Build your own great pyramid

Do you have a great pyramid at your school?

Photo by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

No-- not a great pyramid of Egypt.

The pyramid that will truly enhance and ensure student learning at your school-- a pyramid of intervention.

In schools that truly focus on learning, creating a pyramid takes a good school to great.

Many good schools today are employing educational research of having teachers work in collaborative teams to focus on one or more essential questions of Professional Learning Community work, whether they are aware of it or not.

The four essential questions, as identified by DuFour, DuFour and Eaker, focus on teachers working in collaborative teams to identify clearly what it is we want students to learn, how we know they are learning it, how we respond when they do not learn it, and how we respond to students who already know it.

The most difficult of these principles to implement is employing systemic intervention for students who are not learning what we are teaching.

Many schools and districts readily lead work on aligning curriculum that all students learn and developing common assessments.

But a pyramid of intervention is the one step that few schools or districts implement.  Typically students are either lucky or unlucky.  Some of them have teachers who analyze data, make instructional decisions based on the data, and employ re-teaching, re-testing, or other intervention strategies.  But some of them don't, and that means all students are not given the opportunity to learn what they have not yet learned  It means that in many rooms, and in many schools, time is the constant instead of learning.

With a school's development of a systemic pyramid of intervention, all students are given the opportunity to learn each of the intended essential learnings in a caring culture and climate of learning.  All teachers utilize intervention strategies, same-subject teams develop team intervention processes, and the school builds a systemic pyramid of intervention.

Our school developed and implemented a pyramid of intervention and it truly made the difference for each student's learning. The bottom of our pyramid was all of the effective school-wide strategies we employed to help every student in our building.  These included the implementation of effective educational research strategies by every teacher, including good instruction, effective feedback, the four questions of PLC work, our freshman transition program, new student program, counseling and scheduling personalization and other whole-school programs.

If a student became unsuccessful academically, behaviorally, or social-emotionally, he or she moved to the next level of support in the pyramid.  Just as collaboration is not invitational, neither is intervention.  The next stage of our pyramid paralleled our RTI process, with teachers, counselors, social works, administrators and other professionals responding to student learning needs.

Graphic by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

  

A student who was not learning became a learning emergency, with mandated responses by the school staff, including teachers, counselors, and administrators.  These responses also involved the parent and student, with mandated intervention for students struggling academically.  Teachers indicated which students needed extra time and support to learn, and students received Gold Cards mandating intervention.  Mandated intervention lasted 4.5 weeks as grades were monitored at interim and quarterly.  

If students no longer needed intervention, the mandated intervention ended.  If students were still unsuccessful, students continued to receive mandated intervention and may have continued to move up the pyramid.  The last tier of the pyramid was special education referral or highly intensive support. Other options along the way included online curriculum, reduced school day, and possible referral to our district's alternative school.  

Is your school focusing on curriculum mapping and alignment so that all students learn the intended standards and benchmarks?  Great.  Are teachers working in grade-level or same-subject teams to develop common assessments?  Terrific.

So be sure and take the next step.  Who is monitoring the learning?  And who is responding when a student is not learning?  By developing a pyramid of intervention, you are ensuring that each student learns and that the school responds systemically, consistently and purposefully.

Build your own great pyramid.  If the Egyptians could do it centuries ago, so can you.