152. MTSS-B Made Simple: How Teams Decide What Students Really Need

You're listening to the Counselor Chat podcast, a show for school counselors looking for easy to implement strategies, how to tips, collaboration, and a little spark of joy.

I'm Carol Miller, your host. I'm a full time school counselor and the face behind counseling essentials. I'm all about creating simplified systems, data driven practices, and using creative approaches to engage students.

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Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Counselor Chat.

I'm your host, Carol Miller, and today we are talking about something that sounds complicated but really shouldn't be. We're talking about mtss.

Now, before you mentally check out and think, oh great, another acronym.

Stay with me because this episode is not about compliance,

it's not about fancy data systems, and it's definitely not about creating more work for you.

It's about clarity,

it's about teamwork, and it's about protecting your energy as a school counselor.

Because if you're anything like most counselors I talk to,

behavior decisions often end up sitting squarely on your shoulders. I mean, a teacher walks in and says, I don't know what else to do.

Or your admin forwards you a referral and says, can you handle this?

Or that parent email that says, what is the plan?

Suddenly you're the behavior department.

But here's the truth.

You were never meant to carry behavior systems alone.

And that's exactly where MTSSB comes in.

Now if you're wondering what is MTSSB like, I've heard of mtss, but what is this mtssb?

Well, let's simplify it.

MTSSB really stands for multi tiered Systems of Support for Behavior.

And if you are using MTSS in your school,

maybe you're using it for all the academic stuff,

the Tier 1, 2 and 3 reading and math interventions.

But let's face it, MTSS is a comprehensive approach.

It looks at everything from college and careers to attendance and behavior and all the academic pieces,

and it wraps them up neatly into a package.

And I think as schools are starting to add the behavior portion for rti,

which is a response to intervention and really changing from RTI to an MTSS model. And that's exactly what my school is doing right now. We were AIs, RTI focused and now we're moving into the MTSs.

I know a lot of acronyms,

but what we are trying to do is really look at the whole child because it's not just their academics,

their reading or their math that are preventing them from success,

but their behavior and their attendance and their mental health as well.

And so we are trying to comprehensively look at the our kiddos and say what kind of interventions do we need to put in place to help this kid thrive?

So NTSSB or our multi tiered systems of support for behavior,

it's really a framework,

it's a structure and it's a way to make decisions intentionally instead of emotionally.

Because mtssb,

it's preventative,

it's layered,

it's team based,

it's data informed and it really is focused on matching the right support to the right student.

What it isn't, it's not a punishment ladder, it's not a stack of referral forms and it's not a send them to the counselor pipeline.

Lastly, it is not a data spreadsheet nightmare.

And I think sometimes this is where the confusion really happens because when behavior feels really chaotic,

we react faster instead of responding smarter.

And my friends, MTSSB isn't about reacting faster,

it's about responding smarter. And at its core it's simple.

Tier one, this is what everyone gets. Clear expectations, classroom lessons, school wide systems.

Tier 2 is what some students need. Targeted small groups, check in, check out, some structured supports.

And tier three, this is what just a few students require.

Individualized plans, intensive intervention.

But here's the part that often goes missed movement between tiers really should be a team decision.

It's not a hallway conversation.

It, it's not a frustrated moment, it's not a. Carol, can you please just take him for just a few minutes?

It's a team decision.

In my district, when we actually started looking at MTSs and we said we wanted to incorporate this into our school on a district level we really focused in on incorporating mental health and we have a district wide team as well as, and I'm in an inner city school as well as building level teams.

So the building level teams report to the district level and I'm on both, I'm on both my building team and my, and the district team. And the district team is really, right now we're looking at,

we looked at the core framework of what should be incorporated.

Now we are really focusing in on mental health screeners that we can give to all of our students.

And so we've gone through a screening process, we've looked at a ton of them,

narrowed it down.

Now we're down between two that we want to start Asking for teacher input for the thing with MTSS is that it's not counselor focused. And I mean, it seems like it when we're talking about behavior and interventions and providing social, emotional learning.

But really there's a lot of things that start right inside the classroom.

And that's what makes it wonderful because you're really building this community approach to.

