“I can’t do that in my school.”

“My students can’t even sit in their seats long enough for me to teach this.”

“I’d love to implement MTSS, but you should see the behaviors we’re dealing with.”

We hear versions of these comments from educators all the time, and they’re fair. When you’re dealing with significant behavior needs every day, another professional development training can feel far removed from the problem right in front of you. After all, what good is the perfect instructional plan if students aren’t regulated enough to engage with it? Behavior has come up a lot in the MTSS Collective lately, and we wanted to share some insights.

Behavior and Academics Aren’t Separate Problems

Dr. Pam Radford, one of our MTSS Collective founders, shared that her district is seeing significant behavioral needs, particularly among younger students, and that leadership has been trying to move from constantly reacting to behavior toward understanding what they can change at a systems level.

One comment from that discussion gets at an important part of MTSS that doesn’t get talked about enough: Data-informed instruction can help reduce challenging behavior. A student who is routinely being asked to do work far above their current skill level has a pretty good reason to disengage. So does the student who already knows everything being taught and spends half the lesson waiting.

When instruction better matches student need, students have something they can successfully engage with. They experience less frustration, less boredom, and more opportunities to participate productively. That doesn’t mean every behavior problem disappears because you differentiated instruction, but academics and behavior can’t be treated like two completely separate systems.

MTSS gives schools a way to look at both.

The Student Isn’t the Only Variable

The MTSS Collective conversation also pushed beyond looking exclusively at student behavior. If students are struggling to cooperate, regulate, transition, attend, or participate, educators have to change the question from: What’s wrong with these kids? to:

• Have we explicitly taught the behavior we expect?
• Is our instructional environment set up for success?
• Does the task match what students are ready to do?
• What is happening in the instructional environment?

That’s why MTSS Collective members talk a lot about student data and adult data.

We need to know how students are responding, and we also need to be willing to examine what the adults and the system are doing around them. That changes behavior support from a cycle of putting out fires into a problem-solving process.

Our Leaders Are In It With You

Pam isn’t talking about behavior from a higher-education theoretical standpoint. She works directly with districts trying to build these systems while educators are managing real students, real classrooms, and real implementation barriers.

The same is true across the MTSS Innovations Committee. Dawn, Judy, Margie, Pam, and Stephanie have spent decades implementing, coaching, scaling, and supporting MTSS across classrooms, schools, districts, and statewide initiatives.

They know what happens when the model on the PD slide deck meets the school day. That means when you bring a question like, “This sounds great, but what do I do when behavior is completely derailing instruction?” you’re learning from people who have worked through the same problem in similar systems.

If behavior is making MTSS feel unrealistic in your school right now, we want to remind you that behavior is part of the MTSS work.

Behavior and academics are inextricably linked. If you’re waiting for behavior to die down before you begin, you’ll never start. Inside the MTSS Collective, you can bring the messy version of the problem. The one where the students aren’t responding the way you hoped, the teachers are overwhelmed, and you’re not sure what to change next.

Our facilitators have spent their careers doing this work via data-based problem­ solving, and between the 5 of us, we’ve yet to be stumped.

Dawn, Judy, Margie, Pam, and Stephanie

The MTSS Collective