# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Locating Yourself - A Key to Conscious Leadership

# data[].attributes.headline
Change the terms for teacher learning. (Fullan)

# data[].attributes.subject
Change the terms for teacher learning. (Fullan)

# data[].attributes.headline
3 Signature SEL Practices for Adult Learning

# data[].attributes.subject
3 Signature SEL Practices for Adult Learning

# data[].attributes.body
For more information visit CASEL Adult SEL.   https://drc.casel.org/strengthen-adult-sel-competencies-and-capacity/https://drc.casel.org/strengthen-adult-sel-competencies-and-capacity/https://drc.casel.org/strengthen-adult-sel-competencies-and-capacity/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Convince people that change is necessary. This often takes strong leadership and visible support from key people within your organization. Managing change isn't enough - you have to lead it.

You can find effective change leaders throughout your organization - they don't necessarily follow the traditional company hierarchy. To lead change, you need to bring together a coalition, or team, of influential people whose power comes from a variety of sources, including job title, status, expertise, and political importance.

Once formed, your "change coalition" needs to work as a team, continuing to build urgency and momentum around the need for change.

What you can do:

Ask for an emotional commitment from these key people.

Work on team building within your change coalition.

Check your team for weak areas, and ensure that you have a good mix of people from different departments and different levels within your company.

Step 3: Create a Vision for Change

When you first start thinking about change, there will probably be many great ideas and solutions floating around. Link these concepts to an overall vision that people can grasp easily and remember.

A clear vision can help everyone understand why you're asking them to do something. When people see for themselves what you're trying to achieve, then the directives they're given tend to make more sense.

What you can do:

Develop a short summary (one or two sentences) that captures what you "see" as the future of your organization.

Ensure that your change coalition can describe the vision in five minutes or less.

Practice your "vision speech" often.

Step 4: Communicate the Vision

What you do with your vision after you create it will determine your success. Your message will probably have strong competition from other day-to-day communications within the company, so you need to communicate it frequently and powerfully, and embed it within everything that you do.

Don't just call special meetings to communicate your vision. Instead, talk about it every chance you get. Use the vision daily to make decisions and solve problems. When you keep it fresh on everyone's minds, they'll remember it and respond to it.

It's also important to "walk the talk." What you do is far more important - and believable - than what you say. Demonstrate the kind of behavior that you want from others.

What you can do:

Talk often about your change vision.

Address peoples' concerns and anxieties, openly and honestly.

Apply your vision to all aspects of operations - from training to performance reviews. Tie everything back to the vision.

Step 5: Remove Obstacles

If you follow these steps and reach this point in the change process, you've been talking about your vision and building buy-in from all levels of the organization. Hopefully, your staff wants to get busy and achieve the benefits that you've been promoting.

But is anyone resisting the change? And are there processes or structures that are getting in its way?

Put in place the structure for change, and continually check for barriers to it. Removing obstacles can empower the people you need to execute your vision, and it can help the change move forward.

What you can do:

Identify, or hire, change leaders whose main roles are to deliver the change.

Look at your organizational structure, job descriptions, and performance and compensation systems to ensure they're in line with your vision.

Recognize and reward people for making change happen.

Identify people who are resisting the change, and help them see what's needed.

Take action to quickly remove barriers (human or otherwise).

Step 6: Create Short-Term Wins

Nothing motivates more than success. Give your company a taste of victory early in the change process. Within a short time frame (this could be a month or a year, depending on the type of change), you'll want to have some " quick wins" that your staff can see. Without this, critics and negative thinkers might hurt your progress.

Create short-term targets - not just one long-term goal. You want each smaller target to be achievable, with little room for failure. Your change team may have to work very hard to come up with these targets, but each "win" that you produce can further motivate the entire staff.

What you can do:

Look for sure-fire projects that you can implement without help from any strong critics of the change.

Don't choose early targets that are expensive. You want to be able to justify the investment in each project.

Thoroughly analyze the potential pros and cons of your targets. If you don't succeed with an early goal, it can hurt your entire change initiative.

Step 7: Build on the Change

Kotter argues that many change projects fail because victory is declared too early. Real change runs deep. Quick wins are only the beginning of what needs to be done to achieve long-term change.

Launching one new product using a new system is great. But if you can launch 10 products, that means the new system is working. To reach that 10th success, you need to keep looking for improvements.

Each success provides an opportunity to build on what went right and identify what you can improve.

What you can do:

After every win, analyze what went right, and what needs improving.

Keep ideas fresh by bringing in new change agents and leaders for your change coalition.

Step 8: Anchor the Changes in Corporate Culture

Finally, to make any change stick, it should become part of the core of your organization. Your corporate culture often determines what gets done, so the values behind your vision must show in day-to-day work.

Make continuous efforts to ensure that the change is seen in every aspect of your organization. This will help give that change a solid place in your organization's culture.

It's also important that your company's leaders continue to support the change. This includes existing staff and new leaders who are brought in. If you lose the support of these people, you might end up back where you started.

