Principals can create a climate where teachers value interventions and make them part of their teaching plans. Here are some tips for helping teachers understand that interventions matter.
- Have teachers discuss the kinds of interventions they use at team and depart meetings.
- Focus some of your walkthroughs on observing the teacher circulating among students with a clipboard in hand and completing on-the-spot repairs or scheduling an exploratory conference.
- Invite teachers to share a successful intervention with colleagues at a faculty meeting.
- Organize professional book study groups that focus on interventions; join a group so you model your investment. Give teachers choice of books and purchase them using school funds.
- Invite teachers to share the Tier 1 instructional practices that are working in their classrooms.
- Invite teachers to share students’ work that shows progress because of interventions.
Because the classroom teacher is the key to helping a diverse group of learners improve, it’s important to help teachers enlarge their knowledge of how to intervene and also to celebrate their success with a note from you!
Two Book Suggestions for Professional Study Groups
- RTI From All Sides: What Every Teacher Needs to Know, K-8, by Mary Howard, Heinemann, 2009
- The Reading Intervention Toolkit by Laura Robb, 4 to 8, Shell Education, 2016
Evan Robb, Principal Johnson Williams Middle School and author of:
The Principal’s Leadership Sourcebook, Scholastic, 2007.
Follow Evan Robb on Twitter: @ERobbPrincipal
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