In this episode, Tiffany Bergen, MTSS Coordinator at North Rockland Central School District in New York, shares how her district moved from talking about MTSS to putting it into practice in classrooms, in the year it outpaced both the state and its county in ELA and math growth. Larissa and Tiffany discuss what building a district MTSS handbook exposed, why the district rethought what Tier 1 means, and the meeting norm that changed how teams talk about students. Discover what it takes to build trust, momentum, and a real MTSS culture in the first years of implementation.

Resources:

How to Build an MTSS Handbook for Your School or District

MTSS Month-by-Month Checklists

A Guide to Self-Assessment of MTSS Implementation

The MTSS Meetings Guide and Toolkit

Request a consultation

Takeaways:

• Tier 1 is core differentiated instruction, not an intervention.
• Lower the barrier, not the bar, so every student can reach grade-level work.
• The process is messy, but the product is clean.
• Make your handbook a living draft and ask staff to find the blind spots.
• Get really good at three to five interventions before adding more.
• Start every student meeting by sharing something amazing about the student.
• Table the meeting if the prep checklist isn’t done.
• Lead from the buildings, not from a desk. Visit classrooms as a guest, not an evaluator.

Learn more about MTSS and Branching Minds by visiting our Branching Minds Website, or sign up for our weekly Newsletter on all things MTSS. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn @BranchingMinds.

Send feedback or inquiries to podcast@branchingminds.com!

In this episode, Leah Kuypers, creator of The Zones of Regulation and founder and CEO of The Zones of Regulation, Inc., joins Larissa to talk about why schools expect students to regulate but rarely teach them how. They discuss what regulation actually means, what support looks like across MTSS tiers, and the common ways a well-meaning framework turns into a compliance tool. Leah also explains why the adults in the building are part of the work, not just the ones delivering it.

Resources:

The Zones of Regulation

Zones of Regulation Training Offerings (including Regulation 101)

Link for Resources Leah mentioned:

The Zones Climate Rubric and MTSS and Zones of Regulation Crosswalk

Leah Kuypers LinkedIn

Tier 1 Behavior and School Climate Guide for School Leaders

Classroom Management Is Much More Than Discipline

Changing the Way (and the Reason) You Document Behavior

Takeaways:

• Regulation is developmental, just like learning to read.
• Being regulated means meeting the moment, not staying calm.
• You can’t impose a strategy on a student in the heat of the moment.
• Make regulation the norm for every student, not the exception for a few.
• Model your own regulation out loud so students see adults doing it too.
• Read behavior referral data for the missing skill, not a reason to crack down.
• Let students name their own zone, and never use the zones to label them.
• Shift staff mindsets before introducing any regulation curriculum.

Learn more about MTSS and Branching Minds by visiting our Branching Minds Website, or sign up for our weekly Newsletter on all things MTSS. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn @BranchingMinds.

Send feedback or inquiries to podcast@branchingminds.com!

In this episode, Joan Schumann, PhD, founding executive director of the International MTSS Association, traces how a fifth-grade year spent watering a teacher's plants instead of doing math turned into a career building integrated systems of support. She and Larissa get into why so many districts say they're "doing MTSS" while running something much closer to a two-tiered model, and why she thinks the research community's incentives are part of the problem. For leaders trying to sort what actually works from what's being marketed to them, Joan names the structural reasons that's so hard — and what a professional association can do about it.

Resources:

International MTSS Association

IMA Action Networks

Team Time — Santa Fe, January 2027

Journal of MTSS

Joan Schumann

The Difference Between MTSS on Paper and MTSS in Practice

Using Universal Screening For Accurate, Objective Tiering in MTSS

The Ultimate Guide to MTSS

Request a consultation

Takeaways:

• MTSS is a different operating system, not another initiative layered on top.
• The alternative to multi-tiered is two-tiered: nothing between core and long-term formalized support.
• A long-term need doesn't mean a permanent need for intensive support.
• Academic gaps often originate in the learning environment, not the learner.
• Researchers are the one group in education not held accountable for collaborating.
• Run true universal screening so support doesn't depend on which teacher notices.
• Build problem-solving teams that put the counselor and the interventionist at the same table.
• Stop using tiers as a new vocabulary for the same sorting behaviors.
• Bring leaders to researchers with the real implementation problem, not the other way around.

Learn more about MTSS and Branching Minds by visiting our Branching Minds Website, or sign up for our weekly Newsletter on all things MTSS. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn @BranchingMinds.

Send feedback or inquiries to podcast@branchingminds.com!