Leadership for Belonging: Building Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) that Foster Dignity and Belonging for Every Student

Dr. Ruthie Payno-Simmons:

Good morning, everyone. As you’re coming in, good morning. Good morning. Thank you for being here with us today. Good morning. We’ll give maybe about one minute and then, we’ll get going. Good morning, good morning. So good morning everybody and welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. I am so excited. I’m trying to keep myself calm. Thank you for joining us for the Leadership for Belonging: Building Multi-Tiered Systems of Support that Fosters Dignity and Belonging for Every Student. I’m Dr. Ruthie Payno-Simmons, the Region III Director at the Center for Education Equity at MAEC, and I’m so delighted to welcome you. I share those responsibilities with Dr. Daryl Williams, who also supports and leads Region I. Before we get started, could you please drop your name and your role and where you’re joining us from in the chat? We would love to see who is in the room and also where you’re coming from in the room and then, how you’re joining us today. And while you’re doing that, as you’re dropping your names and your roles into the chat, I’m going to go ahead and frame why we’re here today.

Many of us have spent years building and strengthening multi-tiered systems of support, and we really lean into this work. We know that it can have such a positive impact on changing our systems to create positive and predictable climates for students so that they can thrive. We always are thinking about the structures, the practices, the data, the interventions, and the supports necessary to ensure that students have what they need to be successful.

Today’s conversation invites us to consider the students’ experience. As we’re building those systems, what are students experiencing within them? Do students experience our schools as places where they’re known, where they’re valued, they’re seen, they’re heard, they’re respected, they’re co-developers, co-constructors? Do the systems that we have designed create conditions for our students to experience dignity and a genuine sense of belonging?

And what is the role of leadership in creating and sustaining those conditions? That is why we wanted to create a space for this conversation. And today is an opportunity to think about multi-tiered systems of support, not only as a framework that we implement or a set of practices, but, really, to examine what it means to lead systems in ways that fosters dignity and belonging for every student. We can move to the next slide, please.

Before we move into our learning, I wanted to briefly share who we are and the work that we do at the Center. MAEC has worked for more than 30 years in partnership with educators, families, schools, and communities to foster positive learning environments where every child has the opportunity to reach their full potential. And the work includes supporting educational communities to be responsive to students, families, and communities that they serve while working alongside. And one of the ways that we carry out that work is through our Center for Education Equity. If we could move to the next slide, please.

So we have a disclaimer slide and I need to read what’s on the slide. So I just ask that you read along with us. Today’s session is supported through the United States Department of Education’s Equity Assistance Center program, and the learning that you’re going to experience is developed by our center at MAEC as a part of our work supporting systems across Region III. So please read along as I read along, read out loud. Okay, so: “The contents of this professional learning session were developed under a grant from the United States Department of Education. The Department does not mandate or prescribe practices, models, or other activities described or discussed in this document. The contents of this professional learning session may contain examples of, adaptations of, and links to resources created and maintained by another public or private organization. The Department does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of this outside information.” But we do. We give a lot of attention and care to the work that we do. “The content of this professional learning session does not necessarily represent the policy of The Department. This publication is not intended to represent the views or policy of, or be an endorsement of any views expressed or materials provided by any federal agency or by any federal agency.”

Thank you all so much for sitting through that with us and listening to that.

So if we go to the next slide, just really quickly, the Center for Education Equity is a project of MAEC and it’s home to Regions I and III Equity Assistance Centers funded by the US Department of Education under Title IV of the 1960 … I always get this twisted. I always want to say 1964 first, but the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Through the Center, we provide technical assistance and professional learning and partnership with schools, districts, and state education agencies. And in Region III, we’re so fortunate to work with Dr. Kathleen King Thorius, the SWIFT Education Center, and WestEd as our partners. We can move to the next slide.

Together, our two Centers serve the states and territories that you see represented across Regions I and III. And looking at the chat as you all were sharing, we can see that many of you are joining us for some of these places. So we’re glad that you’re here with us today. We want to talk a little bit in the next slide about how we approach the work. There are three things that we like to lift about how we approach our work at the Center.

First, we focus on building internal capacity so that the work can be sustained within systems that we support. And second, we center relational trust. We think that is foundational and a critical part of the work. We think that meaningful change happens through relationships and it’s grounded in integrity and respect. And then third, we believe in partnering with communities, including families and school districts and state agencies rather than doing this work in isolation. And we believe that we build the capacity so that our clients can continue to do this work long beyond the support that we provide. And these commitments really help us to ground what we’re going to have in the conversations today when we think about leadership, dignity, and belonging. All right, we can go to the next slide. Thank you so much.

So you can see here that there are three of us team members that are doing the work, and I want to acknowledge my colleagues that are supporting the webinar, working behind the scene. They make this learning possible and the opportunities possible, and I’m fortunate to work alongside this group and the colleagues that I have. And so, you see here, of course, myself is there, but we have Mariana listed there and she is one of our Program & Content Specialists. And also, we have our Communications Director who both do so much work behind the scenes to make all of this possible. So I want to thank them and acknowledge them today for their leadership and care to detail and care for the work. All right, we can move to the next slide.

We just want to talk a little bit about the webinar etiquette, just a few things about our time together today. Please use the chat throughout the webinar to engage with one another and with the conversation. We are so blessed to have Dr. Nikole here with us today, and I know she’s going to really share a lot of knowledge. You’re absolutely welcome to ask questions as we go. Please place the questions in the Q&A box rather than using the raise hand function. And we’re going to hold questions until the end of the webinar and come back and then have a Q&A opportunity with Dr. Hollins-Sims. So don’t hesitate to ask those questions and we can go to the next slide.

This is my favorite part here because I get to introduce Dr. Hollins-Sims. I call her Dr. Nikole quite a bit, but Dr. Hollins-Sims. It is really my pleasure to introduce our facilitator for today’s conversation. Dr. Hollins-Sims is an internationally recognized speaker, facilitator, author, and educator, and she serves as Senior Educational Consultant and Strategist for Hollins-Sims Consultation. She’s also a Research Associate in the College of Education at University of Oregon and a partner to the National Center on PBIS. She is a Pennsylvania-certified School Psychologist and was named 2021 Pennsylvania School Psychologist of the Year. I’m not surprised. And she has also served in a number of important state and national roles, including as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Education at the Pennsylvania Department of Education and as a TA Coordinator for the Midwest PBIS Network. Dr. Hollins-Sims is the lead author of Creating Equitable Practices in PBIS and was a selected presenter at the 2024 MTSS Forum at the US Department of Education.

I want to say something personal before we move and hand things over to her. Because I also know her as a colleague and she’s a dear colleague and a friend and someone whose work that I really appreciate her work and her thinking. I value it very much because she has a way of bringing people together to have challenging conversations where their dignity is intact. So she definitely models what she’s going to be talking with us about today, and I’ve seen it across multiple contexts. So we began thinking about this topic and a conversation that we wanted to create around leadership for multi-tiered systems of support, dignity, and belonging,

Dr. Hollins-Sims immediately came to mind. She brings deep expertise to this work, but she also has a way of creating space for people to think, reflect, and challenge their own thinking. That is a part of what I appreciate about her and why I wanted her to lead this conversation with us. So Dr. Hollins-Sims, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your expertise with our community, and I’m going to turn things over to you. Thank you so much.

 

Dr. Nikole Hollins-Sims:

Thank you so much, Dr. Ruthie. And yeah, it’s always hard to follow up when you speak, so I’m always just honored to be in spaces with you, and I’m grateful that I’ve had this opportunity and that you trusted me with this opportunity to share with the group. So super excited. I’m looking at the chat, I’m looking at the number of participants, I’m seeing familiar names, and I know you’re smiling because I’m smiling seeing that you are here. So thank you for taking time out of your morning to be with me. It is an honor and a privilege to stand before you in a virtual space to talk about something that’s very near and dear to me, and that is dignity, belonging, and education. And so, I appreciate Dr. Payno-Simmons just giving and pouring into me as we start this time together.

