This week, Kudos go out to Patty Barrientos, who is serving as our substitute Secretary 1. For the past couple of weeks, she has filled in so admirably and will continue to do so until we are able to fill that position. Kudos also go out to all our Pupil Supervisors, Jacob Salinas, Iris Mena, Adrianna Ramirez, Jacqueline Virgen, and substitute Crystal Castro, for the great job they are doing out on the playground and inside the cafeteria. Finally, Kudos go out to our RSP teacher, Catalina Arroyo, our counselor, Malena Schoch, and our Family-Student Support Liaison, Xenia Centeno, for all the “above-and-beyond” work they have been doing lately with a few of our students who require extra help to make it through the day.

On Tuesday the December 6th through Thursday December 8th, a team of four teachers and the Instructional Leader from Rose Ferrero attended Solution Tree’s RTI at Work Institute in Pasadena, CA. This was to refresh our understanding that a highly effective multitiered system of supports (MTSS) requires educators to work collaboratively and take collective responsibility for every student’s success. RTI at Work builds upon the power of the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) at Work process to create the learning-focused culture and collaborative structures needed to ensure all students receive the time and support they need to learn at high levels. RTI’s underlying premise is that schools should not delay providing help for struggling students until they fall far enough behind to qualify for special education, but instead should provide timely, targeted, systematic interventions to all students who demonstrate the need.

RTI at Work is the highly effective way to implement MTSS and is research-affirmed, results-oriented, and proven to accelerate learning and close achievement gaps. The key difference is that the RTI at Work approach is purposely built upon the PLC at Work process. The essential characteristics of the PLC at Work process are perfectly aligned with the fundamental elements of RTI. PLCs and RTI are complementary processes, built on a proven research base of best practices and designed to produce the same outcome—high levels of student learning. PLCs create the foundation required to build a highly effective system of interventions.

RTI at Work, specifically, with its split-pyramid design, was developed to ensure that academics and behavior are addressed and featured in a systemwide support process for students. RTI at Work professional development ensures educators are provided the guidance necessary for ensuring time and other resources are efficiently and effectively allocated for academic and behavioral support.

In the PLC at Work process, four critical questions drive the school’s collaborative efforts to ensure student learning:

1. What knowledge, skills, and dispositions should every student acquire as a result of this unit, this course, or this grade level?

2. How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills?

3. How will we respond when some students do not learn the essential knowledge and skills the first time?

4. How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient?

In the RTI at Work approach, these four questions are used to guide the teaching and intervening of essential academic and social behaviors. Educators should view misbehavior as the absence of an academic or social behavior skill; misbehavior or organizational struggles are an educator’s cue to fill that gap by teaching the expected skills.

To this end, the staff should work collaboratively to:

·At Tier 1, identify the essential behaviors all students must learn and demonstrate for future success

·At Tier 2, provide time and support to students who need additional help mastering essential behaviors

·At Tier 3, target intensive support for students who demonstrate severe behavior needs

Finally, the RTI at Work process delineates how to allocate staff best to guide academic and behavior interventions. This is critical, considering most schools have extremely limited resources.

Far too many students needing “remediation” have failed to close their achievement gaps because they miss grade-level essential curriculum to receive Tier 3 support. The RTI at Work approach was purposefully designed to address this problem, beginning with defining Tier 1 as “all students having access to the grade-level essential curriculum.” Additionally, we advocate that students are not “moved from tier to tier”; instead, additional tiers of support are “value-added.” This means that any student who needs intensive remediation (Tier 3) on essential skills from previous years must receive this support:

·In addition to access to the current grade-level essential curriculum (Tier 1) AND

·In addition to additional time and support to master grade-level essential curriculum (Tier 2)

As we were told (many times) at the conference, the RTI at Work process works to change an outdated educational system that was NOT designed for all students to learn at high levels.

Every month the Central Coast Federal Credit Union, KION 46, and Telemundo 23 invites the public to nominate a deserving Monterey County school teacher for a Classroom Makeover award. This helps recognize the valuable work of our community teachers, who struggle to do more with fewer resources, especially when it comes to needed classroom supplies that they desperately need for their students.

Thus, once a month during the school year, a committee reviews the nominations and selects one teacher to receive that month’s Classroom Makeover award. And this month it was one of Rose Ferrero’s finest teachers, Kindergarten teacher, Delia Sanchez!!!

The Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development found, on average, elementary school teachers spend $500 annually on classroom supplies out of their own pockets. The Classroom Makeover Award goal is to help teachers teach by giving them access to needed supplies. Congratulations, Delia!!! We know that you will put the money to good use, and thanks for all you do for the students in your classroom.

To all our staff, have the most restful, yet joyous, holiday season possible (as you definitely deserve it!)