RTI – A School Library Mash-Up
March 13th, 2006 by Christopher HarrisOr should we call this: Interventions Responded To @ Your Library (TM)?
Either way, this “mash-up” is about finding ways that libraries can be a part of a school’s response to Response to Intervention (RTI). In the last post, I briefly introduced RTI as a new model for approaching instruction. There is an emerging body of work online dealing with RTI, but I haven’t seen much discussion of it in educational blogs yet. One of the best resources is Jim Wright’s RTI-WIRE.
Where do libraries fit?
At the end of the training I attended last week, the facilitators asked participants to include requests for follow-up workshops on the feedback form. Here are some of the responses:
- Overview for all staff
- Problem solving strategies for teams
- Literacy problem solving team
- Efficient problem solving methods
- SRB (scientifically research based) research and identification
- Reading comprehension
- Internet resources
- Intervention library
- Catalog of resources
- Reading comprehension at high school levels
- Basic, hands-on, practical graphing in Excel
- How to read graphs
In other words, quite a few of these items are dealing with our areas of expertise – problem solving, reading, research, cataloging, and information evaluation/interpretation. And here’s the deal, at the most basic level, RTI is just a research/problem solving framework. As Jim Wright explains on RTI-WIRE (emphasis added):
To implement RTI effectively, schools must develop a specialized set of tools and competencies, including a structured format for problem-solving, knowledge of a range of scientifically based interventions that address common reasons for school failure, and the ability to use various methods of assessment to monitor student progress in academic and behavioral areas.
We already know and use a variety of frameworks for understanding complex information, so it is only natural that teacher-librarians would be involved in RTI as well. This is a chance for teacher-librarians to shine as curriculum and pedagogical experts in schools as a direct result of their training in problem solving, research, and integrated instructional/assessment practices. Since reading is a primary focus for the initial push of RTI, libraries have another area of natural fit.