I’m not going to belabor the welcome in terms of what you already heard about me on a professional side. But anyone who has attended any of my sessions knows that I like to talk about some of my personal stuff so that I can really connect with you and just maintain that humanity that we can share together. So I always like to acknowledge the people that mean the most to me in my life, and so I am a wife to Ron. Ron and I will be celebrating 10 years of marriage in November, and I always joke and say, “How many people in the room have been married 10 or more years?” If you want to hit up the chat and let me know, you can, and how many years, that would be fun. And so, I’m always encouraged to see those numbers and the longevity of those relationships. And so, I only hope and pray that that will happen for Ron and I, and I believe it will. I’m a mommy to CJ. CJ is my eight-year-old son who is currently in third grade, just started school about two or three weeks ago. And I don’t know about other moms in the audience or other parents in the audience, but when you have this opportunity to watch education through a young person, it is so amazing to witness. And so, I’m always just in love with education through his eyes and why I continue to do the work that I do because I want other students to experience education in a way that they feel safe, they feel happy, and they feel valued. I’m a puppy parent to Biscuit. Biscuit is our, I guess, five-year-old golden doodle, and he has made our house so fun, and definitely our house would not be the same without him. So if you are a doodle parent, you can also hit up the chat and let me know maybe the name of your puppy. I would love to know that. And last but not the least, I am a Disney fan. If you’ve heard me speak before, I try to embed Disney in some way when I have these opportunities. I don’t know that that will happen today, but you never know, so keep your eyes and ears open for that. All right, thank you all so much for just getting to know me a little bit better.

Now, let’s dive into the content. So here are the objectives of what I’d love to cover with you today. My hope is that as participants, you’ll be able to define the concepts of dignity and belonging in education. For many of you that I’m even seeing in this list of participants, many of you have understood what to do and make sure that these two concepts are present in everything that you do. However, I think it’s always important for us to recenter and just make sure, are we still on the right path? Are we understanding our role as leaders as we begin embedding and making sure these concepts live and breathe? So that’s the second objective is how do we describe the ways for intentional leadership practices to create conditions for honor, dignity, and true belonging? In a moment, you’ll hear me talk about how belonging has become sort of buzzy, a buzzword, and we want to go beyond the buzz. And in that beyond the buzz, we have to talk about what is true authentic belonging, and it can’t just be the slogan that we have, it has to be the action that matches that slogan. Lastly, because this is an MTSS concept production, my goal is really to focus on implementation. What does that mean? How does it look? What are the ways that we can enhance and embed it? And so, I want you to be thinking about your own current implementation of multi-tiered systems of support and how we can design them to better create those conditions for dignity and belonging to be accessible to every student. That’s the core. However, I say student with the understanding, and I’m going to preface it by saying everyone in that educational community, staff, family, community, all of us need access to belonging and dignity. How can we create it though for our students is where MTSS can be a very good vehicle for us to make that happen.

So attention pilots, all of you right now are putting on a pilot hat, and I say that because as leaders and as pilots of your system, you guide, you direct, you ensure those conditions are available for us to have a smooth ride, right? So I want you to put on that pilot hat, and I also want you to think about, do you have your manifest ready? Many of us get on airplanes all the time, and we may not know that the pilot has a manifest, meaning he or she knows everyone that’s on that plane, whether it’s the staff, the other people, the passengers, but also the people that are supporting the flight, making sure you have what you need, your flight attendants. Your manifest tells you all the people that you need to make sure this flight arrives and lands on time and safely. As a pilot, you do that every day in your leadership work. You have a manifest that tells you who you’re responsible for, what are the constructed pieces that you need to have to make sure that this system moves in a way, that there’s safety, that there’s dignity, that there’s belonging, that there’s mattering.

And so the way that I think about using your manifest as pilots is a framework that I like to call All Systems F.L.Y. And so I’m going to unpack each part of this in a way that I hope will connect with you as you consider this as an overlay or a way to assess your implementation of MTSS. So the first piece is F for foundation. We need to have that core structure in place for the framework to be livable, breathable and doable. So the foundation has to be solid. It has to create what I like to call the house. So the infrastructure of the house is your foundation. What you’ll notice next is L, which are the layers of support, layers for short for today, but layers of support. So that’s that tiered logic, knowing who needs what when and being able to address it in a way that is accessible and allows for a positive outcome. So with those layers of support, think back to the house. Foundationally, I have the infrastructure. Now, I need to build in the practices on each floor of the house. Let’s think about it in those three tiers, right? Floor one, floor two, floor three, same type of concept. Those layers of support are meaningful. But in addition to that tiered logic, how do we layer in, embed, and make sure our foundation is set with concepts like dignity and belonging for all? And then lastly, the Y is yield. So we have our foundation, we’ve added layers of support, and now the yield tells us, have we done what we said we would do? And are we seeing the outcomes, the yield, the growth, the strength of our system actually at work? So that’s what I want you to think about as we move through this. Put on your pilot hat and let’s get going.

So as we begin, I never take it for granted that everyone has the same understanding, the same definitions, the same approaches, but there are some key components that I’d like to level set for us as we go through the content for today. So what is our equity of understanding? My point in saying that is we all have those different approaches, definitions, et cetera. So when we think equitable, it doesn’t mean we all think the same way … I’m sorry, equal means we don’t all think the same way. We have to have equitable understanding. So how does this connect to you in a way that you can see it, appreciate it, and contextualize it? So what is MTSS? What is PBIS? Oh my! Right? “Lions, tigers, bears, oh my!” All of these acronyms that are out there. I want us to simplify it as much as possible while also understanding that they’re really important and they’re also very nuanced. Contextually, rural, suburban, urban, they have that similar infrastructure, but contextually, it may look, sound, and feel a little bit different. The other piece that I want you to think about is why are equitable educational frameworks necessary? It is all good to have a framework like MTSS. However, if it is not reaching all of our learners in a way that we can see positive outcomes, then we have to rethink what we’re doing. And so research has supported that the use of a tiered framework for behavior, and I’m going to stick with behavior for now, to improve school climate and reduce problem behaviors, there’s research that supports that, right? Even though that’s encouraging, there still remains students of varying backgrounds and you can fill in the blank on varying backgrounds. It can be boys, it can be race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, religion, spirituality, all of that can factor into a varying background. And what we know is that even though a tiered framework has utility, there’s decades upon decades of research that it works, there are still students who are not benefiting from the standard implementation of a tiered framework. And this research came from a great friend and colleague, Dr. Kamontá Heidelburg, who really unpacked thinking about PBIS, that behavior side of MTSS, and knowing that even if we just do the basic nuts and bolts of that framework, somehow we’re going to miss some things or some people along the way. So we have to be willing to think differently.

And again, as I said, let’s get an equity of understanding before we go further. Language check. The multi-tiered system of support definition is on your left, and this comes from the National MTSS Center. And essentially, what it’s saying is that it is a framework. I can’t say that enough. It is a framework. It is not a program. It is not a curriculum. It is the structure that allows you to do good practices. However, let me say this too. Not only is it a framework, it’s proactive and preventative. It should integrate data and instruction to maximize student achievement, support students from various domains, not just academic, social, emotional, and behavior. And I love this from a strengths-based perspective. How many of you have sat in meetings? Leaders, I’m calling on you. You sat in your team meetings, you have a structure for those meetings, and somehow the conversation goes in a downward spiral. Well, the students that live on that side of the neighborhood, their scores are low, no wonder. Making sort of those deficit mindset comments that don’t allow us to learn and grow and go upward in making real change. There’s a great book, I like to give tools out. So one of the books that I really like is called The Data-Driven School. One of the things they talk about is to go from this concept of being a problem-solving team to a needs-fulfilling team. And for me, that hits on being strengths-based rather than problematizing things, how can we shift our focus, our framing to be more needs-fulfilling, filling up a cup, filling a gap, filling a need, rather than focusing on just problems? Okay, so that’s MTSS.

