situation was a challenge. !

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Once I presented the idea to the staff we had a hard time coming up with a

common time to meet. We had a meeting set for early December that got re-scheduled to a for days later which then needed to be pushed back all the way to January. Coordinating with 15 or so other staff members who are all very active in our school is quite a hurdle to over come. Fingers crossed our meeting in January will open a whole new drive for RTI in our school. !

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Finally, the hardest piece for me to learn was how to create the form. There are

so many different aspects of Word vs. Pages and Mac vs. PC. At school we use PCs and at home I use a Mac. Then I thought I could use a PDF but there is a service for that and I knew I needed to go free for our school budget. With a little trial and error, I was able to create a useful form that can be replicated for future use. !

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The summary of results in still in limbo. We have a good start to our new and

improved RTI process, but we are still evolving. I was able to bring some very important information to the table and that brought on a whole new slew of conversations and needs. The ndings were that people also realized we had a need and we needed a change. !

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I learned a lot from doing this project. I was able to learn that in the US there are

a thousand different ways to do RTI in a school. I learned that we need to make a change at my school and see how we can help students. Our motto is: Every student, Every minute, Every day. We lost sight of that and tried to push students needs off on others. I think we need to keep this discussion going and go back to helping every child achieve to the best of their abilities. I will keep forging ahead with our new sub committee and we will see what change we can make this year and in the future.!

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ATTACHMENTS: ! PDF RTI Info Sheet ! Sample RTI Form!

REFERENCES:! Almon, Nannette. Personal interview. 13 Nov. 2013.! National Center on Response to Intervention. (n.d.). National Center on Response to Intervention. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from http://www.rti4success.org! Response To Intervention " RTI Resources. (n.d.). Response to Intervention. Retrieved October 15, 2013, from http://www.interventioncentral.org! SRBI Academic and Behavior Interventions for ALL students. (n.d.). SRBI Process. Retrieved December 2, 2013, from http://www.guilford.k12.ct.us/SRBI %20Handbook%20-%20May%202010.pdf!