Transcript:

Q: You’ve been doing RtI here for the last 3, 4 years?

A: Yeah, 3 to 4 years. We actually started, we started in the Spring of ‘05 maybe ‘06. My first year as a principal we started reviewing everything. That’s when we got accepted.

Q: So, what has been the most valuable, the most important aspect of implementing RtI at this campus?

A: Student success because the students have achieved a level of success that I don’t think they would have any other way, and that success is, I think that success has been a product of the staff development and the knowledge that has been gained by the staff members and the how to do things kind of stuff, the right way. The success has been based on that. The priority at the beginning was to review our existing resources and our existing level of knowledge in order to implement RtI reading instruction to see did we have the resources on campus to teach each of the indicators, the 5 indicators of literacy? Did we have all the stuff necessary? We saw a big, a big void in vocabulary instruction. We saw a big void in the fluency piece on how we did that, and that’s where those two things came from. And how it’s changed to now? I’m not sure the focus has changed. I think we’ve gotten a whole lot smarter on how to do grouping and scheduling, and it’s a never-ending battle to try to make sure that through the course of attrition in the staff that the new people come in know the same stuff about reading and know the same stuff about vocabulary instruction and know the same stuff about grouping, etc., and that’s a constant challenge for us from year-to-year.