To look at the. The child, to look at the kid, to say, what do we need to do to really make things great for our kids?

And maybe this kid right in front of us that we're all looking at because this one's really struggling.

With our MTSS team, we also looked at our behavioral interventions or our, excuse me, our behavioral expectations.

And so each school defined their expectations.

Some of our schools use pbis and so they had some core expectations.

My building, for example, we had somewhat of a framework, but we really weren't using pbis. We didn't do the rewards. We didn't do the token economy.

We didn't do anything. We just had some posters plastered around the halls and they were really dated. I mean, they were from before I even started.

So what we did in my building team was we went through. We redid all the posters this summer and then we created lessons to really explicitly teach all the behaviors that we wanted our kids to know.

So we had clear expectations and a school wide system.

And we also have our SEL lessons that are weekly.

We also went through and did an inventory of all the things that we were already doing that fell into a tier one category. We actually looked at what we do for tier 1, 2 and 3 and made this whole inventory.

And it took us a couple days to do that because we really broke it down from these expectations to things that classroom teacher is already doing.

We have a soft start in the morning.

We have community circles.

We have morning slides.

I put together the morning slides for our teachers.

They have a little question of the day,

a little joke of the day.

Last year's we had a word of the day and there's a community building question on each of them.

It's very simple,

very cute.

But we went through all the things that we do and we broke it down.

And as we were doing this,

this was the first step.

This year we also started looking at meetings where we were discussing kids.

And in addition to talking about their academics,

we actually started talking about their behaviors too.

And what we came up with were team decisions.

Because let's face it,

when one person is making behavior decisions alone,

few things happen first. If only one person is Making the decisions, it becomes really emotional.

If a teacher is frustrated, the intervention is. It may be reactive.

And if the admin is under pressure, the response may be punitive.

And if you're overwhelmed, you might default to whatever feels fastest.

Second,

when you are making behavior decisions alone,

inconsistency really creeps in.

One student might get a small group, another gets an office referral,

another gets a think sheet, another gets nothing.

And before long, the system feels really random.

But when decisions are made by a team,

we are getting clarity instead of chaos.

And a behavior team, if you're going to have one in your school, it might look like a classroom teacher, a counselor,

a school psychologist,

maybe your social worker, a special educator,

anyone who's directly supporting that student.

In our building, for our team, we have one person who's a special educator, but she also is the behavior specialist for our building.

So we have her on the team. We have our principals on the team,

the two counselors, the classroom teacher, and sometimes we'll have another teacher. Besides,

it could be a special area.

Sometimes even the nurse comes in.

It depends on what types of behaviors and things that we're seeing. So for the kiddo that's constantly in the nurse's office,

we will invite extra people to come in as well.

And we found that when we are doing this, we're not reacting to a moment. We're asking things like what pattern are we seeing?

How often is this happening?

We where is it happening?

What has already been tried and what support level makes sense?

And when we talk about it this way, it is empowering.

And it protects you office counselors from becoming the default fixer because you are not the behavior department.

You are part of a behavior team.

Now, data informed does not have to equal data overloaded.

And now let's talk about the word that makes everyone tense,

and that is data.

Somewhere along the way,

data started feeling like five spreadsheets, 30 tracking forms, graphs. No one looks at documentation that never informs anything.

But here's what data informed actually means. It means noticing those patterns.

That's it.

How often is that behavior occurring?

Is that happening during transition? Is it always at recess? Is it mostly during math?

Has attendance shifted?

That's the Data.

You don't need 17 metrics. You just need some meaningful patterns.

And if you're collecting data that never informs a decision,

that's not mtss. That's just busy work.

And school counselors. We do not need more busy work.

Sometimes our data looks like a simple frequency cow.

We are pretty lucky in our building that we have connected community schools. And so we have a couple people who they're. They're support persons from connected community schools that help us.

And they do things like they run some lunch groups.

They are helping us build some common spaces in our classrooms.

But we also use them for things like, can you go in and do a simple frequency count for behaviors? Like, how many times is this kiddo really off task?

And I. We just have a little,

you know, form, and they just sit there and they just check off little tally marks.

Sometimes our data,

if it's not the frequency count, maybe it's a behavior reflection form. Maybe it's how many behavior think sheets we are collecting over a period of time.