What you can do:

Talk about progress every chance you get. Tell success stories about the change process, and repeat other stories that you hear.

Include the change ideals and values when hiring and training new staff.

Publicly recognize key members of your original change coalition, and make sure the rest of the staff - new and old - remembers their contributions.

Create plans to replace key leaders of change as they move on. This will help ensure that their legacy is not lost or forgotten.

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review. From " Leading Change" by John P. Kotter. Copyright © 2012 by the Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation; all rights reserved.

Kotter's 8-Step Model Infographic

See Kotter's model represented in our infographic:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kotter's 8-Step Change Model - Implementing Change Powerfully and Successfully

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn how Kotter's Change Model can help you prepare for change thoroughly so that you can implement it successfully.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Leadership Topics | Leadership Development Topics | CCL

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Leverage our research-backed leadership development topic modules to build a custom training for your team. We can deliver these leadership topics—or you can.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Roadmap: Middle School CoP Topics and Resources

# data[].attributes.body
COP topics/ideas

# data[].attributes.body
Are we listening for meaning or are we listening to send our own message?

https://youtu.be/-4EDhdAHrOg

# data[].attributes.body
Culture can be silent.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Forced Copy ALS: Reflection, Planning & Action Tool

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
educator skill-will matrix resources (1)

# data[].attributes.body
A list of engagement ideas!

# data[].attributes.body
Article.

# data[].attributes.body
A tool to evalulate the teams in your buildings.

# data[].attributes.body
A brief overview and explanation of MTSS.

# data[].attributes.headline
Effective Leadership within an MTSS Framework (Article)

# data[].attributes.subject
Effective Leadership within an MTSS Framework (Article)

# data[].attributes.body
Leadership roles within an MTSS framework; leading teams.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By: Dr. Kim Gibbons

The Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports (MTSS) framework has quickly emerged as a methodology for improving outcomes for all students. Through this framework, high-quality instruction is tailored to student needs and implemented using a data-based decision-making framework. In fact, a recent national survey of K-12 administrators indicated that 61% of respondents have fully implemented or are in the process of implementing an MTSS framework district-wide, up from 24% in 2007 (Spectrum K-12 Solutions, 2010). While it is encouraging that so many school districts around the country are implementing the MTSS framework, the focus needs to shift from implementation to sustainability. At this point, the problem for educators is not how to initiate MTSS; rather, it is how to implement changes in process and performance that will endure. We know that issues will arise, within individual districts, as implementation occurs on a national level. We can predict themes that will occur if key components are not addressed or not implemented with fidelity. The field of education is full of examples of school districts implementing an innovation with great enthusiasm at the beginning, but later abandoning it. MTSS could be the latest in the long list of programs that were "tried years ago." School leaders need to institutionalize MTSS in ways that preserve the positive changes and resist efforts to revert back to the old ways of doing things.
The Importance of Leadership
Leadership is second only to teaching in its impact on student achievement. Principals are responsible for 25% of school effects on student learning. The Wallace Foundation has produced study results indicating that when, (a) principals focus their efforts on improving instruction, (b) teachers trust the principal, and (c) the principal works to develop shared leadership within the building, higher scores on standardized tests of achievement result. Key leadership responsibilities include communicating a vision of high standards, creating an engaging and safe environment, encouraging leadership by others, focusing on improving instruction using data, and improving outcomes through collaboration. Meeting these responsibilities will require that instructional leaders (i.e., principals) are results-oriented and data-informed. They must be responsive to feedback and be effective communicators. Above all, they must work to build consensus and articulate a vision for the building that aligns with district priorities.

Effective principals realize that putting vision into action is only possible through setting ambitious goals and then mobilizing their teams to meet these goals. Conveying a clear vision, the intended benefits, and a plan of the supports that will be provided is thought to contribute toward readiness and acceptance when implementing a change. When we talk about vision as it relates to implementation of the MTSS framework, district leaders need to be cognizant of how MTSS relates to the district's strategic plan and goals. Efforts need to be made to explicitly communicate how MTSS fits within other district initiatives (e.g., braiding initiatives). For example, many districts are implementing professional learning communities (PLCs), benchmark assessments for all students, progress monitoring for some students, Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS), anti-bullying programs, standards-driven instruction, and pay-for-performance systems. A leader with good vision will explicitly show how each of these initiatives fit within an MTSS framework and are related to each other. Without this clear vision, staff members will be confused.
Necessary Components of an MTSS Framework
In a webinar conducted this week, I discussed five components that need to be addressed within an MTSS framework: (1) assessments, (2) data-based decision making, (3) multi-level instruction, (4) infrastructure and supports, and (5) fidelity and evaluation. Each is summarized below.
Assessments
Schools need to have assessment systems that address three areas. First, they need to have reliable and valid screening measures that are administered at multiple points per year to assist in evaluating the impact of universal instruction and to determine which students are exceeding, meeting, and not meeting grade level standards. Second, they need to collect diagnostic information on some students to determine skill gaps and target interventions. Third, they need to collect progress-monitoring data on students receiving interventions to determine if these interventions are effective. We never know in advance whether an intervention will be effective for a particular student. The only way to gauge effectiveness is to monitor progress using valid and reliable measures. Progress monitoring tools need to have multiple alternate forms of equal and controlled difficulty with minimum expected growth standards specified. Finally, educators need to recognize the importance of multiple sources of data when making decisions. Important decisions should never be made based on one piece of information.
Data-Based Decision Making
The process for data-based decision making requires that decisions about participation in intervention levels is data-driven, involves teams, and is operationalized with clear decision rules. Schools must have data systems in place to access data in a timely manner. These systems should allow for the graphical display of data and a process for setting and evaluating goals. In determining a student's response to intervention, decisions must be made using only reliable and valid data. In addition, the team members need to know how to interpret a student's rate of improvement as well as confirm whether the intervention was implemented accurately.
Multi-Level Instruction
Within an MTSS framework, there are typically three levels or tiers of instruction: universal (Tier 1), supplemental (Tier 2), and intensive (Tier 3). In designing effective universal instruction, attention should be taken to ensure that curriculum materials are research-based and aligned to standards. Teachers should be able to articulate teaching and learning standards both within their grade levels and across grade levels (below and above). Differentiated instructional practices should be used to ensure that students are receiving instruction close to their instructional level. Finally, opportunities should be implemented consistently across grade levels for students exceeding grade level expectations.

