MTSS for Social, Emotional, and Behavior

Hey there! This training is all about MTSS for social, emotional, and behavioral support. MTSS is one of those pieces of education lingo that we hear all the time, but that not everyone totally understands. So I’m sharing in this video what it is, some actual specifics about how it works, and how you might fit in as a school counselor. I’m going to be keeping this to like 20 to 30 minutes, so it’s not going to be a complete how-to guide, that would be an all-day training, but I think it will still be helpful for you.

So, what is MTSS? MTSS stands for Multi-Tiered System of Supports. It is generally described as a prevention-based framework for managing and making sure that every student is getting what they need to be successful, and that that decision is based on data, at least partly. Now, depending on where you work, you might hear it called PBIS, RTIB, MTSSB, or SWPBIS. The labels vary, but the core idea is the same. A tiered continuum of support that helps schools to respond to students’ social, emotional, and behavioral needs. The framework was designed to be proactive, which means that one of the big goals is to sort of catch students early before those concerns become more severe. This model is, of course, used academically. It started in the academic side of things, but for this video, we’re just focusing on social-emotional-behavioral concerns. Alright, here is the big picture. Tier 1 is universal, meaning every student receives it. When Tier 2 is strong, when we would consider Tier 1 to be working, then about 80 to 85% of your students will be meeting behavioral and social-emotional expectations without needing anything else. Tier 2 is targeted support for the roughly 10 to 15% of students whose data indicates that they need something beyond Tier 1, but don’t have a severe need. Tier 3 is intensive, usually individualized support for the small percentage of students, 1 to 5% of your students ideally, who have the highest needs. But the thing is that sometimes the line between tiers is squishy. Some people, uh, coordinate and implement Tier 2 interventions that are individualized, even though individualization is usually a Tier 3 thing. Some people provide intensive support that is Tier 3, but they’re doing it with small groups, so it’s not individualized. Some people consider individual counseling Tier 3 because it’s one-on-one. For other schools, it depends on how many sessions it is to determine what tier it is. As always, there’s lots of context and nuance, and the final labels are up to you and your school building.

But before we get into each of the tiers nitty-gritty, I want to talk about two things that come before the tiers themselves, the MTSS teams and the foundational layer of adult support that makes everything possible. Now, in an ideal model, each school has a dedicated MTSS team that includes administrators, counselors, social workers, behavior specialists, school psychs, maybe some relevant teachers. For students receiving tier two and tier three support, the student support team is meeting regularly to develop a plan for each student and assess their progress. In an ideal model, the teams are meeting every four to six weeks to discuss whatever data is being used to guide the intervention and make any needed changes. People are bringing to these meetings things like data on current students being supported with an intervention, names of students you’re just doing some watchful waiting, keeping an eye on, Maybe bigger level patterns across classrooms or grade levels that might indicate a Tier 1 concern. Now, unfortunately, the reality is that in a lot of buildings, this team is not as robust as what I just described. Sometimes a school counselor is doing that. Heavy lifting of coordinating, implementing, and monitoring most of the MTSS work largely on their own. The goal is always to move towards a truly shared system where it’s not all on your shoulders, but we start with what we have, right?

Now, this isn’t an official tier on most MTSS frameworks yet, but there’s also sort of an invisible Tier 0 in schools, and that’s the training and support for the grownups. It’s maybe less visible or talked about, but it’s pretty essential. The Institute of Education Sciences identifies supporting educator well-being as a key component of a well-functioning MTSS system. The idea is pretty simple. If the adults aren’t ready and educated and regulated themselves in these ways, everything else becomes a lot harder. This foundational layer of at Tier 0 grown-up MTSS has three parts. One, shared beliefs across the building with all the adults, faculty and staff training, and staff well-being and adult SEL. So the first piece of this and what it actually looks like is with shared beliefs. So before any intervention program can work well, there has to be alignment, agreement about why students struggle. And what they actually need, believing things like all students can grow socially, emotionally, behaviorally, the behaviors, communication, uh, that the relationship is often the foundation of an intervention and that prevention is more effective than reaction. Everybody’s got to be on the same page there. The second piece is faculty and staff training, professional development for adults in the building on things like de-escalation strategies, trauma-informed practices, morning meetings, community circles, and how to integrate social-emotional learning skills in the classroom and their instruction. And that third piece, staff well-being and adult SEL. Makes sense that that would be pretty foundational to student well-being. Adult well-being and SEL, right? Because the grown-ups are the models and the co-regulators, and that looks like the grown-ups having self-awareness and emotional regulation, grown-ups being able to manage their stress responses, and there being intentional relationship building with students and with one another as colleagues.

