RTI Blog

As a young professor, I remember attending a conference session in which a speaker talked about conducting research and working with staff and children in a local preschool program, and I immediately thought two things. My first thought was “Wow, I want to do that,” and my second thought was “How do you get to do that? How do you make that happen?” I asked the presenter how he made it happen and he said “Visit programs, meet program staff, and just ask.” Happily, I did that and I have had many opportunities to work with children and staff in early intervention and preschool programs. My most recent collaboration has been with Prairie Children Preschool (PCP) in the Indian Prairie School District # 204 in Aurora, Illinois.

Once we finished PSSA testing in the spring, our main goal was to try and keep the momentum going into the remainder of the school year and beyond.  Our RtI model was gaining support beyond our school.  The sixth grade math program that we created was up and running.  All of the social studies teachers were getting trained in Restorative Practices.  Our plan was working almost too efficiently.  As the principal, one of my major concerns was that we would begin to lose our key people to other schools.  While I recognized that being a leader means creating others to follow in our footsteps, I was worried that a loss of a key player would mean a major setback for our program.

Before my involvement in the Response to Intervention (RtI) process, I never really realized the importance of implementing a research-based program or curriculum to replication fidelity. As a principal in a school, I felt that as long as our school held to the general premise of a particular research-based practice, we would probably get the desired outcomes we were looking for as we used the research in our school. As I reflect back on my 20+ years as a principal, I think of all of the research-based programs that came and went. Teachers in schools would call these programs “jumping on the bandwagon” or the next district “flash in the pan.” Initiatives came and went over my career, with very few having any staying power because we weren’t able to achieve our desired results.

I am a teacher in an inclusive early childhood classroom at Prairie Children Preschool in Indian Prairie School District # 204 in Aurora, IL.  I teach morning and afternoon sections of preschoolers; each class is composed of approximately 10 children who are considered to be “typically developing” peers.  Nine students are tuition-paying children from our community and 1 is an at-risk student whose experience is paid for by the state of Illinois Pre-K “at-risk” grant. Additionally, children with disabilities are added to the class so that there may be up to 16 children in each section.  Three years ago, the early childhood program made a shift in the programming for students who are “at-risk” of developing learning difficulties and those with identified disabilities.   Initially attending the preschool program 4 days per week in an inclusive setting, these two groups of students started to attend the fifth day (Friday) for a half-day session without their community peers.  Two other inclusive classroom teachers and I, along with our speech pathologist, decided to use this unique situation to provide our neediest students with some specific and focused tiered instruction that would incorporate opportunities for vocabulary development as well as target skill development in the areas of language, math, and fine motor.

In a previous blog post, I shared our continued need to focus on strengthening our progress monitoring review process. This blog is intended to illustrate how our structures and “story script” are used to keep a team focused and provide a common language to problem solve with data.  I’d like to introduce you to Jamari.