District team invited to present Response to Intervention model to education leaders

District team invited to present Response to Intervention model to education leaders

A team of Walla Walla educators has been invited on all expenses paid trip to Charleston , South Carolina to present on the district's intervention strategies to improve student achievement at the Response to Intervention Summit, February 24-25.

District Response to Intervention (RTI) Coordinator Maria Garcia, Walla Walla High School Associate Principal Mira Gobel, Walla Walla High School teachers Casey Monahan and Peder Fretheim will represent Walla Walla Public Schools at the Southeast Comprehensive Center which will be attended by state educational leaders from throughout the Southeast United States .

Tiered Interventions and Evidence-Based Strategies for Improving Student Outcomes in High School is the conference theme. The purpose of the summit is to build the capacity of state education agencies to implement these strategies.

According to Garcia, the district was contacted by representatives of the South Comprehensive Center to present at the RTI Summit after they read an article featuring efforts at Walla Walla High School which was published in educational magazine Principal Leadership, April 2009.

"I feel honored to be able to represent to people who are in a position to make a difference for students in their entire state," Garcia said. "They want to know from our perspective what they need to know to implement tiered instruction effectively."

Garcia will present on the district-level perspective, Gobel will discuss the school-level process and Monahan and Fretheim will talk about the teachers' role and specific interventions. Gobel says they are working hard and seeing results and it's exciting other schools want to learn from their journey.

"We are looking at one student at a time," Gobel said. "We believe in the foundational belief system that RTI is built on; every student, every day, right now. We will do whatever it takes!"

Garcia and Gobel will report to the school board on their experiences in South Carolina during the March 2 school board meeting. The RTI model identifies children needing additional support in reading, math, writing, and helps prevent the development of serious learning problems.

Response to Intervention also identifies children who, even when given extra help, make very limited progress. Research has shown that these children sometimes have a learning disability.

For more information, contact Mark Higgins at 509.526.6716 or by e-mail at: mhiggins@wwps.org.