The Power of Collaborative Response with Kurtis Hewson

Speaker A: Welcome everyone to the Ed Essentials Podcast, the show where education meets leadership. My name is Hunter Flesch and I'm a school administrator and your host for this show. If you're new here, this podcast is for aspiring and current school leaders who want to grow their leadership skills and who also want to feel more prepared for roles like assistant principal, principal, or school leadership positions. Whether you're just starting to explore leadership or you're already in the seat, you're you'll find real practical strategies here to help you lead with clarity and confidence. If you ever have questions, ideas or just want to connect with me, feel free to reach out. My email is edessentials.networkmailuh.com or just follow me on social media by following Essentials. Now for today's guest, we have Curtis Hewson. Curtis is a former teacher and administrator, an award winning educator, and the co founder of Jigsaw Learning. He's also the co author of the book Collaborative Response which is all about building school wide systems to support students through teamwork and intentional practices. Curtis works with schools and districts across the U.S. canada and beyond, helping them shift from reactive to proactive support models and strengthening the way teams respond to student needs. In this episode we'll talk about what collaborative response actually looks like in action, uh, how leaders can get started with it, and why systems and clarity matter more than ever in today's schools. Thanks so much for tuning in. Now let's get started. As you very well know, for school leaders, we're already thinking about next year. We're already thinking about all the things that we want to change, um, and implement and improve. And so really the big reason why I brought you on today is to talk about this concept of collaborative response. So that's going to be the focus of today's conversation. Curtis, for those who maybe aren't familiar with you and your platform, could you just give a brief overview of who you are, your background and your current platform and the work you're doing?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So, ah, educator, former administrator, taught at the post secondary level and oh boy, for nearly two decades I've been working on this um, framework that we refer to as Collaborative Response. My wife Lorna and I have been engaging with schools and it's been the last nine years that I work exclusively now with schools and school districts implementing this framework that has such an amazing impact on uh, on not only how we're responding to the needs of students, but how we are building the collective capacity and efficacy of our staff team. At the same Time. So the work started off as I was a principal in a school, never intending to engage in something that would be, um, looked at or examined or even considered by others. We were just trying to figure out a way to support the needs of our students, ensure no one was slipping through the cracks and leverage the centuries of teaching experience that we had in the building. Amazing teachers in this building. But we were not maximizing our collective expertise in a really meaningful and intentional way. And that's where this all started.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I first discovered you by listening to your episode with Casey Watts. Um, and all of her focuses on clarity, uh, frameworks and clarity cycles. And so her work and listening to you speak about collaborative response really resonated with the work. And again, I'm a second year assistant principal trying to do the same work you've done is, hey, we've got this amazing collective expertise. We have amazingly dedicated teachers who truly do want the best for student needs. However, we do have some big challenges in schools. And that's the nature of the game in any school. Right? You're going to have challenges no matter what. But how do you utilize the collective, uh, expertise that's in the room and for you and for myself, in the role of a school leader? How do we put our staff in the best of positions possible through this framework or type of response to be successful? So tell us a little bit more about your book, Collaborative Response. Uh, you mentioned there's three foundational components. So could you walk through those components and then why are they so essential, um, for schools?

Speaker B: Absolutely, Hunter. And it's. The framework itself is simple. The complexity is implementation and trying to connect these three foundational components. And as we talk through our conversation, I'm going to challenge yours, um, and the audience's thinking a little bit with four really contradictory statements that go against some of the things that we do and understand in education, but are really fundamental to this collaborative, collaborative response framework. So, three fundamental components. The first is collaborative structures and processes. How do we create opportunities for teams to come together? That's the first piece. Uh, and if you can picture in your mind three puzzle pieces going together, and this collaborative structures and processes is twice as large as the other pieces. Um, so they come together and the reason it's twice as large is I believe, and we've seen it through the work, that without effective structures and opportunities for people to work together, the other two pieces have limited. They have some impact, but limited impact. The second piece is data and evidence. How do we utilize information that we have to help inform those conversations. And the third is a continuum of supports. And I'll talk through that how we get really clear on how we're supporting students. We used to refer to it as a pyramid of interventions. Very consistent with a lot of the language around, uh, professional learning communities at the time. And this, um, was mid-2000s, when we were starting off, and response to intervention was just starting to emerge in the literature. We found out over time that actually a pyramid of interventions is somewhat limiting and doesn't accurately describe what we've come to see as the power of a continuum of supports. So, uh, understanding the three pieces is, like I said, fairly easy. It's how you put them together that takes time and intentionality. We usually say, for schools engaging in this work, it's year two and three when you really start to see how it all connects. The first year is figuring out each of those three pieces.

Speaker A: Right. So, Curtis, walk me through. When you were in the building, right. And you were in that position, uh, of leadership, which piece did you really feel like you had to start with? And for a lot of associate principals, and kind of selfishly myself, I'm still trying to establish systems within my building of how do I want this cycle to run, or how do I want to put my people to work, and how do I want to utilize the collective talent. But I also know data is a really important piece, and my teachers maybe don't have the time to do the data analysis. Uh, so I've taken a big role, uh, in that aspect this year for maybe those assistant principals or principals starting out. Where do you recommend that they start?