On the PBIS side of things, remember I said you know that triangle that we put in every slide deck I’ve seen around MTSS because it really drives home the point and the structure that we’re looking at, the behavior side of that triangle is typically referred to as positive behavioral interventions and supports, which is an evidence-based framework, again, tiered logic that supports behavior, academic, social, emotional, and mental health. And I think that’s a piece that we don’t want to neglect when we talk MTSS, is that the mental health or mental wellness side of this work is still relevant, necessary, and should be a part of the framework that we’re designing. It creates what’s called positive, predictable, equitable, and safe learning environments where everyone thrives. Recently, I was listening to a podcast and my colleague, Kelly Perales, made the comment that as we’re talking about that last part of the definition, she said, “What better time than now should we be focusing on creating those positive, predictable, equitable, and safe learning environments?” And I couldn’t agree more. So again, I want you to have those two definitions in your back pocket as we move along. Okay.

Key components of a tiered system. So this is fun for me. I’m a school psychologist by training. I love MTSS. I’m just a big proponent of it. And so anytime I get the opportunity to be in front of people and talk about it, I’m really excited. So with that, we’re at the F. Remember F.L.Y.? Foundation, Layers of support, and Yield. As I’m going through these core features of MTSS, I want a question to go around in your head: Where does leadership live in these core features? So let’s take a look at these. Some of the core features you’re probably well aware of. Some of them you might be like, “We got to work on those.” And others you may say, “Oh wow, I didn’t even realize that was a core feature and we’ve been doing that forever.” So let’s take a look. A standards aligned core instructional component is one of the biggest features of MTSS. And what I want to say around that is when we think core instruction, sometimes our minds go immediately to academics, whether that’s literacy, mathematics, writing, et cetera. And that is exactly what we mean here. However, core instruction also means social emotional wellness, also means behavioral instruction. I really believe this to be true. In the work that I’ve been able to do, this was something that has stuck with me for years, is that especially on the discipline behavioral side of the work, discipline means to teach. Discipline does not mean to punish. And I think sometimes in the work that we do, it gets really tough to not conflate those two things. So the core instruction is just as important at the behavioral level as it is at the academic.

We also talk about universal screening, and my hope is that by the time we wrap our session today, that when you think about universal screening, that you’ll also think about how that may contribute to what we were just discussing about whether or not the standard implementation is maybe not addressing every student in the best way. So universal screening for a very nutshell definition is something that is given on a consistent basis, a small assessment to really benchmark and see where students are performing in various areas, and then make some decisions about perhaps what needs to be adjusted at Tier 1, who may benefit from Tier 2, and who may benefit even more at Tier 3. Universal screening is sort of that first entry into assessing the progress or the health of our tier one. And so, what we’re looking at … I’m going to make it a little medical for a moment. Let’s say you go to the doctor for a physical and the doctor takes your weight, your height, takes your blood pressure. A universal screening is similar in that way, in that it’s this first entry into seeing how you’re doing. At that level, when you’re getting blood pressure, height, weight, all those things, we’re not moving right away to heart surgery, right? We’re sticking to those indicators that can tell us, “Hm, maybe in the exam we may need to ask these questions or maybe we need to think about this diet moving forward.” Three times a year is typically when these happen, fall, winter, spring, and a team, like a Tier 1 team, would be looking at that data to make some decisions. We’re going to talk more about this in a minute around how belonging kind of fits into this and being equitable.

Shared ownership. Have you ever been in a situation where you hear staff say things like, “Well, Nikole, she receives this type of support, so that’s Ruthie’s student.” Or vice versa, “That student, Marianna, she’s really good. She probably doesn’t need to go see Nikole because Nikole doesn’t have anything to do with students that have those types of skills.” What we want to get away from is that they belong to you here or they don’t belong to you there. Shared ownership allows us to say every student in this building, regardless of my role, whether I’m a leader, a teacher, a custodian, it doesn’t matter, they belong to us. And so if I have the skills to be able to support that student, no matter what it is, I can be an asset to that team. I can be an asset to that student. It doesn’t mean that I have all the answers, but the students belong to me too.

Data-based decision making. At the core, that’s what MTSS, PBIS, all of these acronyms, these frameworks, that’s what they mean. We’re looking at data on a consistent basis. We’re making informed decisions about it. Think back to what I said, going from problem solving to needs fulfilling. The data should be telling us what the needs are, and we should be able to then think about what are the appropriate action steps that should come next to make sure that we fulfill the need that we’re noticing.

Effective teaming, this all goes hand in hand. Again, leadership. Where does leadership live in these core features? As the leader in your systems, do you have the right people on the team? Are you missing people? Are there voices or expressions that are not being heard on your team that could make a difference? I’ve often shared, and I’ll share this very quickly, a quick story. I was an internal PBIS coach at a middle school, and during that time, I was responsible for keeping track of the students that were receiving Tier 2 supports. In this particular building, we were using check-in and check-out. If you know anything about that intervention, typically the students will have a point sheet that they’ll keep track of the different ratings they receive from teachers and then determine at the specified time whether or not they’ve met their goal. And I can remember I had students who met their goal, and again, this is middle school, so I want you to keep that in mind. And I say to the young people who made the goal happen, “I’m going to have an ice cream party for all of you. It’s going to be on this day. I can’t wait for you to join me.” And they smile, they’re excited because they met their goal. Time passes and we get to the ice cream party day, and when the ice cream party is held, I’m in a room with all of this ice cream and bowls and all the things, and none of the students showed. And I couldn’t understand why? And so middle school friends, if you’re in the space, you know that there are middle schoolers who will be very upfront and clear with you even when you aren’t necessarily ready to hear it. And I will never forget this young lady, her name was Lamaya. And she’s always friendly and talking to me. And I said, “Lamaya, how come no one came to my ice cream party?” And she goes, “Ms. Hollins, that’s because it was dumb.” And taken aback, feeling like rejection, and I said, “What do you mean?” And she said, “We have ice cream every day in the cafeteria. Coming and getting ice cream wasn’t fun for us. If you would’ve told us that we could go outside because we don’t get to go outside anymore as middle schoolers and have lunch, we probably would’ve come.” I’m tying this to effective teaming because if we had a student as a part of our team giving us the input, the insight, the knowledge of what they wanted, we would’ve been more effective. I would’ve felt more effective as that coach, but I missed a mark because our team didn’t have those faces and voices that we needed.

That also connects to family and community engagement. Similar, if we’re not tapping into the assets of the community, the assets that our families bring, we’re going to miss a mark. And I have to quote my dear friend, Dr. Amira Hill-Yancy, when she talks about the family or the caregiver is the SME of the student. And what does SME mean? Because when she said it, I went, “Ooh, that’s a new one for me.” Subject Matter Expert. They are the subject matter expert on their child. They know what’s best. So we have to be willing to give away control sometimes, and that engagement allows for us to listen, learn, and grow. That’s effective teaming coupled with being very strategic in our family, and it’s intentional in our family and community engagement.

We now move into professional learning. That makes me happy to know that there’s this many people on this session today because professional learning as a core feature of MTSS is a must. There’s constant evolution that we need to stay up with, know how to adjust to, and make sure that contextually the things we’re doing are appropriate in our settings and our systems.

And lastly, coaching. Coaching can look a variety of different ways. It doesn’t have to be just one coach that does one piece of the work. You could have multiple coaches that exist in your buildings. You may be able to even empower a teacher, excuse me, school counselors, school psychologists that can take ownership of that coaching role. It doesn’t always have to be an external partner. It’s helpful to have both quite honestly. So that you have someone with that external perspective that can support the internal perspective and turn that coaching into actionable outcomes that you can see in real time. So those are the core features that I think I want you to really have in your heart as we move through. Okay.

