- No matter how effective classroom teachers are, there are times when a student must receive interventions outside the classroom. When a student becomes so disruptive that it interferes with other students’ ability to learn, the student is experiencing a personal issue(s) that precludes him from the educational activity, or when the student behavior compromises the integrity of the classroom, in-school support services may be required.
- There are usually three types of support needed: crisis, short term, and long term.
- In-school support services must be well defined and designed to respond to specific teacher requests for assistance. This can best be accomplished when these services have interventions designed to respond directly to the referring behavior and cause identified in the Teacher's request.
- In-school support services must be proactive as well as reactive and include follow up activities, which are consistent with the classroom teacher’s style and philosophy.
- The administration and support faculty will assess existing resources and begin implementing a support system which includes the following components:
- Crisis Support - requiring an immediate intervention
- Short Term Support - requiring a service which provides delayed interventions – i.e. Saturday School
- Long Term Support - requiring alternative programs to implement long term interventions.
- The designated support/staff team makes the determination of the specific support to be provided.
- Teachers are made aware of the specific action taken and anticipated results by reviewing each of the support services, which will be described in the section entitled In-School Support Services.
Process for Developing In-School Support Services
- Review current referrals
- Identify most frequent reasons
- Identify current system as it relates to responding to referrals and reasons
- Have teachers identify expected responses to each type of referral and reason - not who
- Develop menu of support services that can be used as interventions
- Support staff and teachers agree on what is possible within the school
Process
- Ask the teachers
"What has to occur for you to ‘feel, buy, and own’ that this student is ready to come back to your classroom?" Have them identify and clearly define the interventions and/or consequences that they expect.- Previous step should result in both mandatory and optional interventions to be used by support staff (addressing extenuating circumstances)
EX: mandatory = counsel, contract, consequence
The "judge" (support staff) who administers the consequence and the timeline and who must tell the teacher what has been decided decides the consequence.
- The what is being done is to respond to the request for assistance which is driven by the reason for the behavior - goes back to the targeted behavior.
- The options for those individuals should draft in-school supports that are identified by the principal as the school’s support staff. This team becomes the work group for this section of the plan development always remembering that the clients are the teacher and the student. Facilitate this team through the following steps:
- identify the school's current support services
- given these behaviors and reasons, identify available interventions
- purpose of each intervention should be developed in direct response to teachers’ expectancies and targeted behaviors
EX: For ________ behaviors at ________ intensity for ________ duration =
[support services] .- then, identify the knowledge, skills, abilities necessary to do [support services] .
- given that, who should do it?
- how frequently do you expect that you will need to access this person(s) and their service?
- given that, how do we configure our support services?
- Take back to the staff for review
- "When a S/ is referred for crisis, this is what could be done..." = "Guide for Implementing In-School Interventions"; this draft goes to the faculty for approval/revisions.
Format
Include in the plan a description of the support services provided when out of class assistance is required. Included in this description for each services is:
- the name of the service
- the purpose of the service
- entrance criteria
- a description of the service provided
- duration of the intervention
- procedures for accessing the service
- exit criteria
[ Back to Top ]
[ Topic 6 ] [ Table of Contents ]
Copyright ©, 2000. Lee R. Clark. All Rights Reserved.
Not for dissemination without permission of Project Director.
Last modified 2001-03-21.