Cooperation among educators is vital for Response to Intervention program success
One of the main opportunities—and challenges—presented by Response to Intervention (RTI) is that, regardless of the exact approach used, in order to work effectively the program requires educators from different disciplines to work together in new and more collaborative ways. But what are the roles of speech/language specialists, school psychologists, ELL educators, and special educators in RTI? And how can classroom teachers best work collaboratively with all of these people?

In search of answers, Reading Today spoke with three members of IRA’s Response to Intervention Commission who have expertise in several different disciplines.

“The bottom line for me is that there are a number of people at all levels who have expertise in language and literacy,” said Barbara Ehren, a professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and director of the doctoral program at the University of Central Florida. “They should put their heads together because they all have different pieces of the puzzle.”

Speech/language pathologists
“It’s only really been the past 20 years that we’re talking in the professional literature about the reciprocity across language processes,” Ehren said. “Now we are seeing listening, speaking, reading, and writing as interconnected. You can’t isolate any of those four processes; you have to look at interaction across all four.”

Speech/language pathologists, of course, bring expertise in that arena. One of their roles can be to “work with classroom teachers on language and literacy issues,” Ehren said. This involves, among other things, helping classroom teachers provide “language-sensitive instruction and intervention.”

How easy or difficult that process is can vary greatly. “Sometimes models are set up in districts or states that facilitate or thwart collaboration,” Ehren said. For instance, sometimes speech/language pathologists are still referred to as “speech teachers,” and they are not utilized as contributors to language and literacy initiatives.

“We have to overcome the ‘silo culture,’” Ehren concluded. There is more than enough work to go around, and it is counterproductive to be overly territorial about who does what.

School psychologists
“School psychologists have an opportunity to see children in different instructional settings,” said Donna Scanlon, an associate professor in the reading department at the University at Albany. “This allows them to have a broader perspective than others in the process may have.

Also, school psychologists have insights into the child’s psychological and emotional state and its role in the learning process.

“They can help identify some of the other barriers that children face in making progress in school,” Scanlon said. This includes putting families in touch with services they may need and talking with classroom teachers about how supports might be put in place to best help these students.

For example, they can be alert for confusions that may arise for the child because different teachers talk about the same concepts in different ways. Tiered approaches to intervention can be particularly vulnerable to problems with coherence.

Special educators
In the past, special educators couldn’t work with children unless they were specifically referred, which created a real division in the roles of classroom teachers and special educators, said Carol Connor, an associate professor in developmental psychology at the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University. Under RTI, however, those lines have become less clear.

There is now more opportunity than ever for collaboration between classroom teachers and other professionals, although there are still strict rules about who special educators can work with and how.

“Special educators can try to negotiate some flexibility in the interpretation of the law,” Connor said. “The more general support the special educator can provide, the more progress can be made.” For instance, special education teachers can help classroom teachers design effective classroom instruction for struggling readers.

As part of the collaborative process, classroom teachers can “bring students who may be struggling to the attention of the special educator early on so they can come in and provide educational support for the child,” Connor said. Classroom teachers also can “be open to suggestions from special educators about how to meet the needs of students who are struggling.”

The “bigger picture”
“While we all share devotion to and concern about language and literacy, we have different and unique skill sets,” Ehren concluded. “It’s only when you pool that expertise that you get the bigger picture.”

Working together, pooling expertise. (December 2010/January 2011). Reading Today, 28(3), 4.