Response to Intervention, or RTI, is a program coming to OHS somewhere in between mid-October and early November in order to supplement the existing TMM (Tuesday Morning Meeting) program. The RTI program has been endorsed by schools across the nation, and has been recognized many times for it’s impressive success rate. It is meant to help students master critical learning skills and aid them in all of their creative and academic endeavors.

Math teacher, Mara Oien, tested the RTI program on a small scale last year. Oien said, “For teachers, it means that we will be meeting one to two times a week, before school, looking at student work and determining if students are understanding it or not. For the kids that are understanding it, we’re going to come up with enrichment activities. For the kids that are not understanding it, we’re going to try to come up with ways to reteach it.”

OHS tried out RTI at the end of the last school year as a “pilot,” on a group of students to track their progress. Oien said, “I found the students that were struggling the most on one of the chapter tests, and I brought them in during my fourth hour for about four to five days, every other day for two weeks. I retaught the material and then we retested, and they all improved on their test scores.”

Teachers will meet weekly and discuss students’ individual academic progress and new ways to encourage learning. RTI time can be useful for everyone, even those who don’t need extra help in school. It could be used to learn a new topic or even study for AP tests or the ACT. It will allow students to receive help in a timely manner, especially on topics and classes that each student struggles in, and students will get much more one on one time with teachers.

On some occasions, students will be able to choose from a variety of workshop type activities to learn about topics that are not offered as classes or didn’t work into the students’ schedules. Some logistics are still being decided upon, such as what days of the week RTI will take place and when exactly it will start. TMM will most likely be reduced to once per month instead of once per week, while the new RTI program will take place anywhere from two- four days per week.

Principal Mark Randall is very excited about this new program. Randall said, “We’ve researched this through schools that we’ve visited. We’ve researched it through schools that we’ve talked to that we haven’t visited. We’ve met with some of the most prominent researchers in the nation that have done work around this. This is certainly something that’s right up there with some of the best practices that we could do.”

OHS put lots of time and effort into researching possible ways to supplement TMM. They ultimately settled on RTI due to its high success rate, and the way it will better meet the needs of the students.  OHS cares about their students and wants to give its students their best chance at success, and RTI is no doubt the next step in accomplishing that.