Speaker B: So here's the beauty of it is we had all of these pieces already in the building. We just hadn't thought through them and put them together. And the great news is, when we start to explain this framework to schools, there's easy identification areas where they can go, oh, we've got that, we've got that. It's just we haven't connected it in a really tight and consistent way. So I'm going to start first, uh, with the collaborative structures and processes. And we describe four layers of team that every school needs. And I've now worked with schools that have 15 students. I've worked with schools that have 5,000 students. I've worked with kindergarten, uh, to grade 12s, rural schools, large metro high schools. And these four layers apply in every situation. In a small rural school, it might be the same people in all these layers of team because we only have four people in the building. Um, so let's Describe these layers. And Hunter, I'm going to ask for you to jump in if you can recognize these, because the first contradictory statement that I'm going to share is that we are going to reduce the number of meetings in our building by adding one more. And again, mathematically that does not make any sense how we're reducing meeting by adding. But you're going to see what this, what I mean by this. So our first layer, and we had it in our building, we didn't recognize that it was part of four layers. Um, it wasn't until years after that you could reflect back and go, oh my goodness. All these layers were highly, highly aligned and intentional. We had grade level teams and we had two to three classes per grade level. Each of those teachers, initially, when I came into the building, they had a 30 minute planning time. Every week we did some creative timetabling to increase it to 60. We started to get really clear on what people were doing during that time. We refer to this now as the collaborative planning layer. Okay. So the idea of the collaborative planning is we have opportunities for teachers to come together, primarily teachers. Um, as an administrator, I want to set the conditions or the structures for that, but it doesn't mean that I'm going to be joining those conversations all the time. Um, I'm of course going to be coming into review to support, but my involvement is not needed at that collaborative planning layer. And the idea is that we are engaging in work that is going to benefit all sorts of. So our grade level teams were looking at their data. They were identifying areas that they were setting goals. Does this sound like anything that you do in your building right now, Hunter?

Speaker A: Absolutely does. It sounds like, uh, plc. It sounds like exactly. We do that with grade level teams. Four or five teachers coming together. Usually a mentor's leading it. But yes, their focus is typically around the tier one. What are all students receiving?

Speaker B: 100%. Okay. And so schools that have strong PLC structures get really excited with this because I'm going to describe how for us it was a great foundation, but something else was needed. Okay, I'm going to skip the second layer and go to the third. The third layer in my school it was, and we had about 350 students. Um, it involved myself as the principal, the assistant principal, our learning support teacher, and we had a family school liaison that we shared with the high school. Essentially the four of us were meeting every week, every Thursday morning, and we were discussing students who needed supports beyond the classroom. Now, sometimes our convers, we often didn't involve Teachers in this conversation. Because with all due respect, sometimes the conversation was about the teachers. Okay. And so it meant prior to the conversation, one of us might go and observe a classroom, one of us might have a conversation with a teacher, we might have a follow up where he said, okay, whose responsibility is it to go and talk to Hunter to figure out what else is going on with this student that's been referred. This group was determining which students need support beyond the classroom. Who do we need to be referring to? Maybe our district level for support? What is some professional learning that we might have to engage in to help support? Because we're having lots of these issues coming up. Maybe it's okay right now this teacher is struggling in this area. Great teacher. But here's an area that we could help focus. Who can go in and help provide some support? Or in time it might be how do we connect the teacher in 2C with this teacher to be able to help support one another? Because there's some expertise three doors down. Um, we often refer to this layer, we call it the school support team layer. And I've worked with large high schools where they don't have one of those. They have several. I worked with one high school where there's a grade 10, um, student services team, a grade 11, a grade 12. Then they also had a counseling, um, team that was looking specifically at mental health supports. But essentially it's a layer where we're looking at students who need support beyond the classroom. Most of the time in a US setting, this is connected highly to your special ed specialists. Does that make sense?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely does. It sounds. So in my building we utilize what's called a student assistance team. So that's a team that. Where again, we focus on mental health outside struggles. Who do we need to connect with community services? Um, but yes, that's our administrators, social worker, school, um, based therapist. And so we meet every couple of weeks, I think every three weeks, um, to kind of give an update on family situations that have changed, student situations that have changed, just to see how we can provide that additional support. It's less, we have less conversations about teachers in that meeting. But I think it's because we have different frameworks and systems in place to

