Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) often looks better on paper than it does in practice, says Jamie Haug, technology director for New York’s Pearl River School District. She finds that incorporating sports talk makes MTSS more relatable, allowing administrators to intervene more effectively.
Haug’s comfort with athletic metaphors comes from time spent with her father, a former NFL reporter. She now uses sports terminology to explain MTSS intervention strategies.
It’s an angle that resonates with many administrators, Haug explains.
“I’m talking about football with [a principal] at such a level that I’m connecting with him,” she says. “He started to understand the differentiated approach that happens in classrooms through tiered supports and how that happens in the sports world. The light bulb went on.”
The framework
The idea was sparked during a conversation between Haug and Nathan Farrell, account executive for Renaissance Learning and an NCAA men’s Division I basketball official. It requires leaders to adopt a coach’s mindset and think of students as a team.
Take this LinkedIn post from Farrell, where he describes the “next play” mentality to help students overcome mistakes and step toward growth.
You can’t change the mistake, the call, or the moment. But you can control what happens next. The faster you reset, the faster you learn, grow, and perform.
Mistakes should be used as data, he added. Over the last two years, Haug has been implementing a data dashboard called eduCLIMBER to assist in academic screening, intervention monitoring, MTSS planning and more.
Haug describes student data in the same way a coach would discuss a player’s stats.
For example, Tier 1 support is a “team” of students’ universal screener. Just as a coach evaluates team stats to identify trends, educators can analyze student data to reveal learning deficits.
Tier 2 moves into tailored coaching. If a football coach finds a few of his linemen struggling to block, the coach will pull them aside to run drills. Similarly, students struggling with phonetics can form small groups for specialized reading instruction.
Once a student is identified for Tier 3 support, educators should intervene one-on-one. “That’s traditionally how teams get better, especially as you go up the ranks,” Haug says.
This new framework has the potential to move the needle for Haug’s Pearl River district because it removes barriers for educators who struggled to understand their role in an MTSS intervention strategy, she adds.
“MTSS is difficult, and it’s not something that you can talk about from a holistic level all the time,” she says. “You could just say it means [a student] didn’t get it in the classroom, so now I’m going to pull them out of the classroom. But what does that mean? What are you doing differently in your coaching or teaching to make an impact at Tier 2 that puts them back in the bigger setting and sets them up for success?”
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