the family’s living expenses. Jacob’s aunt often cares for him and his siblings along with her three younger children. Some days, Jacob’s aunt asks the older children to watch the younger children. Jacob’s role as caregiver means he often makes his brother, sister, and cousins breakfast, helps them get dressed, organizes their lunches and backpacks, and walks them to their classrooms. Jacob is sometimes late to his own class or absent on these mornings.
Jacob and his siblings have witnessed varying degrees of violence and drug use in the community. His dad’s work demands make it hard to have routines, like a set bedtime or homework time. Jacob and his siblings sometimes don’t have meals at home. Jacob is often hungry but feels ashamed to ask for extra food at school, while watching other students waste theirs.
Despite these traumas, Jacob likes school. Jacob enjoys numbers and logic puzzles and has experienced success in mathematics. He has good peer relationships and generally fits in well in classes. When he is attentive, his teachers remark that he is a good contributor and can be seen smiling. When he is not, his teachers become concerned about the impact of Jacob’s inattentiveness on his learning and of his disruptions on others’ learning. When Jacob becomes frustrated, he lashes out verbally, and occasionally, physically. Staff recognize that detentions and other negative consequences that have been assigned are having little impact but don’t know of other strategies. They want a consistent approach for all students, and not separate rules for Jacob. Jacob’s father is busy and has a difficult time committing to school appointments, but when his father has met with staff, he has expressed his respect and support for a good education. He wants a better life for Jacob and his other children.
Jacob wishes his teachers knew that school is important to him. His realities outside of school make it challenging for him to always manage, monitor, and regulate his behaviors. He’s often hungry and tired. He tries to push through these feelings, but it doesn’t always work. His absences and tardies are increasingly contributing to difficulties.
Jacob’s situation is, unfortunately, not unique. There are many, many students in the North American school system facing familial and financial challenges just like Jacob’s—and students with needs that are slightly less dramatic are even more common. In fact, over half of U.S. students live in poverty (Suitts, 2015). Jacob’s story provides critically important context for the causes—loss of a parent, economic struggles, food scarcity, violence, or lack of structure at home—behind what many teachers may simply pass off as troublesome classroom behavior. We should continue to strive for classroom environments in which students are engaged and attentive, complete the work assigned to them, and demonstrate clear progress at the end of the unit compared with the beginning. The truth is, many students around North America experience difficulties displaying such behaviors because their life situations have presented challenges in mastering these skills. When home, health, and hunger are unreliable variables, successful self-regulation may vary too. Let’s continue to expect and recommit to teach and support, and let’s do so with empathy.
Students are inherently and intrinsically creative and curious, but they also long for safe and predictable environments that allow them chances to develop such skills as exercising autonomy, practicing independence, demonstrating competence, growing in learning, and forming relationships and connections (Ryan & Deci, 2000). These behavioral skills foster complex thinking and social-emotional growth (Denton, 2005), which lead to success not only in classrooms but also in life.
All students deserve that we, as educators, nurture their behavioral skills as well as their academic skills. Doing so should not be difficult—both sets of skills require students to learn problem solving, metacognition, and critical thinking, so there should be some degree of overlap in what is taught. However, in an attempt to cover the increasing number of academic state standards and ensure our students are compliant, we have lost sight of our responsibility to consider our students’ fundamental behavioral needs—those skills that form the foundation of an education and a life.
I passionately believe that the most important instructional and behavioral principles and practices for students—differentiation, growth mindset, self-assessment, metacognition, and perseverance, to name a few—are inextricably related. Research finds that these skills are mutually reinforcing concepts that will improve student engagement, nurture noncognitive skills, and lead to greater academic performance (see, for example, Farrington et al., 2012). Instruction in one behavioral skill should positively affect the development of other skills, serving overall to improve school, career, and life outcomes for students.
This book builds on a research-based model of instruction and supports that is already familiar to educators—response to intervention, or RTI. This introduction presents to educators what RTI can be, should be, and truly is—the what and why of RTI, and how it applies to behavioral instruction. It defines behavioral skills and discusses the need for behavioral supports for all students—not just those displaying contrary behavior—since behavioral skills are necessary for any student to be successful in school, college, career, and life. It helps educators apply the latest information from research studies on behavior and its impacts on success to skills they can teach in their classrooms. Finally, it encourages readers to embrace the notion that behavioral skill development is a critical part of the educational experience and that each and every student has the capacity to learn and display positive behavioral skills. As stakeholders in the school community, educators, including administrators, should ensure that their learning spaces reflect an appreciation for and knowledge of behavioral skills, such that students in their classrooms view school as a welcoming environment that teaches, models, and nurtures behavioral skills.
Introducing Behavioral RTI
While educators have appreciated the importance of student behaviors as a necessary foundation on which to complete the “real work” of academics, many now recognize that behavioral skills are as important as, and perhaps more important than, academic skills. Whether we label behavioral skills as noncognitive skills, self-regulation, executive functioning, social-emotional learning, or more specifically as grit, self-control, or social intelligence, student mastery of these behavioral skills better predicts success in school, college, and life than test scores and measures of intellectual ability (Borghans, Golsteyn, Heckman, & Humphries, 2016; Duckworth, Quinn, & Tsukayama, 2012; Duckworth & Seligman, 2005; Heckman & Kautz, 2012; Noftle & Robins, 2007; Poropat, 2009). We as educators must collectively embrace this reality and better nurture these skills within our students. But how? The simplest solution is simply to take what we’ve already been doing with academics and apply the same process to behavior.
One of the most common models for teaching academic skills to students—all students—is RTI. According to RTI experts Austin Buffum, Mike Mattos, Chris Weber, and Tom Hierck (2015):
RTI is a systematic process of tiered support to ensure every student receives the additional time and support needed to learn at high levels. RTI’s underlying premise is that schools should not delay providing help for struggling students until they fall far enough behind to qualify for special education, but instead should provide timely, targeted, systematic interventions to all students who demonstrate the need (Buffum et al., 2012). Traditionally, the RTI process is represented in the shape of a pyramid. (p. 8)
Buffum and colleagues (2015) offer an illustration of that pyramid (figure I.1, page 4) and go on to explain its components:
Source: Buffum et al., 2015, p. 8.
Figure I.1: The RTI pyramid.
The pyramid
