The wait to fail model has been relegated to the dustbin of history.

Education models of the 21st century are focused on proactivity and

prevention, not on the reactivity of the past. Under the MTSS model,
MTSS teams, who are responsible for both RTI and PBIS interventions,
have been designated to provide a variety of screening measures at
the Universal level, including curriculum-based measurement (CBM)
and assessments for literacy such as DIBELS or DRA2. The idea behind
these screening tools is that students who are struggling will be
identified soon after they begin to fall behind their peers and, likely,
well before a teacher or parent would have recognized them as having
significant difficulties and referred them to the special education team.
Through the identification of students soon after they begin to fall
behind, we are able to provide them with a much greater opportunity
to regain their peers academically than if we had waited for a
significantly

large

discrepancy

between

actual

and

expected

achievement to appear. As a school psychologist, I intend to apply

these

same

principles

that

have

shown

such

great

promise

academically to students who struggle with behavioral and socialemotional issues. Through the utilization of affective education
programs such as Signs of Suicide (SOS) and Stop and Think, I am able
to reach out to all of my students about the importance of emotion
regulation, understanding the feelings of others, and having the
courage to tell an adult when a friend is in trouble. My hope is that I

will be able to act preventatively by educating those with lagging skills

in these areas before their difficulties rise to the level of second or
third tier intervention.