RtI "Facelift"

Sometimes, in the hustle and bustle of this thing we call "school", we might forgot why it is we are doing a particular thing. Now, ultimately, the fallback answer is always "for the students", even though sometimes I know you are thinking "it is because we have to, but I'm really not sure why."

Yes, there are sometimes things that we have to do. We may not like them. We may not even understand them. But we must do them, and try to perform to the best of our abilities.

I wanted to leave a note here about RtI. To me, RtI started as one of those "why are we doing this" things. As time has gone on and our RtI program has evolved, I have a better understanding of the "why", and I have seen positive results coming out of RtI in our building.

However, there is usually room for change, and this program has been no exception. To many of you, to this point RtI has probably seemed like it was someone else's responsibility, say, namely the Math and Reading teachers. Did you know, though, that RtI is supposed to be reaching all students?

I'll bet you do now. (Don't you just love "Ah-ha!" moments? Okay, excuse my sarcasm, moving on...)

This is why we are evolving our RtI program a bit. If you will recall from our meeting last Spring, the old Homeroom time will now become RtI time. Each teacher will be responsible for a group of students. Remember, these groups will probably change - much different from how we did Homeroom. Also, you will need to bring your "enrichment group" idea and/or curriculum idea to the RtI committee so we can be sure there are no repeats.

Please keep in your mind the central idea that this will reach ALL students. RtI does work - especially if the staff is committed to seeing success in students. That would include all of you folks, so I am looking forward to this change. Stick with us, and hopefully we will reap the rewards of our hard work soon! I feel like our RtI "glass" has been half full... let's fill it up!