An updated MTSS framework. Okay, I’m going to ask you all not to fall out of your seat when you see this triangle because you’ll notice a little thing in the middle called Tier 1.5. I don’t want you to fall out of your seat. This does not mean that Tier 1 is different. What this is articulating and why I wanted to show it to you is because as we talk about being more inclusive, creating spaces and conditions of belonging, we often say all of that happens at tier one and it does and it should. It should happen at Tier 1 and it should happen across all tiers. What happens in Tier 1.5, and these are from my colleagues who are referenced at the bottom, they’re talking about what’s called class-wide intervention. So remember earlier I talked about universal screening and how we get data and we start to make decisions and all of the things. Data should be an ongoing process, whether it’s qualitative or quantitative. And with class-wide intervention, what we’re saying at Tier 1 is, let’s say we have a classroom and we’re doing, I don’t know, social emotional lessons, for instance. And we’re starting to see that even with the lessons, some students are just still not capturing the concept, and we’re noticing it in the relationships that they’re building or not. And we’re noticing it not just with a small number of students, but with maybe half of the students in the classroom. If that is happening, then we can’t just continue doing that universal piece and just thinking, “You know, half the students aren’t getting it. Okay, well, half the students may need to go to Tier 2.” No, what probably needs to happen is at Tier 1.5, class-wide intervention takes place and we’re progress monitoring similar to what we would do if students were moving up the tiers, but we’re looking across our classroom at a specific skill and figuring out how we monitor if that skill is being changed, if it’s getting worse, if it’s getting better, and then that helps us be more intentional about the supports that should follow. So which students would benefit most from Tier 2 supports if we’ve attempted and done well the monitoring of Tier 1.5? So I wanted to bring that up because sometimes this movement out of Tier 1 can sometimes be premature if we’re not paying attention to that class-wide approach that could create a more, could create a better condition, I should say, for belonging to take place for all students.

Okay, implementation science. So I’m giving you the MTSS core kernels that I want you to know before we get into the dignity and belonging piece. I think sometimes in the work that I’ve been able to do in schools and in districts across the country and in my home state of Pennsylvania, implementation science is so critical. We have so much excitement around new things, around wanting to do better in our schools. And it’s often that we move too quickly through these implementation stages, and then we go, “It didn’t work. Let me restart or let me think of something else that I should do now.” And so I want us to kind of slow our thinking down and pay attention. At the bottom of this picture, you’ll see an arrow that’s bidirectional and it says two to four years. Again, I don’t want you to fall out of your seat, but I want to acknowledge the reality of systems change. And implementation science allows us to know through our NIR Network, National Implementation Research Network, that it takes time. And so, if you’re feeling like we’re moving at a snail’s pace, we’re not making the headway that we need, I want you to remember it takes years to make these things sustainable, long-lasting and embedded into the work that you do. And that’s with any innovation that you’re trying to put forward in a big system with all different types of people. So for sake of time, I’m not going to go one by one and unpack each one, but what I would like to do is give you a couple examples and maybe this is that sort of self-check you can have around where your implementation is situated currently. And if you’re comfortable and you feel safe enough, go ahead and pop in the chat where you think you are. Exploration, installation, initial implementation or full implementation. And I would ask if you are comfortable putting where you are, I’m going to challenge you to go even further and say what you’re comfortable with in these four.

So let’s say we’ve done PBIS and we’re at initial implementation or we’ve done MTSS for academics and we’re at installation. That’s what I would love to know if you’re comfortable putting that in the chat. What I want you to focus on is that most of us, when we started the journeys around tiered logic in schools, we’re at the exploration stage. I can remember that same middle school I was at, we didn’t know what PBIS was. We’d heard of response to intervention. We figured there was a behavior side to it, but we were learning it. And so in the exploration stage, we were going to trainings here and there, getting information about it, seeing is this something we could actually do, thinking about a team, who do we need around the table? Is this something that this building could actually benefit from or do we already have something that does something similar? That’s the assessing at the bottom, assessing fit and feasibility. And then who would be the drivers of that work? Would it be our team? Would it be our coaches? Figuring all of that out as the exploration stage. As we move across the stages, installation begins with maybe one school in a district that begins PBIS installation. We want to see how it works. We want to get training for our team so that we’re feeling more confident to then introduce it to our faculty. At initial implementation, this may be year one was training and installation. Year two, we’re trying it out. We’re seeing if there’s any change. And then full implementation, maybe we’ve done it across multiple buildings in our district. Maybe we’ve done it across multiple grade levels, and we’re seeing and looking at whether or not that implementation has made any real change or difference and we’re monitoring that consistently. That’s implementation science in a big nutshell. There is a lot of work around this, so I know I’m not doing it justice by taking you through it this fast. However, these are the processes that many of us in this space have had to go through in order to make sure that our work could live and breathe and be accessible to all. So again, if you’re comfortable putting in the chat where you are in the process, feel free. If not, I want you to be thinking about that as we move through.

All right, pilots. So we’ve done a big foundational walkthrough. We’ve been prepping for the flight to take off. We aren’t quite there yet because we need to check to see if our skies are clear and we got to make sure we know for sure that that’s the case because what we don’t want to do is fly into cloudy skies or storms, and we’re not fully prepared for them. So a way that we can get prepared and feel like we’re moving in a way that is getting us to a destination is to add in those layers of support. And so, as we’re considering moving and taking off, you know how this goes, as your seat belts and tray tables are up, we are moving and taking off. As pilots, we have to adopt a 30,000-foot view. Pilots equals leaders, remember? So as leaders in this work, can we see the full scope of what we’re supposed to see, our full system in total, and be able to say, “This needs fixed. We should start that. We should stop that. We should continue this.” That’s a 30,000-foot view. When people say I’m a systems level thinker, that’s what they mean. I can see the big broad picture. I’m not right here in a narrow space. Don’t get me wrong. There are people that we need to be in the narrow space because from the 30,000-foot view, that lets me know that space is covered, right? But I want us to shift our thinking.

So there’s a great book that I just picked up. It’s by Dr. Patricia Ray, and the book is titled MTSS Is Not Broken, Systems Are. And I loved how she broke this down, so I wanted to bring this forward to you. A traditional view of MTSS speaks to Tire 1 is just general classroom instruction. Remember that core instruction that I referenced as a core feature? Yes, that’s the traditional view. When you adopt a systems view, Tier 1 becomes the foundation. Remember the F in F.L.Y.? It’s the foundation of prevention, consistency, and early response. So remember predictable, equitable, safe, all of that is that systems view. Traditionally, in conversations around MTSS, you would hear people say things like, “What tier is the student in?” Shifting that to systems, it’s not so much what tier are they in, but what is the need? Remember needs fulfilling and how will the system respond? Do you see how the onus is now not on student, but how we collectively as a system can best support and fulfill that need? And I put student, students because as we think of the tiers, we’re in groups, we’re in universal level, we’re in class-wide, et cetera. Traditionally, team meetings are a place to discuss students. And I got to be honest, I’ve sat in meetings where it’s been, “Yep, we got a list of maybe 20 students and we’re going to be here all day and we’re going to go student by student by student by student.” We got to shift that. That’s not efficient. It’s not talking systems. Maybe at the advanced tiers, that’s appropriate in some ways, depending on what tier of support we’re at, but at that universal level, we got to shift for a structure for making decisions, assigning ownership and monitoring follow through, that global discussion, that systems level discussion instead of student by student.

