Prevention- Early Intervention Trauma Programming

42 MTSS Intervention Strategies for Your Student Support Team

Every student comes into the classroom with their own experiences and needs. As educators, we can support students by choosing intervention strategies designed to help them succeed. A strong Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) depends on individualized, research-based intervention strategies. Intervention plans must be relationship-informed as well as data-informed, building on what we know about our students and determining how best to support them. Check out these ideas for your student support team.

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6 Ways to Sustain SEL in Schools

Sustaining SEL efforts over the long term is crucial to allow children to adequately develop these skills. But that sustainability faces barriers in the form of staff turnover, limitations on resources, and competing for precious classroom time against other programs and initiatives. This article provides six key ways to support sustaining SEL PreK–12 efforts districtwide.

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CASEL’s SEL Framework

Learn more about CASEL’S framework, known to many as the “CASEL wheel,” that helps cultivate skills and environments that advance students’ learning and development. This framework creates a foundation for applying evidence-based SEL strategies to your school community.

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Connecting Schoolwide SEL with Other School-Based Frameworks

Some of the most common frameworks for organizing student supports are Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). Adopting schoolwide SEL does not mean that a school must abandon these existing frameworks. Rather, schoolwide SEL offers an opportunity to enhance or refine existing systems of support. This guide from CASEL defines Schoolwide SEL, MTSS, and PBIS, then describes how these frameworks can align with and complement one another.

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Supporting Mental Health in Schools

Concerning trends in rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicidality have brought the mental health of America’s youth to the forefront. While an estimated 1 in 6 children and adolescents meet the criteria for a
diagnosable mental health disorder, few receive needed treatment. Inequities and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) exacerbate risks. This report highlights Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems (CSMHS) in schools across the U.S. and the core features that make up a successful CSMHS.

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Building a Culture of Joyful Learning

Research shows that students who feel known and valued are more prepared to meaningfully engage in learning. Students who experience a sense of belonging have better self-esteem, higher rates of classroom participation, and higher academic achievement (Korpershoek, 2018). As a result of creating a positive school climate for both students and educators, the elementary school featured in this report had the conditions in place to make rapid academic gains. When educators implemented the instructional improvements described in this case study, student proficiency improved dramatically because children were in the right mindset for learning.

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Cultivating Relationships in Secondary Schools

The science of learning and development demonstrates the value of positive relationships for student success and well-being. This brief describes structures that secondary schools can integrate to cultivate conditions that enable healthy attachments to grow. Specifically, it highlights structures that can foster personal teacher–student relationships, including those that create small learning communities, promote safety and belonging, support culturally sustaining and relevant education, and foster student voice and agency. In addition, it describes structures that enable relationship-building between and among staff and families so that relationships can become more fully embedded into a school’s culture and fabric. School structures can create opportunities for relationships to develop, but those structures are only as powerful as the interactions within them.

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Branching Minds MTSS educational technology platform

Branching Minds is a K-12 educational technology platform that was designed to support schools in doing the work of MTSS and to make personalized learning sustainable for schools and teachers. This site has lots of data, resources and actionable insights on how to provide the necessary instruction to meet the unique learning needs, strengths, and challenges of each student. This platform streamlines the work of MTSS and provides guidance to personalize support for students so educators have more time and energy to do the inherently personal and personalized work of building positive student-teacher relationships.

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New Mexico Community Schools: Improving Student Opportunities and Outcomes

This brief from the Learning Policy Institute highlights lessons learned from New Mexico’s investment in community schools. Drawing on profiles of three sites that received state implementation grants, we find that community schools implementing the key practices at the center of New Mexico’s community schools framework are seeing improvement across a range of indicators, including growth in test scores, increased graduation rates, reduced chronic absence, increased student engagement and connectedness, improved school climate, greater access to mental and physical health care, and stronger family engagement. Key to achieving these outcomes were state investments to support hiring school coordinators and to provide professional development and technical assistance.

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