Now, moving on to the official tiers, the frameworks with the students. Tier 1, we said that’s what every student receives, right? It is universal, and it might look like having school-wide behavioral expectations that are taught, modeled, and practiced. Often this through PBIS. Some people interpret or define PBIS differently, but at its core, it is just these school-wide behavioral expectations. We teach them, we model them, and we practice them together. It could include an acknowledgement and reward system, but it doesn’t have to. Uh, Tier 1 might look like explicit social-emotional learning lessons for all students, daily mindfulness activities. Uh, Tier 1 could be classrooms all hosting morning meetings and or community circles. every classroom having a peace corner or some sort of calm down space, there are being proactive community building activities, whether within the classroom or within grade levels. And then other sorts of grade level or school-wide programming that you do, Career Day, Kindness Week, et cetera, all of that contributes to Tier 1. Some is going to be a little bit more explicitly tied to behavior, some is going to be a little bit more explicitly tied to social-emotional development, but again, it’s universal if everyone’s getting it, it’s Tier 1. Tier 1 also includes the work that we do with families and caregivers. This is particularly important, I think, in an elementary school because they play such a big role with their children. This could look like parent or caregiver workshops on SEL topics, handing out or sending home social emotional support. This could behavioral tip sheets, like handouts with helpful information and scripting. A lot of schools have curriculum nights, sometimes they’re specifically focused on math instruction or literacy, sometimes they’re combined. Maybe there’s one that’s all on social-emotional learning, or maybe you are able to kind of tag along on one of the academic instructional nights to incorporate an SEL piece. And it also looks like communicating with families to help them reinforce what the students are learning at school, socially, emotionally, and behaviorally, whether it’s just really clear communication around school-wide or classroom behavioral expectations, or maybe it’s sending home information to families about what’s being covered. in Tier 1 SEL instruction. Data, of course, is a core part of MTSS at every tier, including Tier 1. The question at this level is is our universal programming actually reaching most students? You might look at things like if you have a large percentage of students being referred for additional support, like a ton of students being referred to you for group counseling, or if you have a lot of students being referred for office discipline referrals, or maybe you’re looking at the data if you do a PBIS acknowledgement system, this could be looking at the percentage of students who are flagged in a universal screener if you’re using one, looking at attendance data, uhm, counseling referrals, again, from teachers or from students, could be looking at data from pre-post surveys or pre-post assessments that you’re using in Tier 1 lessons. You’re looking at all of that, and again, you know, you’re kind of hoping, again, that 80-85% of students seem to be being successfully having their needs met are meeting the expectations based on this tier 1 alone. If not, if this data is showing more than 15 to 20 percent of students are struggling, then the first question is, is tier 1 accurate? Actually, being fully implemented first. Maybe you have 30% of your students that need tier 2 support even with your tier 1 rocking and rolling, but it could be that tier 1 programming needs to be more fully implemented, needs to be revved up, needs to have more going on, or it could be, especially if the referrals are playing a role in your numbers, that teachers need help distinguishing between students who have a demonstrated need versus students who would simply benefit from support.

Now, let’s talk about Tier 2. At Tier 2, this means these are students who have demonstrated some behavioral or social-emotional risk that they have and we think they would be supported with interventions. These interventions are ideally targeted to a specific skill or area of need. They’re often being delivered in a small group setting, um, or through a protocol where multiple students are receiving the same Tier 2 support. Part of what makes this Tier 2 and not Tier 1 is it’s requiring a little bit more grown-up, like, staff time to student time. Of course, we’re hoping that it is tied to ongoing data and progress monitoring, but in the real world, it might not be, at least not for all of them, and that’s okay, too, sometimes. And students are also saying, it’s still receiving all of the Tier 1 support, so everything universally, whether it’s class lessons, morning meetings, access to a Calm Corner, or all of that, they are still continuing to receive, even if they’re also receiving a Tier 2 intervention.