It could be a forced choice survey. Student survey.

I use those forced choice student surveys a lot. They just say, if you were in this type of behavior or this situation,

would you act more like this, or would you choose this type of response?

And those are quite nice.

I have those in my TPT store. So if you ever wanted to look at them, I have behavior force choice surveys for pretty much every type of behavior.

And it could also just be your data. Sometimes it just looks like a simple teacher observation lock.

These are really small focus tools because the goal isn't to have this stack of paperwork.

The goal is just to have some information to help you better decide what you need to do.

Now I want to talk about something we don't say out loud enough.

Decision fatigue.

It's real.

And every day you're already deciding who needs to be seen first,

which crisis takes priority,

which group gets scheduled,

whether this student needs tier 2 or tier 3,

should I pull this kid individually or should I create a small group?

And when behavior systems, they're not structured,

you're inventing solutions in the moment.

And that.

It's pretty exhausting.

And one of the biggest shifts I've seen in schools is when they create a consistent tier 2 menu.

And like I said, we went through at the beginning of the year and we really broke down, what do we have in tier one? What do we have for tier two, and what do we have for tier three?

And so instead of asking, what should we do with this student?

The team ask, which of our existing supports this fits best?

And that's a really subtle shift because it really reduces your emotional decision making,

reduces inconsistency,

and it protects your energy.

This is also one of the reasons why I created my behavior intervention toolkit, which is in my TPT store.

Not because schools need more worksheets, but because counselors need structured Ready to use supports that plug directly into tier 2 conversations.

And this toolkit, it includes intervention menus, reflection forms,

small group supports,

and tools that help teams decide instead of guess.

And when you guys, I think when you put together tools that are already,

you're not inventing interventions on the fly.

You're selecting from a system.

And it's systems that really protect counselor sanity. In fact, it protects all of our sanities.

And if you don't have a toolkit,

whether it's mine or something your district has created,

I really encourage you to build one,

because clarity reduces chaos.

So here's what I want you to remember.

MTSSB is not about adding more layers to your job. It's about building smarter support around the students who need it most and around you. It's about asking who else should be at this table.

It's about consistency over creativity.

It's about patterns over panic. And it's about protecting counselor energy so you can focus on what you do best, supporting students holistically.

And if you've been feeling stretched, if you've been carrying behavior systems all alone in your building,

and if referrals feel reactive instead of attentional,

maybe this is your moment to pause and ask,

is this a system or is it survival?

Because, my friends, you deserve a system.

So I have a little challenge for you this week. I want you to reflect on three questions.

One,

who is currently making Tier 2 decisions in my building?

The second question is,

what data are we actually using and is it useful?

And the third question is,

do we have a clear intervention menu or are we just reinventing the wheel every single time?

Small clarity shifts lead to big energy protection,

and when counselors are protected,

students are better supported.

So let's go over those three questions one more time.

Who's currently making those tier two decisions in my building?

What data are we actually using and is it useful?

And do we have a clear intervention menu or are we reinventing the wheel every time?

My friends, I think if you haven't started MTSSB in your buildings,

I think this is your call to try it,

to talk to your admin about it,

do a little research,

go through, try to get a team together and really look at all of those tiers and what you're already doing in your building and making that menu.

Because if you can put this all together,

you're going to really feel like, wow,

it's not all me.

Things are consistent and we're seeing changes in our kids.

So, my friends, thank you so much for spending part of your day with me and if this episode was helpful I'd love for you to share it with your behavior team or admin because these are conversations worth having.

And if you want to check out the Behavior Intervention Toolkit,

I'll link it in the show notes for you.

Remember, you are not meant to do this work alone.

You are part of a team and strong systems make strong counseling programs.

You my friend,

you are doing amazing work.

Keep doing it and until next time I hope you have a really great week.

Bye for now.

Thanks for listening to today's episode of Counselor Chat. All of the links I talked about can be found in the show notes and at counselingessentials.org forward/podcast. Be sure to hit follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast player and if you would be so kind to leave

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Send me a DM on Facebook or Instagram at counselingessentials until next time. Can't wait till we chat. Bye for now.