Guerrilla RTI - Are we making this too difficult?

Washington Staff,

The "RTI" mentioned below is Response to Intervention (aka. IDM-Instructional Decision Making, Pyramid of Intervention, etc.). It is a term you may have heard and likely have attempted in some fashion during your time teaching. A building wide RTI process would be great - but we are not there yet.

This is why I liked this week's tip from Pat Quinn regarding "Guerrilla RTI." I know this is happening in our building through having paras read with students in the morning, a parent volunteer working with students from one classroom, and a teacher finding time to work one-on-one with a student outside the regular schedule.

As we work toward moving to a better building-wide "RTI" (math intervention, more consistent guided reading groups; three tier process, etc.), continue looking for ways to sneak in "Guerrilla RTIs!"

He who laughs, lasts
DB

From: rti@aweber.com on behalf of Pat Quinn
Sent: Wed 1/7/2009 11:28 PM
To: Doug Barry
Subject: Guerrilla RTI - Are we making this too difficult?

All too often, it seems, educators with the best intentions come together to do their RTI planning. Unfortunately, in many cases, the RTI process becomes paralyzed with the nuances of how to get started.

The conversation goes something like this: "Until we have our pyramid of interventions..." "Until we have the perfect screening..." "Until the team looks at the scores..." Until... Until... Until we have everything in place...nothing ever happens!

Nothing is more frustrating that being stuck in the "until" stage. I have seen the excitement about RTI fade as the hours become days and the RTI process turns into planning paralysis. The result is a last minute effort to get the planning done just to meet a deadline. Not good.
I'm here to tell you that you can avoid the frustration that comes from planning paralysis, and its easier than you think. The answer is Guerrilla RTI.

Guerrilla RTI is a "down-and-dirty version of RTI that is NOT as a permanent solution, but is a way to help kids while all the other pieces of RTI come together.

What does this new "Guerrilla RTI" look like? It's simple really:

Find a small group of students who share a common specific deficiency.
Choose an intervention that is research-validated to address that deficiency.
Find a time and a person to deliver the intervention to the small group.

That's "Guerrilla RTI" in a nutshell.

Is it perfect? Certainly not.

Does it help kids? It certainly does.

Let's say your school is stuck in the RTI implementation process, but you have a group of 5th grade students who still do not know their basic multiplication facts. Are you better off sending them off to middle school next year STILL not knowing their multiplication facts, or should you DO something?

You know the correct answer. So take those four students, choose and intervention, and find a time and a person to deliver it. Perhaps the teacher could spend 15 minutes during half of the students' lunch period implementing the intervention.

Never let "perfect" be the enemy of "good".

Let's say you have two students in your second grade class who struggle in a particular area such as Phonemic Decoding Efficiency. Your school is still evaluating TOWRE to see if it is the perfect progress monitoring tool, and there are other pieces of the puzzle still waiting to be put in place. WHY WAIT?

With Guerrilla RTI you could go to the other second grade teachers and ask if they have any students who are also struggling with Phonemic Decoding Efficiency. You might find that there are five students all together. Choose and intervention, find a time to do it, and GO! Perhaps each of the teachers could help the group one day a week during morning recess.

Let me be clear: I am not advocating that you throw out many of the important aspects of RTI such as outside observation for fidelity, progress monitoring, and the like. But I am advocating helping kids WHILE we create the perfect system.

So if you are frustrated like I am at the pace of change, consider implementing some Guerrilla RTI at your school while you wait!

As always, I'm happy to answer your question. Email me or check out www.response-to-intervention.com

Thanks!
-Pat Quinn"The RTI Guy"