Schoolin' Around

By Schoolin' Around by Branching MindsBusiness Education Non-Profit

Schoolin' Around episodes

January 10, 2023 50 Years of Leadership in RTI/MTSS: A Conversation w/ Dr. Alan Coulter & Dr. Eva Dundas
Since the purpose of this podcast is to bring you conversations with practitioners and experts from the field, to discuss the challenges of supporting students and schools, we had to share a special episode featuring Dr. Alan Coulter and Dr. Eva Dundas. In this episode, originally recorded for our 2022 MTSS Summit, Dr. Eva Dundas, Branching Minds Chief Product Officer, sat down with Dr. Coulter to discuss his experience leading RTI/MTSS as an educator, psychologist, and consultant over the past 50 years.
Dr. Coulter is a licensed psychologist and organizational development consultant (Directions & Resources Group), providing technical assistance, professional learning, and executive coaching in school improvement. For more than 52 years, Alan has been an educator involved in school improvement at the local, state, and national levels. Currently, he provides technical assistance in support of a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) and improvement of results in special education using principles of improvement science and implementation science to states and local schools. He is keenly interested and involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of efforts to improve results.
Dr. Coulter is also a Research Associate at the Center for Applied Research & Educational Improvement (CAREI) collaborating with colleagues in program evaluation of Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), Response to Intervention (RtI), and special education programs. For CAREI, Alan also currently serves on the Intensive Support Team of the Wisconsin Minnesota Comprehensive Center. Alan is a consultant to Com-Link, a firm providing intensive technical assistance to the Michigan Department of Education, Office of Special Education on accountability and improvement of results.
Sign up here for the follow-up Q/A webinar with Dr. Coulter on Jan. 19th! (https://bit.ly/3ID1WLQ)
Learn more about MTSS and Branching Minds by visiting our website Branchingminds.com, or follow and connect with us on Twitter or Facebook @BranchingMinds. Sign up for our newsletter: https://hubs.la/Q02g9lwV0
50 min
December 27, 2022 MTSS Requires Shifting Mindsets with Tiffany Studivant
We are excited to share our conversation with Tiffany Studivant, who is in her 11th year with Clark County School District in Athens, Georgia. Her energy and enthusiasm for her work are contagious.
Tiffany has extensive experience in supporting students and families at the school level as well as supporting building leaders at the district -level. After nine years as an elementary Special Education Teacher and Team leader, Tiffany joined the district’s support staff in her current role. She currently serves as a District MTSS Implementation Specialist, coaching and guiding 14 building-level Elementary MTSS coordinators with the overall implementation of the MTSS framework.
Quotes:
"It's a team approach, it takes building off others' knowledge and learning from each other to figure out the needs of students."
"Shifting that mindset, no, it's not RTI, it's a component of MTSS. Yes, we will intervene as needed. But our goal is getting kids back to tier 1, exhausting everything in Tier 1 before we have these conversations, looking at all the data, the whole child."
Learn more about MTSS and Branching Minds by visiting our website Branchingminds.com, or follow and connect with us on Twitter or Facebook @BranchingMinds. Sign up for our newsletter: https://hubs.la/Q02g9lwV0
34 min
December 27, 2022 MTSS Is Finding the Right Intervention with Jenna Blank
For our final episode of the “Voices from the Field” series, we chatted with Jenna Blank, an educator at Livonia Elementary School in the small, rural community of Livonia in Western New York.
Jenna has been an educator for 14 years and three years ago took on a new position of coordinating the RTI/MTSS process for her school and loves being about to work closely with teachers and families in support of students. Previously she had been a classroom teacher and reading specialist. She continues to teach PreK in the mornings and loves the ability to focus on early foundational skills with her little ones!
Quotes:
"The pandemic highlighted how important to have parents involved in your MTSS process. They have so much valuable information that might often be overlooked. They are the other half of their child's life. They bring such valuable knowledge and insight."
"It can't be underestimated the power of a strong Tier 1 curriculum, accessibility to research-based Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions, and a platform to organize and track your data. If you don't have a strong Tier 1, you're trying to remedy something in Tier 2 and Tier 3 that can't be remedied"
