1. NC RtI Consortium Learning Conference
With One Goal in Mind…
NC RtI Consortium
Learning Conference
Good morning and welcome!
We are so pleased to have everyone this morning at our RtI learning conference. I would like first to congratulate everyone on concluding a successful school year!
For those of you who do not know me, I am Dr. Caryn Ward. I was the project director of the consortium for the first two years while I served as the RTI coordinator for Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools. I am currently a consultant for the consortium this past year when I took a new role as a consultant with GlobalScholar - Scantron. I would like to take a minute to acknowledge my good colleague and friend, Spencer Register of Chatham County Schools who is the current project director of the consortium. Spencer has done a wonderful job in leading the consortium this past year and will be speaking later this afternoon. Thank you Spencer.
I would like to take a few moments this morning to tell you our story of how the consortium began and what we have been working on before introducing our keynote speaker today, Dr. Judy Elliott.
Following our keynote address, we will review logistics of the day.
Our story….The consortium began by several of us networking and reaching out over coffee at seven am in Raleigh, in networking session at national conferences, and through picking up the phone and calling each other. We were from various disciplines but we all were attempting to lead the implementation of Responsiveness to Instruction initiative within our respective districts. We had begun to informally network amongst each other and begin sharing what was working and what was not. At about this same time, I was very fortunate to be contacted by Oak Foundation who was looking to support RTI implementation at a local level. The Oak Foundation has provided support at the national level with their collaborative work with the RTI Action Network and at the state level with the Secondary RTI project.
The group of us that had begun to network informally wrote a grant to provide funds to support us coming together to problem solving district wide RTI implementation. The original group consisted of representatives from the following districts. As I call your district, will you please stand if you have participated in consortium activities over the past the three years…

2. Consortium Membership
Original members include:
Alamance-Burlington School System, 
Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, 
Chatham County Schools, 
Durham Public Schools, 
Guilford County Schools, 
Orange County Schools, and 
Wake County Public School System
Additional Members include:
Cabarrus County Schools
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
Johnston County Schools
Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools
Call out each district…
We have grown over the past several years as word had spread of our work. Please stand as I call our additional districts if you have participated in consortium.

3. Inspiring Action…
You will notice that on all of the conference materials, there is a “golden circle” on them.
Lets watch a clip from a TED talk by Simion Sinek introducing and explaining the Golden Circle. STOP CLIP – at around 4:16-17min mark.
Back in October, we discovered the “golden circle” for use in structuring the story of the consoritum’s work.

4. “Golden Circle” Why How What
As a group, we did not struggle with the why, but the how and the what.
We all agreed on the “Why”. We came together because we all believed that RtI with its core beliefs and groundings in evidence based practices is and could be an effective means to meeting the needs of All of our learners. Some may say it is easy to say we believe all kids can learn but this group of educators came together truly believe this and ground themselves by their actions – “they walk the talk as you say”.
Thus agreement on our mission and beliefs was the easy part - Our mission as stated in the grant is : The RtI consortium exists to effectively meet the needs of all learners by fostering collaboration among regional LEAs on successful district wide implementation of RtI.
Because of our strong belief, we have continued to grow. This group has met on Friday afternoons, yes Friday afternoons, for three hours once a month or more depending on the work we were engaging in to problem solve district wide implementation. As I said for us agreeing on the why was the easy part.
We then jumped to the “what” – We spent over a good year of our monthly meetings striving for conensus on the “what”. You would think that would easier than the why – but when we first started coming together – we had to establish a common language and strive for agreement on what are the critical components of RTI. For example, some of us when we first came together had very different models of what RTI looked like – some had 4 teirs, some had 3 tiers, 5 tiers, were in different places for implementation –some places were implementing school by school, some were going full force district wide, different language and beliefs re differentiation or Tier 1 interventions. Where PLCS fit within the RTI model. Not all of us were implementing PLCs at that time and the list could go on and on. Through attendance at national conferences such as RTI Innovations, the RTI Sumitt meeting in DC several years ago, participation in the leadership network by the RTI Action Network, and book studies, we agreed upon the essential components of RTI. Throughout those different learning opportunities, districts were sharing along the road their practices and what was working and what was not.
We knew our “why” and we had identified our “what” - but the “how”. We had further and increased our understanding of what and why but we were all continuing to have Pockets of Excellence across our district and within our schools. Our question over the last year and half –became – How do we achieve sustainable implementation of the practices identified and called for by the critical components. As part of our learnings, we started to explore change management models. One piece of literature that we had come across was the Implementation Science literature by Dean Fixsen, Karen Blasé, and colleagues. Dean states it so eloquently when he saids an innovation is one set of practices and “implementation” is a different set of activities. You cant have one without the other. Through the grant, we were fortunate to work with Dean Fixsen, Melissa Van Dyke and Barbara Sims from the National Implementation Research Center. Once a month for 12 months, Melissa or Dean sent several hours with us teaching and working through with us on the Active Frameworks of Implementation Science. We had in-depth conversations around the implementation drivers, stages, teams, and improvement cycles. Finally, NIRN has helped us with development of our tools such as the Implementation Roadmap for RTI and continued work on the development of a performance assessment to help us identify when RTI practices are being implemented with fidelity or as intended and provide us with data to continuously improve our implementations.
So today, we are here to share our learnings over the past three years – in terms of the why, what, and how. We hope you not only enjoy the day but take the learnings away and use them in your district or school building as you begin your planning for next year.
Now, I would like to take a quick minute to introduce our keynote speaker – Dr. Judy Elliott. Dr. Elliott’s work, research, leadership, and passion are much admired by the various members of the consortium. Several of us had multiple occasions to hear Dr. Eliott speak at various conferences and we always walk away with wanting more. We are very excited to have her here today with us. Dr. Eliott is one of our leading practitioners and researchers in Responsiveness to Instruction. Dr. Elliott in my opinion is a true scientist – practitioner. She engages not only in research through her various publications and projects but then applies the findings of research as a practitioner. One of the many reasons we all admire her is she has successfully lead the implementation of RTI in her former role as the Chief Academic Officer at Los Angles Unified School District.
Today, she continues to assist districts, national organizations, as well as state and federal departments of education in their efforts to update and realign curriculum frameworks, instruction, assessment, and accountability that includes all students.
Please help me with welcoming Dr. Judy Elliott.
.. Judy Key note…
Thank you. It was an excellent way to start our day off well.
In your conference, program. You will see a schedule for the day. As you can see we are getting ready to go out into our first session. Please take a moment to look at your name badge. On your badge, you will find a Letter – A, B, C, or D. This is the group that you belong to. In your group, you will find several representatives from your district as well as from other districts. We wanted to ensure each district was able to network with each other as well as provide everyone with the opportunity to attend each of the sessions. Please follow your group’s rotation schedule. Thus, for example group A will be attending the next session in Azalea AB, B will be heading to Dogwood A, etc. Signs have been put up to direct everyone to the appropriate rooms.
We will be back in this room for lunch. For part of lunch, we will have the Panel Discussion of Engaging all Stakeholders. Following lunch we will continue the sessions schedule and we wrap up and conclude our day all together back in Trillium A. At the end of day, Spencer will share final remarks and our future directions.
Enjoy!