Understand the strengths and needs of every student. Identify resources in the community. Connect students to out-of-school resources that ignite their interests and address their needs.
City Connects has been using this formula for decades and studying the impacts. Researchers have found that this approach to Integrated Student Support has long-term positive impacts including lower rates of chronic absenteeism and grade retention, higher academic performance and engagement, and increased high school and post-secondary graduation rates.
“How do we bring our knowledge and learning around Integrated Student Support to more communities? Is there a way we can help schools talk about students holistically and create plans to support them in a way that might look a little different than City Connects, and is a little more homegrown?” asked Jen Bouckaert, Senior Manager of Coaching and Networks for Boston College’s Center for Thriving Children.
It was questions like these that led to the development of the Systemic Student Support (S3) Academy, a joint venture between the Center for Thriving Children, the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy, and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Aligned to the National Guidelines on Integrated Student Support, the Academy brings together districts across Massachusetts to learn how to build a system of Integrated Student Support in their schools.
Through full Academy gatherings and individual coaching sessions over the course of three years, school teams learn how to do holistic student reviews, where they identify the strengths and needs of each child. They also create a list of community resources and develop relationships with community partners. Doing these two things helps schools connect students to resources they need, which can be anything from physical and mental health care, to food and housing, to enrichment programs like dance class or swimming lessons. Understanding the strengths, needs, and passions of every student also helps educators build deeper connections within the classroom and create a culture of care and support.
“Schools are often providing support in a reactive way, like if a student is missing school, struggling with mental health concerns, or declining academically. S3 Academy helps schools flip the script. By reviewing every child, S3 teams can provide support in a proactive way and ensure no student is falling through the cracks. This approach also helps teams identify trends across classrooms and schools, which can ultimately help inform systems-level change,” said Chad d’Entremont, Executive Director of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy.
Since launching in 2018, the S3 Academy has worked with more than 100 schools across more than 30 Massachusetts school districts. Currently, there are 28 schools from 13 districts taking part in the Academy across three cohort years.
All four schools in the Mendon-Upton Regional School District are taking part in their third and final year in S3. Counselors at Mendon-Upton’s Nipmuc Regional High School say their time in S3 has led to a cultural shift, where educators and school staff have a strengths-based approach to supporting students.
“One of our main goals was to get to know all our students. They’re coming to high school with a whole life and personal narrative, but we don’t know much about them. The S3 process helped us make connections with those students. Our high-performing students a lot of teachers knew, and our students who were lower performing or had behavioral issues, teachers knew. However, middle students could slip through the cracks. [With the S3 approach] we can catch many of them,” said Allison Towne, School Counselor at Nipmuc Regional High School.
“We learned we had to take the structure of S3 and make it fit for our community. Once we got it, it really feels sustainable now and something that’s integrated,” said Kerry Fagan, Adjustment Counselor at Nipmuc Regional High School. “The idea of the strengths based culture is becoming embedded with everything we do.”
With nearly 600 students and more than 30 teachers, Warren Elementary School in Ashland is using its time in the S3 Academy to establish and perfect the logistics around implementing Integrated Student Support in a large elementary school.
“Our learnings came from logistics. We had to figure out how to help the students outside the classroom. How do we get the right people in the room and how do we share the information around the building, and from first grade to second grade. We worked through things and made changes. We had the belief system, we just had to build the logistics system to make it more successful,” said Leigh Tripp, First Grade Teacher at Warren Elementary in Ashland.
“When you do the review, you find a child flying under the radar. They may be doing well academically, but we may not know who their peers are or what their interests are. One student was excelling academically but was very, very shy, was not speaking up and not making social relationships. We suggested play dates on the weekends; then, I started connecting with them, asking questions about how basketball was going. Then, I noticed they started sharing at morning meetings, started to share during academic times, and started to thrive,” said Kate Bauer, Second Grade Teacher at Warren Elementary in Ashland.
With all four of its schools enrolled in the Academy, Winthrop Public Schools has made great strides over the past three years. The team at Winthrop Middle School describes a myriad of accomplishments including producing a handbook to guide all educators through the S3 process, dedicated professional development on supporting multilingual students, and forming connections with families.
“We identified all these students, and they need all this help. Three years later, I realized how much there is to help students and how we can support them. The greatest learning is that we can identify problems and identify solutions,” said Brianne McGann, Winthrop Middle School Teacher. “We also learned how important it is to engage families in this process. In our second year, I made it my mission to connect with every student’s family. It was a rewarding year because I learned so much more about them and how to support them.”
While school-wide changes are critical to any Integrated Student Support effort, it is often the individual impact on students that inspires the work to continue. McGann shared an inspiring story about one student who was struggling academically and socially. Through the S3 process, she was able to work with his family to discover more about his needs and connect him with a social skills group.
“Six months later he had all As and Bs, was participating in class in more appropriate ways, and had more friends. If we hadn’t done this process, we wouldn’t have put together all the pieces this student was struggling with and wouldn’t have been able to help as well as we did,” McGann said.