Learn more about MTSS and Branching Minds by visiting our website Branchingminds.com, or follow and connect with us on Twitter or Facebook @BranchingMinds. Sign up for our newsletter: https://hubs.la/Q02g9lwV0
26 min
December 13, 2022 The Power of MTSS as a Collaborative Problem-Solving Process with Dr. Lydia Williams
For our third installment of “Voices from the Field,” we have the opportunity to hear from another excellent educator, Dr. Lydia Williams, from Long Island, New York.
Dr. Williams is an educational leader, administrator, and scholar with over 17 years of experience in elementary education. Her prior roles as a classroom teacher, academic intervention specialist, and International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme coordinator have all converged to influence her current work as an MTSS coordinator for the district of North Bellmore in Long Island, New York. In our conversation, we discuss how a Multi-Tiered System of Supports helps provide students with what they need to thrive.
Quotes:
"For me, it's about finding that confidence in ourselves and our expertise and asking questions and seeking the knowledge. It's about creating opportunities for collaboration because it is so powerful what we can do when we come together."
"It's really about using the information to be preventative, so we don't have to end up classifying so many of our students and that we can get them the supports and recognize their needs."
"(MTSS) It's a problem-solving process, and it's collaborative.”
Learn more about MTSS and Branching Minds by visiting our website Branchingminds.com, or follow and connect with us on Twitter or Facebook @BranchingMinds. Sign up for our newsletter: https://hubs.la/Q02g9lwV0
38 min
November 29, 2022 “MTSS Is More Than Just an Intervention” With Trisha Senne
Continuing our series highlighting “Voices from the Field,” we chatted with another superb educator, Trisha Senne, from Elk Grove Village, Illinois.
Trisha started her career as a special education teacher, then transitioned to be a behavior and learning consultant for the district before landing her current role as the coordinator of assessment & MTSS in the Community Consolidated School District 59. In this episode, we talk about how data collection can impact how a school helps students feel like they belong and how schools and communities can be transformed when there is a solid system or framework in place.
Quotes:
“The new “Aha” was really seeing how beyond intervention MTSS is, and how impactful your preventative and proactive approaches at your core really need to be.”
“MTSS is the impact that we have as a system, all the things that we do on a day to day basis, on behalf of students, of course, the assessment, intervention, but its also having a reliable core approach, relationships with families, its communication, all the things that happen from the littlest thing all the way to the biggest.”
Learn more about MTSS and Branching Minds by visiting our website Branchingminds.com, or follow and connect with us on Twitter or Facebook @BranchingMinds. Sign up for our newsletter: https://hubs.la/Q02g9lwV0
27 min
November 15, 2022 Episode 1: MTSS, Providing What Students Need - A Conversation With Donna Cross
To kick off our podcast, we are featuring a few remarkable educators in a series called “Voices from the Field.” These are education rockstars, leaders in their school communities, and serving to support students and teachers.
Today, we begin our podcast with Donna Cross, the Director of MTSS and SEL in Evanston Skokie School District 65 in Illinois. We talk about how MTSS or a Multi-Tiered System of Supports can provide students with what they need when they need it. She also shares how her journey began with her childhood experiences and shaped her approach to supporting students.
Quotes:
“MTSS is equity with its workboots on, giving kids what they need when they need it, and how they need it.”- Donna Cross
“You do get burnt out, and you do get exhausted because you are trying to figure it out on your own. When you are a part of a system and structure that is supporting that work, and doing it in a collectivist manner, you aren’t in this by yourself, you have that teacher efficacy.”- Donna Cross
Learn more about MTSS and Branching Minds by visiting our Branching Minds Website, or sign up for our weekly Newsletter on all things MTSS. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn @BranchingMinds.
Send feedback or inquiries to [email protected]!
43 min
November 08, 2022 Trailer For Schoolin' Around
Don't miss out on our upcoming podcast!
Schoolin' Around is a bi-weekly podcast hosted by Branching Minds, featuring prominent leaders, subject-matter experts, and thought innovators with their perspectives on the current challenges facing K-12 education.
2 min

About Schoolin' Around

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Schoolin' Around is a weekly podcast hosted by Branching Minds, featuring prominent leaders, subject-matter experts, and thought innovators with their perspectives on the current challenges facing K-12 education.