Traditionally, interventions are a list of program strategies or supports. We’ve been there, right? And if you’re there now, I just want you to start shifting thinking on what it could look like if you adopted that 30,000-foot view. In a systems way, interventions are a protected response. It’s matched to student need, time, and progress monitoring. So we’re not just picking the interventions that we just have or are comfortable using, we actually want to match intervention to need. And that is the pivotal rubber meeting road where students can actually start to make a change. This is why, just putting a little quarter in the meter for a second, this is why when we do things like behavioral discussions around data and when we enter the data, we look for perceived motivation. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I want you to check out Swiss and just see what those things are. But perceived motivation is a nice way of saying function. What is the function of the behavior? Is it to gain something, to escape something? And if so, base the intervention on the function that we know will best support that student. Lastly, MTSS exists on paper but does not function consistently. So this is where you have schools and districts, and I’ve been in one of them, I worked in one of them, where if someone asks us from the state, from a national center, do you do MTSS? And the answer is “yes.” And I air quote that because on paper, yes. In reality, missing a lot of pieces. Doing piecemeal, right? So if we have a systems view of what MTSS can and should be, it becomes visible, it’s actionable, and it’s responsive, meaning people can see it in real time. They don’t have to ask you, “Are you doing it?” Because they’ll be able to walk in your building and know. Those are the things that mean a lot from a systems level view around MTSS. So as leaders, I want you to think about that 30,000-foot view that takes us out of the traditional model into how do we see the big picture and how we can make a change.

In addition to checking the skies, we have to ask ourselves, are there disproportionate outcomes in your setting? So disproportionate may feel like, what does that mean? I want you to take a look at some examples. We can start with discipline. So the example is, “Are certain groups of students more frequently excluded or subjected to punitive disciplinary practices?” This may look like suspension. It may look like expulsion. It may look like referrals to the office. And if we’re noticing that certain groups of students are receiving these things on a rate that’s higher than other student groups in our buildings, we just need to start asking some why questions and doing some root cause to figure out what could be at the root of those outcomes showing up that way. Checking our skies. In discipline, we know through research and great colleagues at the Center on PBIS and Dr. Kent McIntosh and others, Dr. Ruthie Payno-Simmons, who have done tremendous work around things like subjectivity showing up in the referrals. So disrespect, defiance, and disruption: subjective. Students are being referred for that, that might represent different groups, but you’ll notice other groups aren’t receiving the same level of those referrals, and that subjectivity is influencing disproportionate outcomes. Discipline becomes one of those things that we have to pay attention to as we assess the health of our system.

On the access side of things, are there certain groups of students that are able to access supports more easily than others? This could be as simple as extracurricular activities. If we have extracurricular activities after school, but we don’t offer transportation, is that impeding access?

Opportunities, are advanced courses available only to certain groups of students or seeming that most students of a certain group are getting those opportunities and other students are not being referred for them or nominated for them, if that’s the process you use.

And then on the outcome side, this is just an example, are certain groups of students more likely to be identified with a disability than others or vice versa? Let’s think about gifted placement. These are outcomes that could make our skies really hard to navigate because we’re not accessing, creating opportunities, providing equitable discipline, and ensuring equitable outcomes for students to be able to access everything that we have to offer for them. So we have to think about are our skies cloudy, stormy, or how can we clear them up? So those tough discussions have to follow, and that’s where Einstein’s quote really lives, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we use when we created them.” And it’s not a blame game. It’s not me saying, ”You created them, I created them.” It’s a collective “we,” and it just means we have to think differently. Remember, go all the way back to the beginning of my talk when Dr. Heidelburg said standard implementation. Standard implementation doesn’t hit the mark. We got to think different. We got to be creative and innovative in our way of implementing.

And so here’s the way to think about that. Focusing on inclusive practices. Now for my special educators in the room or folks with a special education background, when you hear the term inclusive practices, it’s going to mean something maybe a little different than what I’m going to describe here. However, I want you to expand your definition too as we think about , and I’m offering, another definition to consider. This comes from the work of Floyd Cobb and John Krownapple who wrote the book Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity. For some in this space, I recognize some of your faces, you are very well aware of this text. I would highly recommend it as one to really understand dignity and belonging in education. And so this inclusive practices definition is defined as engagement within a community where the equal worth and inherent dignity of each person is honored, heavy and real. Equal worth, inherent dignity, honored. Those are the words I want you to focus on. An inclusive community promotes and sustains a sense of belonging. So what does this mean? Essentially, what it’s saying is that I may not have grown up near you. We may not have had shared lived experiences. I may not agree with you politically. I may not agree with you socially, religious, all of those things. We may be complete opposites. But at the end of the day, I’m a human, you’re a human, and that’s the equal worth. With that equal worth, human to human, each of us has dignity.

And Dr. Donna Hicks, who is one of the biggest proponents of dignity work globally, whether it’s education, corporate, doesn’t matter, her work is very expansive around this topic. What she says and what I have leaned into heavily is that dignity is a birthright and respect is earned because at the core, whether I agree with you, whether I even like you, at the core, you have dignity as a human and that equal worth and inherent dignity have to be at the foundation of what we do when we show up every day as leaders, because we’re going to have those people that we don’t have shared experiences with connect to all of the things I just spoke to. But at the end of the day as leaders, we have to model inclusive practices and that inclusive community promotes and sustains that sense of belonging. What that means is that I can’t tell someone they belong. That is something they have to feel, they have to experience for themselves, and they should never have to be consumed on whether or not they’re feeling it. My role is to create conditions. And when I say my role, I mean as an educator, as a leader, if I were a principal, if I were school psych in a building, that inclusive community, if I’m modeling it and demonstrating it, then there’s the ability for belonging to be possible. Dr. Payno-Simmons, I see your hand.

 

Dr. Ruthie Payno-Simmons:

Yeah, thank you. Krista wanted to know, can you repeat who said that? She really loved it and just wanted to know if you could repeat it.

 

Dr. Nikole Hollins-Sims:

Absolutely. So Dr. Donna Hicks, H-I-C-K-S, and the quote was, “Dignity is a birthright and respect is earned.” Thanks, Dr. Ruthie. Okay. And anytime you need that to happen, I’m happy to do so.

All right, so I gave you the inclusive practices definition. I chuckled to myself a little bit because belonging is a definition that many of us have adopted in a variety of ways. So I look around this space and I see faces again that I know who have different definitions of belonging. However, when you drill them all down, they all have some commonalities that I think are so pivotal. So for me, for today, I would love to share with you my definition of belonging. For me, it’s a sense of mattering and having value while experiencing authentic connectivity and acceptance in an educational community. Mattering is a big, big deal. And when you feel, remember it’s subjective, it’s the feeling I only have, you only have, no one can tell you belong. When I feel that I matter in a setting or that people value me, see me as human and are connected to me, then I can show up more authentically. Then I’m not worried about whether or not people are perceiving me in a certain way. It’s not consuming me. And so, the second half of this definition, it occurs when students, educators, and staff feel affirmed for who they are, see themselves reflected in the learning environment, and trust that their voices, expressions, and contributions manifest into impactful action. And that key piece at the end is what’s critical. It is not enough to simply put something on a bulletin board. It’s a start, but it’s not enough. I need to know if I’m Lamaya in Nikole’s middle school who needed to tell her that ice cream was not the thing, her words, her voice manifested into impactful action because what did I then know and do better? I made sure that I checked in with students when we were determining what they wanted to do when they met their goals. That’s what belonging can feel like, right? That what I said had meaning, that what I said made a difference. Someone is listening to me. So as we’re thinking of having value, authentic connectivity and acceptance, it has to show up real, because students, as I’m sure all of you know, see through it real quick if it’s not real. So belonging for me is defined there, and I want you to keep that definition in your brain as we discuss how dignity is connected to this.

