Forming A “Magical Implementation Team:” A SSWN Forum On How To Implement Changes At Tier One
My name is Krista Sodt and I am a school social worker at a PK-4 elementary school near Seattle. I am in my 3rd year working in this position. I am also in my final year of the School Mental Health Advanced Practice Program (SMHAPP) certificate at Loyola. Through that program I have reflected on, and continued to refine my practice. I have evaluated our current programming through an evidence-informed lens, and identified opportunities for improvement.
I would like to share with you one effort that I am leading, to transform Tier One behavioral support in my building. First, I’ll share where I began. I inherited a functioning Tier One program that we call “Positive Paws” (we’re the Bulldogs). We do a good job of teaching school rules: Be Reasonable, Be Respectful, Be Responsible. When teachers or other staff members see a student following the rules they can give them a “positive paw” to celebrate, which we hang on the wall. When the number of collected Paws reaches the end of the wall, we have a whole school party.
After this picture was taken, the whole school had popsicles (donated by a local grocery store) and a dance party. Celebrations are typically earned 2-3 times per year.
Our small team decided to introduce fun and play into the meetings themselves. Instead of using Google calendar to schedule meetings, staff and community were invited by scroll, and returned personal butterflies to RSVP to meetings. We named our Tier One Behavioral Support team, the Magical Implementation Team, or MIT.
As part of my work with Loyola, I was introduced to the SWPBIS Tiered Fidelity Inventory and I used it to evaluate our current Tier One program’s fit with best practices.
Though we were doing many things well, overall the program was missing or underdeveloped in many key areas. Notably a team approach to implementation and support that included faculty and families) as well as any data collection or data based decision making to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. With the support of my Loyola cohort, and a strong foundation in project implementation from the program, I decided that I could be a change leader in my building, and take on the task of updating and implementing a new Tier One program for my school.
Our Next Steps & How Our “Magical Implementation Team” Came Together
I’m excited to share with you the next steps that I took in my project work!
My first goal was to get leadership buy-in. I approached my principal and shared with him the results of the Tiered Fidelity Inventory, and opened a discussion about making some changes. Specifically, I asked if we could add a team to work on Tier one behavioral programming, and add data collection to our planning and reflecting. I also proposed a new system for reinforcing positive behavior and adding a bit of play to our student’s day. My administrator was impressed with my preparation and was a strong supporter for my next steps. I am grateful to work with an administrator who strongly believes that supporting students involves trying new approaches and taking some chances. Preparation and good data support an administrator in being able to trust that a risk is worth taking, too.
My next step was to identify the end users of a Tier One behavior program (students, staff and community members) and to identify their needs. In order to do this, I made a presentation to my staff about my idea. Staff members had a chance to share any concerns about a new program, which were recorded and discussed. Several team members were excited about a new system and asked to join the effort. We identified stakeholders, and recorded our thoughts about the needs of each group.
With support from a small team of faculty, we developed the key components of the program. We will be launching a “House of Blakely” system, where children will be sorted into a multi-age community with shared goals, and an opportunity to earn ‘points’ toward a collective reward. We know that student emotional engagement predicts reading growth and our district improvement plan is asking schools to increase a feeling of connection between students and caring adults at the school. We are currently taking data from students on their sense of connection to caring adults in the building. We will have this as baseline data as we move forward with our program.
Our small team decided to introduce fun and play into the meetings themselves. Instead of using Google calendar to schedule meetings, staff and community were invited by scroll, and returned personal butterflies to RSVP to meetings. We named our Tier One Behavioral Support team, the Magical Implementation Team, or MIT.
Our MIT team is using a shared google Spreadsheet to drive the implementation of the project. From our Loyola SMHAPP coursework, I know that implementation of a new program takes at least 3-5 years, so we have made the focus of our work the first steps that we can take to ‘prototype’ and simplify our rollout, knowing that we will build on the program over time. With each step, we are looking back to what is known about strong Tier One behavioral intervention and actively matching the program to this knowledge base. We are also embedding Washington State’s new Social and Emotional learning benchmarks into our programming.
Moving Forward With Implementation: Our School’s Next Steps
As we meet, we are developing our program for a roll out in the fall of 2020. Our program will allow us to prevent behavioral issues, teach expected behaviors to all students and recognize the positive behaviors that we would like to increase. All the while we will be increasing student engagement, fostering community and building an opportunity for our older students to connect with and mentor our younger ones. I’m excited to share more about this project as it goes forward.
Editor’s Note: all of our current Loyola School Mental Health Advanced Practice Program (SMHAPP) students are “hosting” a week on our site, sharing information about their SMHAPP project work and responding to critical issues impacting K-12 schools and school mental health practice. We’ ve had some awesome resources and practice wisdom shared already from our SMHAPP students, and we’re keeping it going this week with another crucial topic–how to implement school-wide Tier 1 interventions effectively in an elementary school context.
As we move into this first week of March (and School Social Work Week), I’m proud to welcome Krista Sodt, a member of the 3rd Loyola SMHAPP cohort, who will be leading discussion and sharing resources on her topic. Just as we’ve done before, Krista will help us end the week over at SSWNetwork with a LiveChat March 7th from 9 a.m.-10 a.m. central time where we’ll come together to discuss what we learned over the past week. Hope to see you then–rsvp over at SSWNetwork and join here if you haven’t already (it’s always 100% free to join, and we now have over 2,300 of us there supporting each other).
The Loyola SMHAPP Certificate is a 99% online, 2-year, 15-credit program that offers all school-employed clinicians the chance to join a dynamic professional learning community and to take their practice to the next level. Click here for more info and contact Dr. Kelly, SMHAPP Director at [email protected] if you have questions. Applications for our 5th Fall Cohort are due on or before August 1st, 2020.