Speaker B: talk about that, but keep going and that's perfect. So I've described two of the four and you've already said we've got two of those now in the work. We, of course then, um, I work with some schools who say we have PLCs, but the structure is not really well defined. And in my school, our teacher said, oh, yeah, we have PLCs at a grade level. But then sometimes you come into those conversations and realize m you're talking about who's bringing what to the next bake, uh, sale at the school. And sometimes they were not meeting this week because we have to do some marking or sometimes, sometimes we meet and we discuss who's going to get the bulletin board. Um, pretty outside of our classrooms. Um, we had to tighten some of those conversations. And so in these layers, I often say, you're always going to be tweaking and refining and connecting, especially with where I'm going to go here in a little bit. So the fourth layer. And the thing you'll note is that as we go from that collaborative planning layer, um, and it's interesting that you said tier one, we're going to make that connection here in a little bit. Um, you notice that the administrator involvement is intensifying as we're going up. The teacher involvement is, um, reducing. And what I mean by that is the teacher and the focus on instruction is everything to do with the collaborative planning layer. By the time we get up to this fourth layer, it might not be about the teacher at all. Okay, so the fourth layer, every school is going to say, yep, we've got this layer now. There's always refinements and tweaks that we can do to make it as effective as possible. We call this the case consult, um, team fourth layer. And essentially the easiest definition is anytime we're getting together to talk about one kid and we're bringing all the necessary players around the table that falls into this case consult. In my school, we didn't call anything the case a, uh, case consult meeting. It was just a broad category. So when we would have a meeting with the parents to establish individualized student goals as part of their individualized program plan, that would fall into this layer. Sometimes when there was a crisis in the school and we needed to bring in, uh, additional supports, sometimes we might have social, um, services or police involved in some of those conversations, um, that would fall into this layer. But essentially one kid. And when I've laid out these layers to, uh, schools before and have them start to identify what do we have, what's in place, what could use some refinement. I went with a large high school and they went, oh, my goodness. We have a lot of structures that fall into that case consult layer. And they were good structures. They were really effective. But this was a school of 1200 kids and they were trying to solve things. One kid at a time, they looked at that, this layering and went, oh my God. Goodness. No wonder we feel exhausted. So, um, Hunter, we had these layers. We didn't understand how they were working together, whatnot. It wasn't until actually, ah, years after explaining this to other schools, where you go, oh my goodness. These other schools have all similar things. We need to think through what this means. And what we were finding is even with the great teaching staff that we had, there was too many students reaching that third and fourth layer. Sometimes there was times where we would go, this isn't a conversation that belongs here. It belongs back in the classroom. Sometimes it felt like a handoff. And what I mean by that is a teacher saying, well, I've done everything. Here, you take them. And, uh, in all truthfulness, lots of times they had really, really done a lot for that student. But then sometimes the answer was two doorways away and we didn't have mechanisms to leverage it. So we introduced, um, a meeting structure that we called the collaborative team meeting, and it changed everything. What we found through introducing this at the second, this is our second layer. M By introducing this meeting and refining it over time, it evolved and it's become a very powerful structure. By adding that, we see the reduction in the number of students getting to those third and fourth layer conversations. And the ones that do are the ones who absolutely need to be there. So let me describe this collaborative team meeting. It's evolved, it's changed, uh, over time. And it's the things that we learned in it also bled into the other meeting structures. But we come in and a. It's highly formalized. It needs a facilitator. Um, and I often say, as an administrator, you should probably start as the facilitator. In time, we can get people feeling comfortable to take on that role. But I want my teachers and then bring in administrator, bring in my special ed, um, different personnel that we have expertise. And this is what the conversation looks like, Hunter. And it can start with the PLCs. In fact, when we started, we, we had weekly time embedded for our grade level teams. And then we started to say, okay, every fourth time, essentially once a month, we're gonna transform the conversation into this. Now, the beauty is using the structure I'm about to say to you, we've seen schools where they start mixing their PLC groups. And what I mean by that is high schools where I meet as a science department for my collaborative planning, that first layer, we meet in cross departments for this collaborative team meeting, the second layer, and it's powerful. Let me describe what this looks like. So we of course start off, we have norms established. In fact, all of these layers. I would suggest some of the things we've learned is you need norms, you need roles. We need to clearly, uh, indicate who's our timekeeper, who's our recorder. Just good meeting structures. Um, and when schools say, oh, uh, we don't need those, we collaborate great already, my response is, that's fantastic. Trust me, if you introduce these structures, you're going to accelerate, um, your collaborative efforts even further. You think you're collaborating well now just wait. So we're going to put these structures. Then the meeting starts like this. Every teacher has come ready with a pre meeting organizer that in time is going to be connected to data and evidence. I'll get there, but it's going to start with come ready with two students in mind. Because we're going to start the conversation. We're going to set a timer for 10 minutes, let's say. And the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to go around and say, and as a facilitator, I'm going to say Hunter, who's a student that you've brought to celebrate. And you're going to say, I have Daniel. And I've been just super impressed with Daniel's growth in, um, application of mathematical strategies. We've been teaching different strategies and he's really starting to apply them. Now the next question and sorry, when we started this, we would went, oh, that's awesome. And we would have typed it in our notes and then we would have said, okay, another teacher, what celebration do you have? We've now learned and sorry, I realized I start talking fast as I get excited about this.

Speaker A: You're good. I'm loving it.