But before we get there, what does this look like in schools? So there is amazing, amazing work that comes from Dr. Robert Balfanz out of Johns Hopkins University. And I can remember when I worked for an organization a number of years back, we were introduced to what were called the ABCs that Dr. Balfanz was putting out to really increase graduation rates. And in our particular state, we were doing a project around increasing graduation rates of students with disabilities. And so, one of the things that he highlighted were these technical ABCs, which are on the left-hand side, and how important it is to look at the data around attendance, behavior, and course performance. And what he said is that these three indicators are basically your early warning data indicators on whether or not a student is off track or on track to graduate. As time has gone on and research has evolved, and I believe 2024 was the first time that the new ABCs were introduced by grad partnerships and Dr. Balfanz, he talks about additional ABCs: agency, belonging, connectedness. I want you to think back to my belonging definition, and as I talk through these, I want you to have that in your mind. Agency, if you had to identify what agency means or define what agency means, it essentially is speaking up for yourself, being able to say, “I have something that I can contribute. I want to speak up for it. I want to advocate. I want to do the things that let you know that I’m here, that I matter.” That’s agency. Belonging, I just told you a definition for. So subjectively, personally, I feel like I’m a part of something. People see me. I’m connected to people. They know who I am. They value what I stand for. All of that is important. And then connectedness. I can remember that project that I was just talking to you about. We did a survey with one of our buildings and asked the students, “Why don’t you like coming to school?” And the answer, these were high schoolers, was, “I don’t like school.” And when we unpacked what “I don’t like school” meant, it meant that “I’m not on a team. I’m not in the cool kids club. No one talks to me. I sit by myself at lunch.” Connectedness. So if we want to think about improvement of attendance, reducing behavior issues, improving course performance, and in this case, literacy and math specifically for those data indicators, agency belonging and connectedness have to be a part of that conversation and have to be interconnected with those technical pieces.

As we think about MTSS, particularly at the secondary level, these become part of that early warning system. Early warning systems as secondary can be those universal screeners that you may not have at the secondary level like you have at elementary to give you information on students and what they need and what best supports you can put in place, all with understanding that agency belonging and connectedness have to be a part of the design. And so for me, as I think about the goal of this work, I’ve said it, so I’m not going to belabor it too much, but what I want us to be aware of is that all of this work foundationally begins with access. This is what I call my power up framework. It starts with access. So think about your phone and the bars you need to be the most connected. You need access first, followed by the opportunity to leverage that access, sitting in an affirming space. Those are those inclusive practices where that inherent worth and honor dignity exists. Once those three things are present and we can make sure that the conditions are set, the north star of belonging becomes accessible and available. And that’s the goal, access, opportunity, affirming spaces and belonging.

Okay, I’m giving you a lot of tools and I’m running short on time, which I knew I would because I like to talk about this stuff, so I’m going to keep it pushing, but I want to introduce something that I think will be helpful for you as you’re deciding, “Okay, I’m hearing her talk about belonging. I’m hearing her talk about dignity. I’m hearing her talk about connectedness and agency and all of these things, and how is that going to fit into my MTSS structure? How do I make sure that I add those layers of support?” I want to give you a compass, and this comes from our friends in Wisconsin. I absolutely love this. As you as leaders are thinking about your compass, you’re the pilot, remember? You need something to guide and direct what you do.

I want you to think about will, fill, skill. And so as leaders, you begin with the will, that’s the yellow arrow. A desire to lead, a desire to see something different happen, a desire to make change, function, and live and breathe. What does that begin with? You have to start with self-awareness. How do you see yourself? Do you understand that you might have spots that inhibit you from making decisions because you just don’t know the backgrounds of the students you serve, or you may not know the communities and the nuances of those communities in the way that you thought you did? You may have some learning internally to do around maybe, do you have biases that you haven’t checked? All of that is self-awareness, but I want you to also be aware that self-awareness doesn’t have to be a personal only you thing. You and your team, I like to call it the coalition of the willing, because you might have people who want to be on your team because they see your vision and they want to execute it with you. All of you would benefit from becoming self-aware together. And in that willingness, let’s be honest about our system’s impact. What has it done or not done well for families or students? Examine that and then start moving into believing all students will learn. I’m going to take a pause really quickly because what we often see in this sort of change process is this willingness, the coalition of the willing, I got my people, let’s go.

And we jump right to the green. Will, skill. We got the will, now let’s apply it. Let’s do it. Come on, we don’t have time. And we miss something very valuable. And that’s the fill. That’s the blue part. That’s the gaining the cultural knowledge. So remember I said about self-awareness and you got to start learning about the people you’re serving and the community you’re in, et cetera, et cetera? This is where you can do that well. First off, believing all students will learn. That’s critical. Remember I said deficit mindset versus asset-based or strength-based perspectives? That is a big component on whether or not we can make real inroads on seeing change. It’s the belief that all students will learn. There’s a great book by some colleagues. I like to give you tools, so if you need me to repeat them at the end, I’m happy to. It’s called Hacking Deficit Thinking. That’s the book title, Hacking Deficit Thinking by Dr. Byron McClure and Dr. Kelsie Reed. It’s a great start to unpacking why we have deficit thinking and what are the strategies we can do to make sure we come out of that. So believing all students will learn, understanding we all have unique identities and worldviews, that’s that humility that we have to adopt.

I’m someone who really struggles with whether or not everyone can be culturally competent. I know I’m not culturally competent because I’m always learning. There’s always room to grow. So humility, cultural humility becomes critical. And that’s this blue. Understanding we all have unique identities, know the communities that we serve, and now that we’re moving out of the blue, now we can be more intentional about the skill and the application. So that starts with us pilots leading, modeling, advocating for equity practices, accepting that we haven’t always gotten it right. Remember, no shame, no blame. We haven’t always gotten it right. So now how do we right the ship? And in righting the ship, we use practices and curriculum that respects our students’ cultures, allows them in that belonging definition to not just see things on a board, but actually be affirmed in those spaces, whether it is the curriculum, whether it is the books on the shelf, whether it is the bulletin board, but it can’t just be that by itself. And that’s how we can be culturally responsive in applying these skills to our implementation science of MTSS.

Okay. I want you to do a little inventory for me as we start to move towards the end of my time. I want you to focus and think about your own environment, whether it’s your school, whether it’s your district, whether it’s your county, whatever role you occupy, because it’s so amazing to me to see so many people from different states because you’re all so unique in the way education can sometimes be delivered. And so, I’d love for you to take some time and think about this question. I want you to understand that climate and culture are two very different things. They’re very connected, don’t get me wrong, but they’re also very different. And so when we think of climate, I want you to consider that the heart and soul of the environment. And so, I’ll share a brief story. I went to a bank recently and when I entered that bank, there was this front office desk that said “Director of First Impressions.” And I thought, “Wow.” Because the front office, the welcome space, Director of First Impressions makes or breaks how I’m going to feel in that space. I want you to think about that in your own environment. Who is at the front line? How do you feel when you walk in? Do people feel like they belong? Can they call the environment their own or do they feel alienated? I’ve been in similar situations where I’ve walked in a school and I thought, “I work for the state and they’re going to be kind to me because I’m going to say I work for the Department of Education.” And I walk in and people are busy and sometimes they’ll dismiss you and say, “Just go have a seat.” Or “You don’t see that we’re busy here?” I’ve had all of that happen. And so, I’ve often thought, “Wow, that happened to me. What happens to families who may not know the language? What happens to families who might be just new to the neighborhood?”

That’s climate. Culture is the way we do things around here. Have you heard that before? “Oh, we don’t do that here. Nope.” Or you do something or you question it and it’s, “Well, that’s just the way we do things around here.” So the question becomes to what extent does the school honor dignity through their behaviors and through organizational practices and policies? I’ll share another quick story as an example. I worked for an organization, I will not name it, but when I worked there, I was excited to share some new learning that I had and someone said, “You do know that this is the place where innovation comes to die.” And I’m just blown away, right? And so I thought, “Wow, culture,” right? That’s the culture that this is, “Don’t bring that new stuff. We’re not … uh-uh, that’s not the way we do things around here.” Think about your own environment. Is that showing up? And if so, how can you leverage that compass that we went over just now to make sure your climate and culture is clear?

