Earlier this week, I posted a Tweet that started an interesting conversation about interventions in middle and high schools.
Here it is. Go read through the thread:
There’s some truth there, right?
Middle and high schools DO often struggle with providing systemic interventions for students who struggle beyond academics.
Maybe that’s because we spend all of our time and energy focusing on helping students to master academic skills or their grade level curriculum. Maybe that’s because we know that reading and math will be tested year after year — and the scores that students make on end of grade exams will be used to evaluate our performance, both individually and as a school.
Maybe that’s because we can buy a computer program to address deficits in reading and math, but there’s no computer program to help kids with work completion or other academic behaviors. Maybe we are worried that interventions that target social behaviors or work habits might pull students away from classes that are graduation requirements.
But none of that is an excuse.
If we REALLY want to ensure high levels of learning for all students, we MUST provide tailored interventions that address the unique struggles of ALL students.
Sure, we still need academic interventions for students who haven’t yet mastered grade level standards. And we still need academic interventions for students who are struggling with the universal skills of learning — things like comprehending grade level text, understanding English (if you live in the United States), and applying number sense (Rogers, Smith, Buffum & Mattos, 2020)
But we ALSO need targeted interventions for students who struggle to demonstrate appropriate social behaviors (think: being respectful to authority, cooperating with peers) and academic behaviors (think: completing work on time, coming to class regularly, planning and organizing projects).
The mistake that make in too many middle and high schools is assigning every student with a low grade in a class to the same intervention period. Teachers assigned to cover these intervention periods end up overwhelmed by the number of students and the range of their individual needs.
The result: They turn intervention time into either a study hall (“Let’s use this time to get caught up on missing work!”) or they focus on academics because it is the work that they know best (Rogers, Smith, Buffum & Mattos, 2020).
Neither solution works, y’all.
Study hall time isn’t going to help a student who is struggling with a specific academic concept any more than an additional academic lesson will help a student whose struggles with social behaviors are preventing them from being active participants in class.
Now, I know what you are thinking — particularly if you are a classroom teacher: “Great, Bill. Now, I’m supposed to be a behavior and life coach, too?
And I get it.
I really do.
I’m a classroom teacher, after all.
In many schools, intervention periods ARE led mostly by classroom teachers. In fact, I led a professional development session in a building where the schoolwide intervention period was described as “planning time for the people beyond the classroom.”
#sheesh
High functioning schools, on the other hand, create a system of interventions instead of relying on individual classroom teachers to address all of the different reasons that students may struggle to succeed in school during the same intervention period.
That means EVERYONE in the school leans in and lends a hand, accepting responsibility for providing interventions in the area where they have the most professional training and skill. Classroom teachers are usually responsible for intervention around grade level essential standards. Special educators are often working with students who have not yet mastered universal skills like reading comprehension and basic numeracy.
School social workers and psychologists often plan targeted interventions for students struggling with attendance. Administrators and guidance counselors focus their intervention efforts on students who haven’t mastered the social behaviors necessary to succeed in school. Academic work behaviors can be handled by the core classroom teachers who have proven success with helping students to learn the skills necessary for getting work completed on time or staying organized.
Can you see what is happening here?
By thinking more broadly about the specific reasons that individual students are struggling and by asking the highly trained professionals throughout your building to accept responsibility for developing interventions in their area of expertise, you can ensure that your intervention period is helping ALL students — including those who struggle with social behaviors and work habits — to learn at the highest levels.
Does this make any sense?
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