Speaker B: So when you say that, we say, what do you think you did that led to that success? That's the most critical conversation. And we often say, uh, don't skip the celebrations. Celebrations are critical because that question is doing three things. First, I'm prompting a deeper level of reflection for teachers. You're going to have to think. And when you say, I don't know, it's a miracle. The kid just must be maturing. I'm not going to take that. I'm going to ask a little bit deeper. When you say maturing, what do you mean? Well, I think the parents have been helping out more. How do you know that the parents are helping out more? What have you done that have assisted the parents? We're trying to get it uh, back to me reflecting on what I've done as a teacher or what we've done as a team. The second thing this does is that when you say, well, one of the things I did that seems to really help Daniel is each one of these computational strategies I've been teaching, I've been naming them based on the kids names in the room. I call this Daniel Strategy because he's the one who's explained it to the other kids. This is Tanisha strategy. Someone in that room is going to go, that's genius. I would love to see what that looks like. We often say it's a great opportunity to just open up your toolbox because somebody, you're going to say, oh, it's nothing special. This is what I do. And someone in the room was going to say, I want to see a copy of that. That sounds phenomenal. Or in that cross department example that I shared earlier, it might be the. Well, in our science department, one of the things we've been doing is this. And it seems to be having success. Someone in humanities is going to go, interesting and, and we start seeing cross pollination between teams for this. Okay, this is not the exciting part, but it's, it's a big part because after those 10 minutes of celebrations, we're now going to do this. We're going to say, hunter, I know you've brought a student in mind. Don't say their name, please. What's a key issue that you're experiencing for that student? We often say on that pre meeting organizer that it's eight words or less. We're trying to get it down, concise. And when you go, I'm thinking of a kid, but trust me, I can't narrow it to one key issue. This is where our layers of team are so important because we say, okay, well then that's probably a conversation for one of our more intensive layers. Let's chat after this meeting. Okay, so when you come and say, um, all right, don't uh, share the name, you say, okay, the student. I have my key issue. And what we try and do is, is in time start to have overarching focus for these meetings. So in my school improvement plan, I may have a goal focused on literacy achievement, numeracy achievement and well being this meeting we've said, okay, the overarching focus is literacy. Next meeting. The overarching focus is numeracy. I often say to schools, pick one focus to start with and get good at the process and then you can expand it out. So let's say We've said today's focus is literacy. And I bring forth that I have a student who the key issue is inferencing. They can read something and not infer what the meaning is behind it. Now we might ask a couple questions to be able to say, do you think it's English, uh, as a second language, um, concern with this student. When you say, no, I just think they have difficulty recognizing key points for understanding. Then we go, okay, notetaker. Our key issue is, um, inability to identify key points for inferencing. Then we say, all right, everyone else, write down the name of a student who you also see this happening for. We used to do it. That you would share the name and say, this is my key issue. And some schools are able to do it. And then we go around and say, I have these two kids. You have this one kid. You have a student. But we've started in the last little while not saying the name because it's just far too enticing for someone in the room to go, oh, yeah, I had Tanisha before, um, and then someone else jumps in. I taught her sister, I taught her mother. It goes down these rabbit holes. And what we're trying to do is be really concise. So we say, all right, everyone write down the name of a student that you have. And what we're doing is we're trying to get the attention off the student and also off the teacher and for the teacher to understand. It's not a badge of shame when you say, I have this and I'm struggling with it. It's expected when other people go, yeah, I got a couple students I can write down. It's the level of vulnerability goes just right through the roof. Then what we do is we say, all right, let's go, guys. What could we do to respond to this? And you jump in and say, one of the things I do is when reading, I have highlighters, and the kids have to highlight the keywords. Now someone else will jump in and say, interesting. I've done something like that. But I actually get the kids with scissors to cut apart the key, uh, phrases within there. And then someone else will go, that's an interesting idea. I wonder if on my smart board, I could almost do, like a cover, uh, up. And kids have to guess what would be the thing there. And someone else will say, you know, when I have students read, I often get them to do a turn and talk, to explain what they've seen. Uh, and someone else is going to jump in. That's a good Idea. What if we could do that model, uh, it in front of the class so in this time. And we set timers. It's not intended to be a long, but we're just opening everybody's toolbox. Everybody is sharing things. Often in this, I see people taking notes, writing things down. Someone will mention I use this website and someone else will go, I'd never heard of that. What is the name of it again? Whatnot. And in time, this starts to connect to our continuum of supports as well. But from this conversation, then we come back and say, hunter, what's one thing? First off, what's the student's name that you were thinking of? Just a name, no story. And what's one thing you're going to try for that, uh, kid from this conversation? And we make note and we say, are you going to, going to try that next week? Let's put a timeline on it. And then we go to the next teacher and say, what is the student that you were thinking of and something that you want to try? So everyone leaves with actions from this. And then we move to another teacher and okay, what key issue have you brought today? And we repeat the process in a conversation. We might go through that three to usually two to four times in the conversation, but you can see we creating an atmosphere where a no idea is getting judged. In time, the ideas start to align to our continuum so that we can start really promoting the things that we know have impact for students. But we often say this highly formalized collaboration leads to incredible impact in the informal conversations that happen in the hallways, in the staff room parking lots after it. We saw it in our school at a time when we did not have this structure really well refined yet. But the collective capacity just started to grow. And all of a sudden we started. Students that were getting referred to that school support team layer, that third layer, they weren't happening anymore because we were building up capacity at the classroom. Every one of those conversations, everyone's toolbox was just getting a little bit deeper every time. The collaborative team meeting, that second layer, is absolute gold for schools. And again, we say, you're probably going to do this seven times, eight times in a school year. If you're thinking every three to five weeks, we're going to interject and you might go, uh, a, uh, once a month meeting. Is that really going to change trajectory of my school? And yep, it has huge impact.

Speaker A: Oh, there's so many things that I want to ask about this now. Um, and what I really, really, really appreciate for those that are List everything that you're doing. This whole framework, the intentionality behind it, it's ultimately what you just spoke to. It's improving culture. You're creating a culture of problem solvers, capacity builders. Um, and I love that this framework takes away the judgment that we often place on kids, whether consciously or unconsciously. Right. We all believe that teachers have best intentions, but I know you and I have sat in countless meetings where. Oh, yep, I did have so and so. And oh, uh, they're coming in from second grade to third grade. You better watch it. Like, there's all these judgment calls that get made and it.

Speaker B: And then there's. There's that sense of defeat sometimes that can come from those conversations of, well, there's not much we can do until the parents do this. Until we get more funding. Until, until, until, until. And what we're doing is flipping this to say, nope, we what? Here's the key issue. What could we do? It changes. We often say you're adopting a collaborative response mindset. Don't think of it as a thing, think of it as a way of thinking. It's how we collaboratively respond to the needs of our students. But we're doing it in a way that everybody's getting stronger through the process. Mhm.

Speaker A: Yeah. This is simply how we do business here. We don't tell stories, we don't judge, we don't get caught down rabbit holes. We share, we collaborate, we provide each other strategies and collectively. Because that was one of my questions is about how do you build collective efficacy with this and buying into the system? Well, you kind of mentioned it, right. So many teachers, how do they feel good about their jobs? They want to be able to feel progress. Right. They want to see that their students are succeeding or they want to feel that individual progress like they are growing as an educator. And so when you mentioned this collaborative team meeting structure and it is focused on a celebrations, right. The fact that we are doing great things and that we're gonna take time to truly recognize your individual impact. Kids are learning it because of you, not in spite of you and Hunter.

Speaker B: I'm gonna jump in with that. We start to see the celebrations infused into every one of these layers. When we have a meeting about a student where things are going completely off the rails and there's some hard conversations we're gonna have to have, we still start that conversation with the parent, the guardians at the table, to be able to say, okay, before we launch into what are the key concerns, what are some things we could celebrate that small Little change, absolutely. Changes framework or ways of discussing and thinking within the school. Because again, we're going to come back and say, yeah, but what did we do that led to that success?