Okay. Sacrificing belonging for access. I want you to pay attention to this because this is Maslow. We know Maslow, right? I want us to also know that Maslow adopted this theory from Indigenous peoples, and in his adoption of it, someone adopted his theory and made it more of a triangle. Funny enough, we live in a triangle world in our work, but he actually envisioned it like a staircase. And what we see in American education is that oftentimes belonging gets pushed down and it’s not close to safety and we focus on achievement. What are the scores? Are we doing well? Are we making progress? And we have sort of sacrificed belonging for this hyper-focus on achievement, which makes it almost impossible to get to that pinnacle of self-actualization. And when that happens, this is what shows up. You can take a look at this list and probably say, “Seen that,” “Experienced that,” “Understand that,” right? Negativity, suicide, anxiety, dropout, false dignity. False dignity just means that you base your dignity off what others think about you, that inherent worth is lacking. Self-segregation, gangs, cults, radicalization. Let me spend one second on self-segregation. I want to acknowledge sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes self-segregation is a safety precaution. Sometimes groups of people stay together with lived experiences or shared backgrounds because there’s a safety feeling, especially in a new environment or an unsafe environment to begin with. So I don’t want us to always write off self-segregation as something as a casualty. But if it’s happening consistently and over time and you’re seeing it with the same groups, we want to dive deeper as to why so that that belonging isn’t conditional.

I’ve talked about students a lot. I have to talk about employees. I have to talk about us as leaders and our staff. When belonging is absent, these are the things that happen. Emotional labor and psychological toll, pressure to perform perfectly, navigating assaults on dignity. Remember I said sometimes you’re overly consumed on whether or not people will stereotype you or assume that you’re a certain way because of how you show up? That’s emotional labor on the person and psychological toll on, I have to prove that I don’t fit that stereotype or the pressure to perform perfectly because they’ll expect that I’m not going to perform well, so I have to always be on 10. That takes that same psychological toll. And then navigating assaults on dignity, I’ll talk about momentarily, but I do want to offer that there is a framework around particularly workplace wellbeing because as educators, we need it. We need it. Our workplaces are places that we pour out consistently. A lot of us are experiencing compassion fatigue. These are real things. And so, I just wanted you to see this framework to understand that protection from harm is critical. Connection and community is critical. That’s where belonging sits. These little circles indicate basic human needs. You’ll see a lot of these mirrors, the belonging definition I offered, right? Because we need all of these things to be successful in our work and in our lives.

So where should belonging fit in that Maslow hierarchy or staircase? It should be closest to safety because, when belonging is close to safety, psychologically, emotionally, behaviorally, physically, I’m more inclined to achieve because now I feel safe too. Now I care about that math lesson. Now I care about that literacy lesson, et cetera.

Okay, we’re going to keep moving because I want to make sure I have time to talk to all of you. So are you ready to launch? Pilots, we’ve done the layers of support, we’ve done foundation, but we need dignity as our fuel to make sure we make it to the destination. So those dignity elements are as follows. You can take a look at them and notice we’ve already hit a lot of them because dignity is a big broad topic, but what are the actual things you can do to see it in action? Safety, independence, benefit of the doubt, giving grace, accountability. Something I’ve heard recently and I’ve leaned into it is, “Intent belongs to me, but impact belongs to the person.” So even if someone gives me benefit of the doubt and I’ve said something out of order, impact belongs to them, and so the accountability piece sits with me. And so apologizing for causing harm becomes critical. You may say, “Nikole, why are you talking about this in an MTSS session?” Because as you sit on team meetings, as you make decisions, as you interface with families, community, students, staff, utilizing these essential elements allows the vehicle or the plane that you’re flying to reduce turbulence and make sure that you have smooth sailing as much as possible. So all of these elements, these come from Dr. Donna Hicks again, are critical to that effort.

How do we recognize dignity? It shows up in four things, being appreciated, being validated, treated fairly, and accepted. So appreciated, having parts of your identity positively noticed, represented by people, media, others, validated. If I’ve had a lived experience that’s not yours, trust that that’s my truth, right? Even if you disagree with me, acknowledge that that’s my truth. Validate it, accept it. I’m embraced fully as me. It’s not conditional. And if I’m treated fairly, that fairness is based on the needs that I’m presenting with. So if we talk about manifestation determinations, our students with disabilities, when we take an active role in saying, “Was the behavior manifestation of the disability?”, that’s fair treatment. That’s being able to be holistic and systemic in how we’re looking at the behavior itself instead of onus only living with the child, treated fairly.

I love this quote by Dr. Donna Hicks. “When we honor others’ dignity, we strengthen our own.” And to me, that’s super powerful in what it is we want to make sure we do as pilots and as leaders. But I have to take a moment and talk about the flip side of those 10 elements. For time’s sake, I won’t be able to go one by one, but I want you to understand that these things are real. As humans, we are hardwired for them to show up. We don’t even realize we’re doing it sometimes, but I’ll just share very quickly, avoiding conflict. I am a self-proclaimed conflict avoider. Allowing someone to violate your dignity without speaking up for yourself. Remember that dignity kind of shared, human to human. When I don’t speak up for myself when my dignity is dishonored and I’m allowing those violations to happen over and over again, I’m not only having my dignity dishonored, I’m not correcting the person to even have the chance to be accountable for what they’re saying or doing. These show up. These show up in our everyday work. And so, it’s up to us to know what are the antidotes, those are those other 10 elements to help mitigate these temptations.

And what does that look like when we don’t mitigate them? Becomes othering. So otherwise means being viewed, treated, made to seem different, ostracizing people, labeling them. Mistreated is unjust biased based on your identity, based on the groups you belong to. Dismissed is the opposite of validated. Having your lived experience questioned, your expertise questioned. It means a lot, and I’m going to say this in sincerity and I know my time is running. It means something when Dr. Ruthie says “Dr. Nikole.” I pray that it means something to her when I say “Dr. Ruthie,” because our expertise is meaningful. And so, when it’s not acknowledged or when we haven’t given permission for you to just call me “Nikole” and I don’t know you well, it’s dismissing that expertise. And then, finally marginalized, rejected and pushed to the edge of a group with limited significance or having to hide something about yourself simply to belong, all real, all show up.

So we’ve reached Y, and I know my time is running. At the Y, pilots, how do these concepts influence our decision making? I want you to have these reflections as I close out my time. Remember those core features I gave you? I want you to have some leadership reflection. So for core instruction, am I leading my staff in understanding the value of culturally responsive instruction in our core, not as an add-on, but in our core? In the universal screening stuff, like those temperature checks that I was talking about, height, weight, all those things, am I probing into the ways that our measures, our screening measures might be contributing to disproportionality because we may be having people that are completing those who have a skewed view? What else are we doing? Are we using multiple respondents? Shared ownership. Am I creating conditions for my staff to see each student as a member of our school family and belonging to each of us? For database decision making, am I encouraging my staff to effectively use data to create decisions that are equitable and honor the dignity of our learners? Are we asking the right questions to get to that? For effective teaming, am I empowering my MTSS team to be inclusive of families and others, community students? For family and community engagement, are we doing listening sessions, feedback loops, et cetera? On the professional learning side, is the PD relevant and are we offering various methods to understand what culturally responsive instruction looks like? And lastly with coaching, am I empowering my staff to engage in coaching to apply their professional learning? Because we may have some untapped resources among us in our buildings that can do good coaching.

And I love what Maya Angelou says that, “When we know better, we do better.” And so how do we honor dignity in ourselves and others? We got to listen. We got to trust. We have to encourage vulnerability, have empathy, go to the balcony just means look down on a conversation, step out of yourself and look down over the balcony, add it and decide is this worth it or not? And then own responsibility. Can we land pilots? Is it safe to land? And if it’s not, we got to ask ourselves, do we have a mission and vision? Is it understood? Is it concise? Do people understand it? Has the mission and vision been co-designed? ’Cause it can’t just sit on a website or on a wall somewhere. It’s got to actually have meaning to the people it’s serving and will we monitor it for continuous improvement?

