How to Go From “Talking About Students” to Changing School Systems (with Kurtis Hewson)

About this episode

The episode discusses how structured collaboration in schools can lead to improved student outcomes.

Most schools say they “collaborate.” They hold team meetings. They talk about students. They review data. But without clear infrastructure, those meetings become updates instead of decision-making engines, and multi-tiered systems of support become an extra burden for educators. In this episode, I interview Kurtis Hewson from Jigsaw Learning to break down their Collaborative Response Team meeting format and explain why effective collaboration requires structure and not just good intentions. From who is in the room to how documents are used before, during, and after the meeting, they share the operational backbone that makes collaboration actually move student outcomes. Kurtis Hewson is an award-winning former administrator and teacher, as well as post-secondary teaching faculty. He is the co-founder of Jigsaw Learning and co-author of Collaborative Response: Three Foundational Components That Transform How We Respond to the Needs of Learners (Corwin, 2022). Kurtis works with districts and schools nationally and internationally to establish Collaborative Response frameworks and interacts with thousands of educators each year. If you care about MTSS, intervention systems, or…

People in this episode

Host: Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan

Guest: Kurtis Hewson

Topics covered

• collaboration
• school systems
• team meetings
• multi-tiered systems of support
• educational leadership

Keywords

• collaborative response
• educational collaboration
• team meeting framework
• MTSS
• intervention systems

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Jigsaw Learning, Corwin

Books & works: Collaborative Response: Three Foundational Components That Transform How We Respond to the Needs of Learners

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