Speaker A: Right? And it really disarms folks too, like whether, you know, you've sat in an IEP meeting before and you know, you can have some, some tense parents or hostile, uh, parents that are really defensive or even just teachers, right, who have this sense of they've been struggling with this student all year long and for months and months and months they've been going through this and you force the 10 minutes almost in the beginning to say, stop. We're going to talk positively, we're going to share strengths. Because then you do recognize, oh man, I am seeing, even if it's small, I am seeing growth. And 100%, uh, so much of what I see in my role as an associate principal in supporting teachers particularly, you know, and you mentioned a lot of the academic and my role in particularly with the behavior side is how do I help build this confidence and this tolerance with teachers to understand kids first and lead with that mindset. And I think a response structure like this or meeting structure like this really helps that. Um, because you're not just caught up in what the kid is doing, um, but you're more focused on what can I do to help intervene or how can I lean on the collective, uh, power and intellect of my team to try something new and different 100%.

Speaker B: So there's a couple of things that happen. The second contradictory statement that I'll share that comes true in that collaborative team meeting is we are going to attend to the needs of our students by not focusing on the student. And again, that sounds ludicrous, uh, just face value, but we're really trying to take the attention off the student and put it to what is that key issue that we're seeing? Because we're going to explore that. And one of the things that we've found through this, which I know listeners are going to be excited about too, is yep, we were, we were better equipped to respond to the needs of kids. But the teacher well being aspect, sorry, uh, not just teacher staff because we would try and bring our paraprofessionals into these conversations as well and other people on our staff, um, the well being just started to really grow. Um, and the idea of, um, nobody feels isolated, nobody feels on their own or on an island with this. No, we're work together on this. There is no such thing as your kid or my kid. They're our. And how do we support one another? And I've heard this over and over from teachers of saying, I feel supported like never before. And they're not meaning just from their administrators, they're meaning from their colleagues. All of a sudden, uh, again, one large high school where someone said, I would never talk to that one person, and not that I don't get along, but they're on the other end of the building. I just, I don't get to pass them often. But now I'm in a collaborative team meeting. I'm hearing something that a teacher in the cosmetology lab is doing that's working for a kid. And I'm going, that's fantastic. All of a sudden, next time I pass them in the hallway, I'm jumping in to say, hey, from what you shared the last day, how's that been going for you? Or I'm going to run down to your room because I would love to see how you've set up that one anchor chart you were talking about in, uh, the room. It's phenomenal. And what we start to do, Hunter, and this becomes also really exciting is in time, we start connecting data and evidence into all of these layers. But specifically, the collaborative team meeting and our contradictory statement there is we are going to provide support for our most at risk students by not focusing on them. Now, again, at face value, that sounds ludicrous. And nowhere in here am I saying we're going to ignore kids. We're going to use our layers. And so when someone says what you're describing, you're losing the story of the student. Um, and I am a big believer that the story matters, but not in the collaborative team meeting. It matters in the other layers. And when I get to a case consult, 100%, I want to understand the family dynamics, what's gone on, what worked last year that isn't working this year. We want to go in depth, but in the collaborative team meeting, we don't. And if I were to ask you right now to say, hey, do you have a student that you're thinking of that you could bring to this conversation, where would your head go to for what type of student would first pop into mind for you or your colleagues?

Speaker A: For me, I'd go straight to your tier three or the kid that I'm responding to the most behavior calls to that kind of lowest hanging fruit, Right? Yeah.

Speaker B: And so what we say is, in time, we start color coding our data. So being able to say based on this data set, and it might be connected to, let's Say we have a literacy screener that we're utilizing. It might be that we've created a well being criteria for our students. I've seen lots of different ways to collect data and information, but we say color code it so that we can say these four simple color designations. Red is going to be students that are not meeting expectations. The they're furthest away from the bar. Yellow is going to be approaching, they're getting close. Green is their meeting expectations, and blue is their exceeding. What we do in the collaborative team meeting is we say come ready with a student that the data says is yellow. And what's a key issue? We're essentially trying to focus on kids who are close. They're at the cusp now. There's a number of things that happen here with this. We know that for our students that the data says is red. And I'm not labeling kids. This is not the intention. And we know for a fact that a student based on our data could be red in one aspect, yellow in another, blue in another. Um, that happens all the time. Every human being has a jagged profile. Um, for us. But for the purpose of the collaborative team meeting, if we're bringing reds consistently to that, yeah, there's, there's significant challenges that are happening there. We're probably not going to solve that in this conversation. And in fact, we probably are going to have fairly comprehensive plans and supports in place and we might see small incremental growth. But the understanding is we're not ignoring those kids. We're relying on our other layers. There's already a conversation happening for this kid and I can see you nodding as we go. You can see this in your school. So, so what we're going to do is we're going to see the bar that we've established and we're going to focus on the kids who are close. And there's a couple things that happen. First off, teachers love this because we're talking about a group of students we've never talked about before. That's the first thing that they get super excited about. The second is when I bring up this student who's close. But there's this one key issue that I'm noting. I try a strategy that Hunter shared in the meeting. The likelihood of it having success is much, much higher for us. I try something, it works. And I can't wait to get back to this meeting again because I'm seeing success, uh, for this. Uh, when you suggest, again, I'm going to use a really simple idea that you have a Checklist, an individual checklist you've been using with students when they're working on math problems to help them think through the process. And I have one before on my wall as an anchor chart. But you suggested make a smaller one and put it right at the kid's workspace. Mhm. That's a great idea. I'll try that. And it works. But guess who that strategy benefits? All kids. I've put another tool into my toolbox specifically for again for Tanisha, but it is impacting every kid. But I'm not feeling like I'm spinning my wheels. I can't wait to get back to the next meeting. In fact, I'm not waiting for a meeting. I'm going down the hall tomorrow. Uh, because the idea that Hunter gave me at the last meeting was gold. I want to tap in some more. Or I found out that there's a staff member that's got a really incredible, um, expertise around working with students on, uh, the autism spectrum or Asperger spectrum. So I'm going to go and tap into that person some more. And the data and evidence really allows us to start a conversation about a different subset of students that's going to benefit all students. And again, nowhere in this if someone's hearing. So you're going to ignore your most at risk kids? Nope. We have other layers of team where those conversations are happening. I don't want to talk about Curtis in every one of these meetings. We want to start different conversations at that collaborative team meeting.

