Students in Catholic division have access to several tiers of academic support

By Samantha Johnson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on December 16, 2022.

Hugh Lehr, associate superintendent of learning services for the Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education, outlined for trustees this week the importance of academic supports for students.

“That simple question is not so simple to answer,” stated Lehr. “It’s pretty complex when you look at not just what are we doing to support kids academically but what are our kids dealing with, that justify this.”

Lehr limited his discussion to academic success and provided a four-tiered pyramid diagram outlining the supports available, with universal at the bottom, targeted classroom second, targeted school third and at the top, specialized or individual supports. Universal supports are quality instruction (teaching) and accounts for 90 per cent of support provided to students.

Lehr explained, “Universal supports are applied through the continuum. Learners receiving targeted or individual supports also receive the universal supports. All kids are in the universal and then we add layers of support on top of that.”

As adding support is a multidisciplinary effort, the division brings in external support from the community. The division has speech language pathologists who provide strategies to teachers around comprehension, phonics, etc. There are also occupational therapists, school liaison counsellors, administrators and learning service staff, among others. The whole purpose is to discover the barriers getting in the way and the reasons for potential academic struggles.

Interventions go on all the time. Teachers do this by assessing their students in a variety of ways and then plan for how they will work on a specific skill or deficit a student has.

Usually when a strategy works for a student it is moved to a long-term accommodation. Many teachers have reported that using the same strategy benefits the entire class, which strengthens the base of the pyramid.

Each school is different depending on the size of the school, the number of students and teachers and how many supports they can implement. Universal class instruction includes, among others, vocabulary, technology (the division recently purchased a licence for text to speech/speech to text), co-operative learning structures that incorporate student choice, as well as breaking tasks into steps.

Targeted classroom supports are those teachers use on a group-by-group basis. They include level reading groups, technology, extra time on assignments, note taking, outlines, personal dictionaries, leveraging speech language pathologists and occupational therapy support, visual supports and volunteers.

What a school can do on a larger level depends on the materials they have, the curriculum, access to technology, their assessment of material, along with the availability of space, time and people. There are school-based interventions put into place based on what they have. These include such things as flexible timetables, providing readers or scribes, collaborative meetings to troubleshoot and quiet spaces.

Trustee David Leahy, who requested the information at a previous board meeting said, “It’s good to know. It’s good affirmation. It’s a reality check in terms of what are we doing and how responsive we are to students who are struggling. Are we going to get everybody? No, but there are many strategies, interventions, programs and obviously interest in helping those kids.”

“The filter is pretty tight,” responded Lehr. “If you shake it, not a lot of kids would fall through. It happens, but it’s tough to lose them.”