2024 Kansas MTSS & Alignment Symposium

Hear from a district about their journey to becoming a model Kansas MTSS district in the content of reading.

The Voice Process will be introduced as a model for fully embracing student voice as a way of being in schools. Participants will engage in activities and dialogue that unpack a vision for embracing students as key partners in the school experience. The Voice Process and accompanying strategies will challenge educators to consider whether they truly listen to, learn from, and lead with students.

 In schools, we often challenge our students to dream big. Yet simply dreaming is not enough. Aspirations is defined as the ability to dream and set goals for the future while being inspired in the present to reach those dreams. This session will examine strategies for supporting students who are in a state of Hibernation, Imagination, and Perspiration, with the goal of helping all students achieve their Aspirations. Participants will consider how to attain a healthy balance of dreaming and doing, and how to help students realize that they must use their voices to take action and achieve their aspirations.

This session invites all educators to delve into the pivotal role of purpose in their educational journey. Like renewable energy sources that power our world with sustainability and innovation, a well-defined sense of purpose for educators can fuel the passion, engagement, and resilience for ourselves and our students. This session seeks to explore how a person’s sense of purpose can act as an inexhaustible source of motivation, driving learning communities towards greater achievements, innovation, and growth. Join Drs. Quaglia and Lande to discover how tapping into the renewable energy of purpose can revitalize your educational experience, leading to a more engaged, motivated, and creative learning environment.

Group contingencies offer educators a powerful approach to enhancing classwide behavior and fostering student cooperation. In this session, participants will explore the principles of group contingencies and learn practical strategies for implementing them effectively in the classroom setting. This session is tailored for novice staff working with students from PreK through High School.

Function based thinking is a behavioral science concept that is an integral component of an effective Multi-Tiered System of Behavior Support. It empowers all educators to provide behavior support more efficiently to all students by considering the purpose(s) challenging behavior(s) serve and what is reinforcing them.  Research has consistently shown that traditional “discipline” practices that are solely punitive such as verbal reprimands, timeout, suspension, and expulsion are not effective and often make challenging behavior worse.   Rather than staying stuck in the cycle of problem-punish-problem-punish with little to no success, educational staff need to understand the behavior science behind this phenomenon and use this knowledge to guide more effective and consistent instructional responses to challenging behavior.

Key behavior science concepts are too often not known or misunderstood by educators causing them to stay in an ineffective reactive model and overlooking effective proactive prevention strategies based on Function Based Thinking. Schools need all educational staff to have a clear understanding of the main underlying concepts of behavior science and use this knowledge to guide their responses at all tiers of support in order to work smarter and not harder. This workshop provides this foundational knowledge using easy-to-understand, everyday language in a humorous and engaging way getting all educators on the “same page” removing obstacles to implementation caused by misunderstanding and miscommunication.

“Tier 2” world is often very challenging and can be frustrating for all parties involved.  What makes a strategy tier one versus tier two versus tier three?  At what point does a student move tiers?  How does Function Based Thinking guide this process? This session will attempt to answer these questions in addition to providing direction for ongoing implementation of a Function Based Thinking Multi-Tiered System of Behavior Support.