Speaker A: Um, because otherwise you're spending your whole time talking about one student. And again, not that like you said, you're not ignoring the student, but not at all. When you bring so many people together. Right. You want to capitalize on that time together. And there are a couple different pieces that I want to highlight that you mentioned. Number one, I feel like what you're doing when you're having teachers share those strategies is now they're empowering each other versus I'm sitting in a professional development all day being told I have to do X, Y and Z. The feeling of that and the likelihood of that being more successful compared to a colleague sharing something that's working in their classroom that's more likely going to be immediate, um, and something they can share with me pretty quickly and I can implement pretty quickly. The power of that is amazing. It's kind of like a micro PD that you're incorporating into these meetings.

Speaker B: So Hunter, I'm going to reinforce that a core belief of mine is, I believe, the most valuable resource that we have in education are the people. I believe it's the teachers, I don't believe it's the published resources, materials, uh, that are available. It's the people. And I would argue that for 97% of the things that you're dealing with in your school, the answer lies within the school. Um, the expertise is there. Like I said, we had centuries of teaching experience. We were not tapping into effectively. And you're right, the best professional learning that I've ever seen happen was from these conversations and what came after these conversations. And we don't need to go and get the expert, uh, sorry, sometimes we have to go and get the expert from outside because there is a gap in our collective understanding. But most of the time we have experts in the building. We're not leveraging absolutely.

Speaker A: They just need the platform to do so. The other point that really stood out to me is, and you've heard this term before, but um, data rich, action poor. Right. And so when you think about all the data that's now at our fingertips, you in this framework, and for me and myself in, uh, my building, what I've really tried to do and what I'm hearing this system could allow you to do is to set up some boundaries. Right, let's clarify, and I know maybe we can talk a little bit too about how this translates to, because I'm very familiar with tier one, tier two, tier three, those MTSs, quote unquote layers,

Speaker B: uh, schools that are engaged in MTSS work or RTI work also get really excited because this, this is a missing piece in those frameworks. And I'm going to describe, I'm going to describe why we move beyond three tiers and go to four. And it's not about adding one more on top. Uh, can I, can I jump in on that then?

Speaker A: Yes, please do, please.

Speaker B: So the third foundational component then is a continuum of supports. And the idea is in the continuum we are getting crystal clear about how we're supporting students in particular areas. So in time, long term, don't think of this right off the bat. If I've said again, we have a core goal related to literacy achievement, one to numeracy and one to well being. I've worked with high schools where they have one core goal related to student retention and another related to engagement. Okay, Whatever those focus areas, we start to develop a continuum related. So in my school, I might in time have a literacy numeracy and a well being continuum established. And the contradictory statement, and if people don't hear anything else in this entire conversation. Take this away. Stop tiering the kids. Tier the supports. There's no such thing As a Tier 3 student in my mind. There's Daniel, and Daniel right now might need tier 3 supports. Stop tearing your kids. If I can get anything, if there's the little nugget to take out of this, quit tearing kids. And I see it over and over in schools where, and we were doing it at one point too, where we would tear the kids. But then it became so easy to say, well, that's a tier three kid, so that's someone else's responsibility. Nope, they're all our students. And what we see, um, from, especially in American context, is the blending of expertise, from our general ed to our specialists and, um, special education, There is no more handoff. We're all trying to help support. And so this continuum, here's what it looks like, four tiers. But essentially what we're doing is taking tier one and getting crystal clear with it. So this is what it looks like. Tier 1 are what are the things we will do for all students across all classrooms? Essentially, what are the non negotiables? And whenever I do this with a school, we start off with, um, post it notes all over tables, and we say, all right, when it comes to literacy instruction, what are the things that you do to support student success? And what do you do when a kid struggles? One idea for every post it note. And then we start organizing it into these four tiers. So tier one, what do we see for all students across all classrooms? And in time, there's not 50 things at tier one, we, we start to narrow it down so that there's six big rocks. We agree in this building. So for instance, in my building, one of our tier one big rocks is students need access to literature in the classroom, they need access. Essentially what we are saying is everyone must have a classroom library. And so when a person said, uh, I don't do that because the library in the building's right across from my room, we say, no, that's a big rock that we all decided that we would do. We what do you need to help develop this big rock? That's tier one. Tier two are what are the things we could do for some students in some classrooms? Uh, some of the time, essentially what we're doing is we are getting crystal clear on what are the differentiated strategies we could be trying. We often say, and this is why we found out a pyramid works when you tier kids. It doesn't work when you tier the supports. Because at tier One, we want to narrow it down. But. But at Tier 2, we see a bulge. There's a lot of things that we could do. And when we start getting crystal clear and then documenting this, oh, my goodness. In a collaborative team meeting. Now, when we say, what should we do? Yeah, we're brainstorming, we're thinking of things off top of our head. But we're also referring to our continuum. We're saying, have we tried this? Have we tried this? And when, Hunter, you jump in with an idea that we go, that's gold. We should write it on our continuum. We're going to capture that. I had one principal, uh, say, everyone has a toolbox. What we're trying to do is create a tool shed. Let's make a place where we're putting all these ideas and strategies together. Okay, so that's Tier two. So essentially, when you talk of three tiers and we talk about Tier one being universal, we've essentially taken that and broken it apart into two. And it's going to connect to our layers of team here in a second. Tier three are the supports provided by someone other than the classroom teacher, but still within the building. And Tier four are the supports provided by someone external to the school, whether that's district services or external agencies. Um, and we get crystal clear on what these things are. Then we start to say, daniel's not a Tier three kid. Daniel, right now in literacy requires Tier three supports, but he might not need it forever. Um, and we never look at Tier three. Now when a teacher says, I've tried everything, we pull out our continuum and say, let's talk about what you mean when you say everything. Let's really check in on fidelity, uh, with this. And so this was the part that was total accident. It was not intentional until we saw it and went, oh, my goodness. The connection here is so profound because these tiers of support start to align to our four layers of team. And so when we're engaged in collaborative planning PLC work, we're really getting crystal clear and informed on Tier one practices. We'll see across all classrooms. So when a science department is working together, they're really crystallizing what are we going to do across all of our classes in science? And I've seen some schools, especially high schools, where they'll have a continuum, but the science department's continuum is going to look a little bit different than the math department's continuum. Or I've seen high schools where they say, one of our big rocks is timely feedback for students. We expect that in Every classroom, but how you do it in the gym is going to look different than how somebody does that in a humanities classroom. We're not scripting teaching or taking away your autonomy or professional judgment, but we are putting, um, structures within it. And the collaborative team meeting then aligns to the team tier 2, which is really becomes the space to explore differentiated practice. I often say if the collaborative team meeting, if the principal is leaving with the most actions, we've got a disconnect because the principal is providing tier three level supports. That's someone other than the classroom teacher getting involved. But the collaborative team meeting is essentially meant to focus on tier two. So like I said before, the administrators and special educations involvement in these layers intensifies as you go up from, uh, the first layer to the fourth. But the tiers start to connect as well. We're not going to look at Tier 4 level supports, so supports beyond the building until we're probably getting to that case consult where we're getting around the table with one kid and we're looking at what are some of the community agencies we need to involve. Uh, this might not be about teaching anymore, right?