But what if you implement one or more Tier 2 interventions and they just don’t seem to be working? That’s when the team considers Tier 3. If Tier 2 is working, is being implemented with fidelity, so students are getting the right amount of, like, dosage, the intervention or support is consistent, but the student is not responding, then it might be time to try a Tier 3 support. Now, what do I mean by not responding? That’s up to you and your team and is dependent on whatever data you’re collecting to determine, is this student making progress? Is this having an impact? Are we moving in the right direction? Yes or no? Or, maybe a student you identify as needing Tier 3 support from the very beginning. Like, if the data is indicating a really high-risk concern from Tier 3 support the start. Or, if their needs are too individualized for them to receive intervention in a group format or a more standardized format. Or, if their behavior is significantly impacting their safety. Or, I would add, sometimes, especially when we start talking about older students, if their social-emotional-behavioral concerns are starting to, um, significantly, like, if they’re stigmatizing, so safety, stigma, those would be other things that might mean that you might want to jump to more intensive tier 3 support to begin with. These intensive layer of supports they’re usually built around a student’s very specific profile versus a larger category. And they might look like this. This could be ongoing individual counseling. Sometimes, this is provided by the school counselor, but oftentimes, this also might be referral to the school social worker, if that’s their role in your district, to an outside provider, to a school-based provider. It might look like a functional behavior assessment and a behavior intervention plan. Now, behavior intervention plans can certainly be a tier 2 intervention, depending on what they look like. but if it’s highly individualized and it is connected to an FBA, we’re talking Tier 3 there. This might look like an alternate or modified schedule, crisis intervention planning, wraparound services and family coordination. So, this is going, like, above and beyond, you know, checking in with a parent every couple of weeks, or checking in with someone’s outside therapist every couple of weeks, but really providing wraparound support that can be more intensive. Referral for special education evaluation, or if they have an extended absence, whether it is due to physical hospitalization, mental hospitalization, school refusal, that reentry planning that’s going to be a tier 3 support.

So I mentioned earlier that of course ideally you should be using data to guide every step along the way in MTSS and that’s identifying which students need supports and also in evaluating the effectiveness of the supports. That second piece is progress monitoring, monitoring how a student is doing and whether or not they’re showing progress. Now sometimes progress monitoring data is the same data that is used for identifying student need in the beginning, like their office referrals. Other times it might be like the point sheet and check-in check-out. It could be an assessment that you’re using in group counseling. It could be specific behavior tracking that the teacher is doing, like looking at specific behavior and how frequently it’s occurring. Or it could be a single prompt, like rating the intensity of a student’s anger every day or every week. Those are all different examples of progress monitoring. Then you’re looking at that data and I think also getting some informal information from the teacher and maybe the student to ask questions like, is this student responding to the intervention? Are we noticing a reduction in negative behaviors, a reduction in their symptomology, the intensity of things, or no? Are we noticing a change? You’re asking, okay, do we continue with what we’re doing? Do we adjust it? Do we intensify It is. Is it working? Just plain old, is what we’re doing working right now? You might look at the data and you might also ask what do families and team members need to know? What needs to be, um, communicated to the other grownups in this student’s life about how the interventions are going. You might also be looking at some of this progress monitoring data and considering it in terms of like, how are you documenting it for yourself in your school counseling program and advocating for your program and for your students on sort of a broader scale? For example, I know that there are counselors who struggle with getting teacher or admin investment in small group counseling, especially in a lab setting. They’re trying for students to miss, you know, 30 minutes of academic instruction a week in order to participate. Having progress monitoring data is a really helpful tool in advocating for that because they’re seeing the need, they’re seeing the success, they’re seeing the effectiveness.

Alright, wrapping up, all of that is MTSS-B or MTSS for Social Emotional Behavioral Concerns. And while you may likely play a really big role in all of that, it should be bigger than the school counselor and the school counseling program. But there are some things that feel like immediate, natural connections to what you’re doing as a school counselor because, after all, MTSS aligns directly with the ASK-AN-ASK program. So when you’re doing MTSS-B, when you are participating in that process, a lot of the times, that’s part of also running a comprehensive school counseling program. So this looks like Tier 1, Classroom SEL Lessons, School-Wide Programming, Family Psychoeducational Support. That’s Tier 1 for MTSS. That’s also a core part of your school counseling program. Tier 2, your small group counseling, check-in, check-out coordination, providing short-term individual counseling, consulting with teachers, consulting with outside providers. That’s Tier 2. That’s part of the school counseling program. And in Tier 3, providing some type of individual counseling on a case-by-case basis, creating behavior intervention plans, providing crisis support, wraparound facilitation, and referring, coordinating some outside referrals. Again, Tier 3, and also you. Alright, that’s it for this little training video. It’s not everything you might need to know about MTSS-B, but I hope it gives you a clearer picture on what it actually is and how you fit in.