History of Connections Screener in RI

1.3. School involvement

In 2012 the Connections Project began working with cohorts of schools across an entire school year to help them with all processes involved in implementing the Connections Screener. We worked with 3-5 schools each year and supported them by:

• providing them with all connections screener materials and resources to better understand the importance of connectedness; 
• explicitly describing ways to build buy-in;
• providing examples of successful implementation practices;
• providing data tools and support to collect and analyze connections data;
• sharing ideas for next steps once the data was analyzed; and,
• holding on-line meetings throughout a school year to provide guidance through each step of the connections screening process. 

While working with multiple schools across several years, we learned some critical lessons.

What we've found:	Successful schools:	Lessons Learned:
Establishing buy-in is essential It sounds easier than it is Communication with staff and students is essential We'll say it again - BUY-IN IS KEY!	Have a functioning MTSS (or problem-solving) team Have a primary point of contact to work through details Set up the infrastructure to support screener administration and follow-up data interpretation Look at their data immediately after screener administration and from year to year Started small (one grade level) before scaling up Started with buy-in first	Survey administration is relatively easy; however,  follow up and data interpretation is key Schools focusing only on survey administration (not follow up and team process) abandon the screener Lack of problem-solving team participation makes it overwhelming for one person to implement/sustain Lack of infrastructure = lack of success Start small - too much too soon can be overwhelming! Lack of communication to faculty = no sustainability

You will learn more about evidence-based implementation practices further in this section of the course.