Speaker A: Yeah. And what I love, you've mentioned it several times now, but you have to get crystal clear. And so for, for you, when you were implementing these, this framework, you know, you mentioned when you go to schools, we're laying out sticky notes and we're deciding our big rocks for tier one. And then, okay, now we're, we're clear on tier one, do you find that it. Are there more effective processes to help schools or leaders? You know, if you're a principal listening or an AP listening that wants to start building some of this clarity within their school, you know, what are some of those strategies or processes that you might use to gain clarity for each level or to start building out these continuums?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So first off, there's some big overarching understandings that are about leading change and, um, working through this as a leader. The first one that I've subscribed to, and I find it's huge, hugely powerful, is living by the mantra of ready, fire, aim. And what I mean by that. And Peterson Waterman talked about this back in the 80s. Michael Fullen's popularized it since the idea that we're going to ready ourselves by, um, maybe reading an article or in the case of building that continuum, we're going to get set up and get some sticky notes, but then fire, fire. Just start creating it. Our first continuum was awful when we started to get all the Ideas out. And even when teachers looked at it, they went, oh, there's nothing really here. But we kept aiming, refining, tweaking in time. And the other part of this is understanding. It's a messy process, but it's the messiness, which is so critically important because we're creating ownership. I have on our website, we have dozens of samples of continuums from school that none of them are first drafts. They're all refined over time. But I often say to schools, you should be using these as a reference point, not as a replacement. That is, you find one for literacy and go, this is genius, and slap your school's logo on it. Good work, good news. I saved the teachers the work. No, the work is so critically important because in those conversations, we're talking about what we're doing in our practice. We're examining pedagogy. When you put up, uh, one of the strategies I use in my classroom for literacy is elkonin boxes. And I'm going, what's an elkonin box? What is that? You explain it. Oh, I do that too, but I don't call it that. And someone else is hearing this and going, describe to me how that works again. What is it that you do? Um, what we're doing is through all of these very intentional, um, the three components and the intentionality within it is we're creating a culture that a normalizes conversations about pedagogy. When I hear a school that says, we don't talk shop in the staff room, I say, that's really too bad. When you get to a place where you're seeing growth and excitement, I can't wait to get to the staff room and share something that's working and whatnot. And we want to create that culture where talking about our, uh, teaching and the effect we're having is normalized. Not that I come in and share something, something that went great in my room and someone in the room is rolling their eyes of Curtis's sharing Again, no, we want to normalize this. The second is we're trying to build up high, high levels of collective efficacy. Because through this process, we start identifying, oh, my goodness, there's so much we're doing for kids that post it note activity is powerful because in any staff, you're going to have hundreds of post it notes put out. Um, during COVID we did some of this digitally through these kinds of interactions. And it wasn't as powerful as the visual of. Just look at the hundreds of post it notes that we've seen. I often say, when you start your continuum. You're basically saying, we do good things in this school. Name them, clarify them, articulate them, because we're going to then tier the supports. And again, we're not tearing kids. Stop tiering your kids. We're tearing the support.

