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Bringing It All Together

We have a lot of things in life that compete for our attention. The same is true in schools. Compliance pieces, curriculum, community engagement; they are all good things, however if we aren’t careful, we can leave the school day feeling like we’ve entered a tailspin. By the end of the day, we may be exhausting ourselves trying to meet all of these separate demands.

Is there a better way to accomplish our goals and to feel and be effective and strengthened?

What if we can organize our systems to bring congruence to the work organized under a vision of a dream for what all students can accomplish and be for their lives?

We can! It’s called MTSS.

MTSS stands for Muti-Tiered System of Supports. Using MTSS, we can organize our system(s) in a way that is meaningful. Like the old adage, work smarter not harder. You might be feeling like “I was — ok, I am working hard now, show me how to work smart!”

We all have a destination we want to arrive to or achieve in education. We all want to make a difference. To be a voice to the voiceless, to advocate for others. For many of us, that is why we become educators.

Working Smarter, Not Harder

It starts by doing an inventory of the initiatives in your system.

• How many initiatives are competing for our attention?
• Are some of them trying to serve the same purpose?
• Do you have really smart people, doing the same work, in separate efforts?

If so, those are signs that a framework to organize the work may be important.

We want everyone to lead and to utilize their talents, strengths, and abilities to achieve a bigger picture for our schools. It’s like each member has a piece of the puzzle that will make up a bigger scene of a successful schools.

Where do you start?

Do an initiative inventory. List all the things going on in your system/school/district, then ask yourself about the purpose of each one.

• What is the “why” behind each initiative?
• Can any initiative be combined?
• What if they all fell under major buckets that can be aligned with the right people who can achieve goals to get you there?

That is what MTSS is all about.

MTSS is not a separate “thing”. It’s a vehicle to take you to your destination.

First step, where are you going? What are you dreaming about?

Next step, what do you currently have going? Is it moving you towards your destination? What do you need in your vehicle to get you to your destination? What is the purpose and why?

Taking inventory of your dreams and the ways to get there is the first step. We will unpack the components of MTSS in a later post.

In 2022, North Central ESD’s past MTSS Specialist, Stephanie Andler, shared her knowledge on all things Multi-Tiered System of Supports and how regional school districts can implement the strategies in this blog series.