Supplemental instruction and interventions (Tier 2) should be evidence-based, aligned with universal instruction, and supplemental to universal instruction. All three of the following conditions must be met: (1) the interventions are standardized; (2) secondary-level interventions are led by staff trained in the intervention according to developer requirements; and (3) group size and dosage are optimal (according to research) for the age and needs of students.

Intensive instruction and intervention (Tier 3) needs to involve data-based interventions adapted to student needs and address the general curriculum in an appropriate manner for students. All of the following conditions must be met: (1) the intervention is individualized; (2) intensive interventions are led by well-trained staff experienced in individualizing instruction based on student data; and (3) the group size is optimal (according to research) for the age and needs of students.
Infrastructure and Support
This area involves the knowledge, resources, and organizational structures necessary to operationalize all components of MTSS in a unified system to meet the established goals. Necessary infrastructure includes a district-wide prevention focus, and leaders must make decisions that proactively support the essential components of the MTSS framework at the school. Additionally, support for MTSS needs to be a high priority. Building leaders must set up schedules that support multiple levels of instruction. School-based professional development must be institutionalized and structured so that all teachers continuously examine, reflect upon, and improve instructional practice, data-based decision making, and the delivery of interventions. Resources must be provided to support implementation, and structures need to be established to communicate regularly with parents and teachers. Finally, building teams must be established with clear structures and processes to guide decision making.
Fidelity and Evaluation
Finally, districts must regularly assess fidelity of implementation. Both of the following conditions should be met: (1) procedures are in place to monitor the fidelity of implementation of the core curriculum and secondary and intensive interventions; and (2) procedures are in place to monitor the processes of administering and analyzing assessments. Districts need to evaluate their implementation by establishing action plans and evaluating short- and long-term goals. Student data should be reviewed for all students and subgroups of students across the essential components to evaluate effectiveness of the MTSS framework (i.e., core curriculum is effective, interventions are effective, screening process is effective). Finally, implementation data (e.g., walkthroughs) should be reviewed to monitor fidelity and efficiency across all components of the MTSS framework.

In closing, we need to move from implementation to sustainability. Implementing an MTSS framework requires system change on many levels. Some researchers have suggested that school districts will have the best probability of implementation success if they implement the MTSS framework in phases over time. The hope is that educators and systems can institutionalize MTSS in ways that preserve the positive changes, and instill resilience to resist efforts to revert back to the old ways of doing things, and ultimately improve outcomes for all students!
Ki m Gibbons Ph.D., is the Associate Director of the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement at the University of Minnesota. Prior to that, she was the Executive Director of the St. Croix River Education District (SCRED) located in Rush City, MN. SCRED has received national recognition for its use of the Response to Intervention (RtI) framework. In 2007, SCRED received a legislative appropriation to fund a statewide Minnesota RtI Center for two years. Dr. Gibbons obtained her doctoral degree in school psychology from the University of Oregon where she received extensive training in the problem solving model, curriculum based measurement, and research-based instructional practices. Prior to her role as the Executive Director, Dr. Gibbons has worked as a director of special education, staff development coordinator, and school psychologist. She is active in state leadership and is the past-president of the Minnesota Association of Special Educators. Finally, she is the author or co-author of four books and has numerous other peer-reviewed publications.She is a sought-after consultant who has given numerous workshops throughout the nation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Effective Leadership within an MTSS Framework

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By: Dr. Kim Gibbons The Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports (MTSS) framework has quickly emerged as a methodology for improving outcomes for all students. Through this framework, high-quality instruction is tailored to student needs and implemented using a data-based decision-making framework.