The end is near ...

So the end is near ... There are not many more days of school left for this Administrative Intern and a whole year has passed since I sat in the initial MTSS meeting with a group of skilled individuals including highly skilled Social Workers and Psychologists who had many years of experience in the MTSS process.  I sat trying to hide the fact that I "had no clue" about the MTSS structure outside of the limited experiences I had as a teacher bringing students through the MTSS process.

I could liken this experience to being the difference between "student" and "teacher."  As a "student" of MTSS, I was the classroom teacher.  I was engaged in an "ASK" and "GET" game.  I had a problem with a student... I would "ask" a question and then I would "get" and answer or vice versa from the "more knowledgable" MTSS gurus.  Then it came to the data collection piece and they (MTSS/TEACHERS) would ask a question and they would "GET" my data.  This is much like the game we play with our students.  Mark Rowleski explains that the classroom is just a game of "ask and get."  Teachers with more skill, may "ask" more of their students, and they will traditionally "get" more.  So as I journey through this new experience as co-facilitator of building upon the MTSS structure, I had to change roles.  I was no longer going to serve in the capacity of "giving" what was asked, I had to learn the structures so that I could begin to support the "asking" of the questions.  I also had to build my repertoire because teachers who are problem solving need administrators and leaders who can support the problem solving process.  I needed to build an arsenal of resources and people to help the success of the MTSS structure.

The analogy Trial by Fire comes to mind.  This is a process that simply takes time to understand.  In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, he explains that to become really good at something, we have to spend 10,000 hours on the task to become proficient.  By my calculations, I have spend (2) 8 hour days in MTSS Compliance Training, minus the (2) one-hour lunches, which equates to 14 hours.  Then I have spent the past 43 (after the next two have passed) in school.  Subtract two weeks for Winter Break and one week for Spring Break. So we will say roughly 40 school weeks in all.  MTSS meetings have been cancelled twice for circumstances beyond our control, so we will settle on the rough estimate of 38 weeks.  So 38 weeks with MTSS meetings accounting for 3 hours of each week equalling 114 hours.  I will also add an additional 3 hours each week (More in the beginning) to prepare for, talk with teachers, do observations, fidelity checks, parents contact, sit on IEP meetings, etc.  So we can safely double the 114 hours for MTSS preparation.  In all fairness, the first 2-3 months of school included whole days in a week devoted to collaborating and developing structures or at the very least re-defining them, so I will even go as far as to add 10 hours each week for the first 8 weeks of school to get our MTSS structures established. That's an impressive 80 additional hours.  So ... (drum roll please ...) I have devoted 322 hours to knowing and understanding the MTSS process.  According to Gladwell, I still have 9,678 more hours to go before becoming proficient. And what we know to be true is that the closer I am to becoming proficient, the closer we are to moving towards a new system that we will have to embrace and we will probably find ourselves back at the starting board.  C'est La Vie.  Maya Angelou once said "We do what we know how to do and when we know better, we do better."