Speaker A: I love everything about that you're building. Buy into the process. Um, and again, like I said earlier, it's not coming from one person. It's coming from us, uh, the collective. And so by having teachers engage in that process, which I think is so important for leaders to understand that, hey, your most effective strategy is not to just do a sit and get pd. Right. Your most effective strategy is to put your teachers to work, give them the framework to be effective, and to share and collaborate. And I think that, um, by having the humility to say, hey, I don't know everything, or, hey, I'm gonna trust my staff because I know they do great things, and I believe they have the capacity to do this. And then now I'm gonna create this, uh, allow them to create this continuum of strategies that really builds out, um, our different. Our continuum of support. And I really love it. I think that's a huge takeaway for me and how I message it to my staff. You mentioned color coding earlier. Right. Those kiddos that are really, really red. Dark red, they're gonna be not safe for this meeting that we're gonna be sitting in right now.

Speaker B: Exactly. We're getting really clear and intentional on how we're using our structures.

Speaker A: Yes. Uh, but if I was just to say, oh, here's the kids you gotta work on. Right. There's no power in that. Right. I want teachers to dig into it and share with me what is being tried in the classroom. Ah. What is successful, or what is that, uh, second grade teacher know about the third grade student that's struggling. That could be helpful to the third grade teacher listening now. Right. And so I'm really. You see me nodding my head this whole time, Hunter. I think, because it just connects so well.

Speaker B: Yeah. And one of the things that resonates with me, it was probably, oh, I'm nearing three decades in this, and it was probably within my fifth year, fourth year maybe, of education. I got into leadership quite young as well. And I had to learn on the ground that if I'm running this school thinking I have all the expertise, that's foolhardy. Because I had colleagues that had way more teaching experience than I did at that leadership. From my leadership perspective, I had to create structures. Uh, so it was really essential for me early on. But early in my career I had heard someone say, as a leader, you set the banks of the river. Your job is to set the banks, but then don't micromanage the flow of the water. Let the water flow. And essentially what they were saying is you create the structures, the expectations, the processes and then stand back and let good people do good work. But we know that without banks, the water is going to flow everywhere. It's going to be unfocused, it's not going to have the power of when we can channel it all together. And that's what we're doing is we are really empowering and honoring the teaching and support practices happening within our building, but in a very intentional, very structured, very focused way. And sometimes when people first see that collaborative team meeting, for instance, and see how it's tightly facilitated, there's timers going on, there's a really concise note document. We have software that goes along with this as well. Sometimes people see that the first time and go, oh boy, that's pretty. I've had someone say, watching me facilitate it, said, you're like a military, um, general as far as how tight everything is. And I, I say it looks like that right now. When your staff get in it and get used to it, they, they will just see it as this is how we do business. And oh my goodness, what we get done in a 40 minute conversation is nowhere near, um, what we used to be able to accomplish in that time. Again, when somebody says we already collaborate really well in our building, I get excited because you know what, you put some of these structures around it and you're going to be at heights you never saw and you mentioned earlier, Hunter, if anyone is listening and they're already engaged in MTSS processes, in RTI structures, whatever that looks like within, within their state or their organization and PLC work. Oh my goodness. You are going to be so excited to engage in this collaborative response because it takes all of that one step further.

Speaker A: Beautiful. I, you got me excited. Now I'm ready to start school week and dig into the processes because this is, it's so, uh, it resonates so well, um, with, with leadership style, with how we can truly intervene for kids and support kids and truthfully, how can we get to support teachers better and help them feel more successful in their, their day to day lives. So Curtis, I want to give you

Speaker B: a job for people. How do we, how do we leverage them?

Speaker A: Absolutely. I want to give you a chance now to, for those that are listening, how can people connect with you support you in the amazing work that you're doing.

Speaker B: Yeah. Go to our website, JigsawLearning Cat. Or if you search collaborative response, we're going to come up pretty high on that search list. Uh, now, uh, on the website we have number of resources. One of the first things that you'll see is a link to access the introductory chapter of our book for free. Um, the book has a lot of what I'm sharing, uh, in here as well, but that resource is there. There's also a overview of collaborative response. Just a quick, I think it's a six page article or so, um, that just kind of breaks this down. And then oodles of examples from schools. We also have a podcast, check out Leading Collaborative Response. Or we're going to have you as a guest on our Building a Culture of Collaboration where we talk about broader concepts around collaboration. But any of those are great ways. And then, uh, reach out. You'll find my email information on that website. So again, Jigsaw Learning ca. I'd love to have a conversation. And like I said, it's. We, uh, we began by working and supporting schools, but now most of our work is engaging with districts of how can we create this consistency across all of our schools in our organization and get us all talking a common language, uh, to collaboratively respond to our students? So, yeah, reach out. I'd love to have a conversation.

Speaker A: Beautiful. If you're a leader, listening and you're ready to take that next step in school transformation and really building a system of collaboration and really implement this collaborative response that Curtis has done an amazing job developing. Um, connect with him. Um, Curtis, it's been absolutely wonderful. I'm excited to hop on your podcast and kind of flip the tables here. So I'm looking forward to that. It's going to be wonderful. Curtis, you've been an absolute pleasure. I cannot thank you enough.

Speaker B: Uh, thanks, Hunter. Take care and, uh, look forward to connecting again soon.

Speaker A: And that's a wrap on this episode of the edessentials podcast. A huge thank you to Curtis Hewson for sharing his expertise and passion for building strong systems. His work with collaborative response is a powerful reminder that when teams are clear, consistent and focused, real change happens. If something in this episode resonated with you, or if you're thinking about how to bring this kind of framework into your own school, I would love to hear from you. Send me an email@edessentials.networkmail.com or connect with me on social media. And if you feel so inclined rate and review this podcast. It really helps build our audience and connect us with educators like yourself. If this conversation helped you grow as a leader, take a moment to share it with a colleague or someone in your network who's on a similar journey. Again, thank you so much for tuning in. Keep leading, keep learning, and I'll see you next time on the Ed Essentials podcast. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network, Better Today, Better Tomorrow, and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at teachbetter. Com Podcast and we'll see you at the next episode.