And so I leave you with the six guiding principles of the Tuskegee Airmen. If you don’t know anything about the Tuskegee Airmen, I highly recommend you watch the movie “Red Tails.” The Tuskegee Airmen were the very first African American aviators in the US Air Force, and they began their journey in World War II. These are their six guiding principles. As pilots, I want you to hold them close, aim high, believe in yourself, use your brain, trust your gut is what I would add to that. Be ready to go. In my world, in my spiritual world, I’m always taught be ever so ready. Be ready to go at any moment. Never quit and expect to win. Go in knowing that winning is possible, dreaming out loud.

And so with that, this is me. I would love to connect with you. All systems F.L.Y.: foundation, layers of support, and yield. You can follow me on Instagram, on LinkedIn. My email is there, my website is there, And I know I went a little over on time, but I think we’ll be okay. And so with that, I will turn it back over to Dr. Payno-Simmons.

 

Dr. Ruthie Payno-Simmons:

Thank you so much, Dr. Hollins-Sims. Thank you. You’ve given us so much to think about and reflect on, and I don’t know if you could see the chat and also just the reactions that are coming up, people really … What you shared really resonated with people and the work that they’re engaging in. We appreciate you all for being here. And as we shared at the beginning of the webinar, we’ve been holding your questions throughout the session, so we’re going to actually make sure that we can get to them as many as we can with the time that we have remaining.

So I’m just going to go ahead and get to them without further ado. One of the questions, “If the top doesn’t value belonging, then those in the middle have trouble attempting to highlight it. What can we do when we learn such great information like this from this webinar?”

 

Dr. Nikole Hollins-Sims:

That’s an awesome question. So funny enough, I had a very similar experience in that same middle school that I described in the webinar. And so what I learned is that sometimes people have to see to believe. And so oftentimes, you’ll have people who are very much naysayers or “We’ve tried everything, and nothing works.” And I often go by proof in the pudding. And so, when we’ve done those opportunities, I’ll use PBIS as the example. In that middle school, we had people who were very opposed to that just as a framework. They felt like it was rewarding things and not addressing behavior. And I think all of that ties to a fear of lack of control. And so sometimes when you can demonstrate that, yes, I let the students guide us, yes, I let some of that ownership live there with them, I saw people who I were sure would never believe in it actually say, “This works.” And it took me a while, maybe one to two years. That’s why I’m saying that patience is really important because you won’t see them react right away. So you can take kernels of what I may have said today, but just know that that persistent patience is going to pay off in the end because it will not be a quick overnight, but that demonstrating is the biggest thing I can say will be helpful.

 

Dr. Ruthie Payno-Simmons:

And I just want to add, I really appreciate you saying that because what you said also gets at that sometimes it may not be a question of value, it may be a question of understanding and capacity. And that to me looks like an opportunity to expand awareness and capacity, but also accountability, right? People at the leadership at the top have to also be accountable to those in the middle and those who are in the trenches actually doing the work. So thank you for that. The other question also, “How are students with disabilities already included in MTSS and how does that interact with IEPs?”

 

Dr. Nikole Hollins-Sims:

These are so good. So it’s funny, I just was at a school district recently and they were sharing, and this ties to shared ownership, that core feature, they were sharing that once students leave the tiers and become part of the special education process, the special educators in their district tend to feel like, “Well, now they’re mine.” And it becomes like, “I’m in control. The IEP team now makes the decisions, et cetera.” I think what we have to be aware of though is that that student is still existing in a general education setting. And so let’s just say the student has an IEP for a reading. There’s still things that need to be done from a belonging standpoint in general around math, around behavior, around all of the different domains that students present with. So where I hesitate is when I hear things like, “Well, where does special education fit?” It fits in everything and it should be a part of everything. Instead of this exclusivity that I think students benefit from, from the IEP that they’re receiving, but also maintaining that they’re still a part of that school community becomes super, super critical and important for that IEP team to continue to make sure is put in place as a part of the plan.

 

Dr. Ruthie Payno-Simmons:

I appreciate that and I appreciate the question too. And I served as a teacher and a building administrator, and I can tell you that what you’re saying makes a lot of sense and that the system should be fluid. They’re meant to be fluid for students with IEPs, students without IEPs to be able to navigate and access similar supports for skills that they need to strengthen. And so like you said, I’m reiterating, making sure that when the systems are set up for students to navigate, that they are still receiving core every day and that we don’t move into, we want to make sure least restrictive environment is always at play. That even if they’re getting those supports that they need, that that is not taking them away from being in the general education classroom, receiving the same access to opportunities with the additional support to allow for them to better access it. So I appreciate you saying that. We have two more questions and I’m watching, trying to be thoughtful about time.

I’m going to ask the last question and come around to the question that kept coming up over and over again. “Do you have any good questions on deck that you use to disrupt conversations that do not honor student dignity?” I love that question.

 

Dr. Nikole Hollins-Sims:

I love that question too. So one that’s a quick go-to, the Learning for Justice, which I think is still the name, they changed their names at times, but they had a four-step process on interrupting and that interruption of bias was broken down into number one, question. So I love Sharon Radd. She talks about leaning in with curiosity, and I think that is such a good way because people sometimes don’t even know that they’re saying something off the cuff or off kilter. And you have to almost say, “Tell me more about that. Help me understand your thought process there. Let me see if I’m on the same page.” Do you see how that sort of disarms rather than defense wall going up? So it’s question, right. It’s interrupt, it’s question, it’s educate. Educate might mean, “That’s not been my experience with Marianna. She’s always shown up in this way, et cetera.” And then Ruthie could echo that and the echo, that’s the force. So it’s interrupt, question, educate, and echo. If Dr. Ruthie says, “You know what, Dr. Nikole? Marianna really doesn’t show up in that way, and that’s been my experience too.” Now that person has to do some thinking, some reflecting on whether or not what they said was a them thing or truly something that should be globally stated in a way that might be detrimental. So that’s a quick four step.

 

Dr. Ruthie Payno-Simmons:

And I love the acronym because it helps you to remember, so thank you so much for that. The one question, “Will the slides be shared?”, kept coming up over and over again. The session has been recorded and will be posted on our website so that anyone can access it. What about the slides?

 

Dr. Nikole Hollins-Sims:

Oh, absolutely. Anyone who wants the slides, if you want to email me, you can. I can put that in the chat if that’s okay.

 

Dr. Ruthie Payno-Simmons:

That’s perfect. Thank you so much. And then of course, we’re going to go ahead and wrap up. And so, if we could just go ahead and add to the chat that we’d like to get your feedback. We’re always thinking about how we can improve what we’re doing, what worked well for you, what do you want more of, which we started getting some of that feedback earlier around whether or not we would have more learning experiences led by Dr. Nikole, which we’re excited about moving into our next year.

Before you go, if you could just give us feedback, we’d really appreciate it. The link is there and shared. It helps us to understand your experiences and also inform learning opportunities and support that we would have in the future. So if you could take a few moments to do that, that would be great, and we’ll sit here with you as you’re doing that. And then, we just really want to thank you for joining us today.

While you’re completing the post-session questionnaire, just because I know that we have three minutes to go, I’m just going to also add that we are going to share our contact information with you as well because as you’re engaging in this work, our Center offers technical assistance to support you in making sure that you’re getting what you need to do to work. You also have Dr. Nikole’s information to be able to reach out to her as well as things resonate with you if you want to learn more from her.

So the question is, “Where can we find the recording?” We’ll drop a link in the chat for you so that you’ll be able to know where to look, where those resources are, but you can go to maec.org and usually we have those listed in our resource section, but we’ll drop a link for you just so you’ll know where to go and look. Thank you so much for your questions. Thank you, Kate. We’ll share the recording with the registrants on email as well, so you can expect to receive something in email with access to this recording. So thank you so much. Thank you, Kate.

Dr. Nikole, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your knowledge. We’re continuing to see thank yous in the chat. I knew that you were going to bring some really good information for us to use and to embed in our work, so we appreciate you. We thank you, and I think we’ll go ahead and close out. Everyone have a great day.

 

Dr. Nikole Hollins-Sims:

Thank you.