Dear MAISA Members,

Thank you for a truly amazing November Membership Meeting. The robust conversations on the first day provided us all with a valuable perspective on the challenges and opportunities we face in relation to legislation and overall direction. We especially appreciate the engaging session with Dr. John Hattie and Mr. Tommy Thompson. Overall, the collective knowledge and collaborative spirit you demonstrated exemplify our Better Together approach to advocating for every child in Michigan.

I would also like to extend a special thank you to every individual who presented, to all our hard-working networks, committees, and councils, and to our dedicated Board Members and MAISA staff. Your efforts elevated the important topics and learning we did together. Please also note that this InSiDe Update has incorporated many of your staff members' voices. We appreciate all of you!

Here are my Three Things:

1. We Must Share Our Story! This InSiDe Update is a great example of MAISA showcasing just some of the incredible work taking place across our state. Always remember to take the opportunity every day to share your stories, celebrate your wins, and lift every child. 
2. Next Steps on FY27 Alignment: Following the November 3rd meeting, David Ladd, Dr. Jason Jeffery, and I will connect with the Legislative Committee to discuss further alignment for Fiscal Year 2027. Please ensure you connect with your regional representative on this topic. We will continue to work together to formulate a strategy that effectively responds to the evolving political landscape. ICYMI, here is the PowerPoint presentation from the first day of the November conference.
3. Dr. John Hattie and Mr. Tommy Thomson: During our day of impactful engagement, we were reminded of The Power of Our Commitments and how they can shape the future. I would like to thank the Visible Learning Institute planning committee, presenters, and our MAISA Instructional Council for all their efforts in planning a successful day of learning. Dr. Greg Nyen, we appreciate your vision for having such a positive day of learning and all of those who contributed. I would also like to thank Dr. Daveda Colbert for closing the session and lifting our work and the 2023 Literacy Commitments: "We will measure our impact. We will collaborate and align our efforts. We will share our story. We will build collective capacity, and we will call in all voices to move the work forward."

We are Better Together,

j

• MiFamily Engagement Centers: ReadWithMi.org
• Coaching Matters: October 2025 Edition
• The Professional Learning Path to Literacy Achievement
• Literacy Coaching Intensive Institutes in Escanaba and Wayne-Westland
• MAISA in the News!
• Java With John: Episode 3 with ELPL's Michelle Goaley
• Strong Beginnings: Building Bright Futures for Three-Year-Old Children in Michigan 
• The Story of Help Me Grow in Ottawa Area ISD
• Read, Write, ROAR! Learning Adventures
• Math excitement is bubbling at Bay-Arenac
• Early Childhood Educators Engage in Playful Math
• Comprehensive School Mental Health System of Supports
• The Evolving Role of Family Engagement: Free Webinar + SCECHs
• Emergency Seclusion & Restraint Series
• Achieving Balance in Classroom Assessment
• MAISA Office closure

Note: Please click "View entire message" at the bottom of this email to view the full newsletter!

Previous InSiDe Updates

Want to view the previous edition of the InSiDe Update? Click here to view the September 2025 edition.

Last year, Berrien RESA was awarded a grant through the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential (MiLEAP) to develop a statewide early literacy media campaign. The campaign's goal was to help Michigan families with children from ages 0-10 take advantage of those everyday opportunities to strengthen their children's literacy skills. The campaign was a huge success!

Here are a few engagement insights based on the marketing efforts of the project:

• A website, readwithmi.org, was established for families offering skill development tools and engagement resources sorted by age and geographic location. Parents turned to the website as a trusted resource. Families accessed more than 6,600 website resources throughout the campaign, while also generating over 1,000 clicks to partner sites like the Great Start to Quality and Out-of-School Time programs. 
• The campaign exceeded its reach goal by 160% (to reach 80% of families with children ages 0-10 at least 20 times during the campaign). In fact, 3.6 million parents/guardians saw the ads at least 22 times. By combining online strategies like paid search advertising and social media, along with offline channels like print and broadcast TV, the campaign ensured families across Michigan saw and heard the message frequently. This integrated approach helped expand awareness, promote literacy opportunities, and encourage parents to turn everyday moments into building blocks for learning.
• The campaign established unique partnerships. By teaming with PBS and the Michigan Learning Channel (MLC) as well as the Detroit Lions, Berrien RESA, and MiLEAP, we were able to maximize grant funds, reaching even more families across the state.

Outcome survey data about the overall impact of the campaign were recently collected from every county in Michigan. Results are currently being analyzed. A comprehensive campaign report is expected this winter. 

Check out the campaign by visiting www.readwithmi.org. You are encouraged to share this video highlighting the readwithmi.org website with families in your education communities!

Thank you to Kyle Gnagey, Communications Coordinator, and MAISA for producing it!

Our 4-day Literacy Coaching Intensive institutes started this month!

The power of this institute experience is that our coaches are spending this time embedded in elementary schools, giving them an authentic coaching/teaching experience right from the start.

We are looking forward to many more across the state this year. Dig into our Coaching Matters newsletter for more information.

The Daily Press in Escanaba recently highlighted MAISA’s Literacy Essentials Intensive Coaching Institute, held this month and hosted by Webster Kindergarten Center, part of Escanaba Area Public Schools.

The feature celebrated this powerful collaboration aimed at ensuring every young learner has the tools to read, write, and thrive.

Thank you to all the literacy coaches, facilitators, and educators working to build brighter futures for Michigan's children!

Read the full story in the Daily Press here!

We’re excited to share the latest episode of Java With John, MAISA’s new podcast created as a resource for Michigan’s ISD leaders.

In this episode, host Dr. John Severson sits down with Michelle Goaley, MAISA’s Early Literacy Professional Learning (ELPL) Project Director. Together, they discuss how early literacy professional learning supports educators and advances student success across the state.

Java With John is designed as a collaborative space for Michigan’s ISD leaders—fostering a statewide network of peers and thought partners. Each episode offers valuable insights, strategies, and discussions that navigate the complexities of educational leadership. 

Listen now: Java With John: Episode 3 with ELPL's Michelle Goaley

We’d love your feedback and ideas for future episodes! Email us anytime at javawithjohn@gomaisa.org.

• Watch episode 1 here
• Watch episode 2 here
• Watch episode 3 here

More than a decade ago, Ottawa Area ISD (OAISD), through the Great Start Collaborative, joined families and community partners in recognizing a simple but urgent truth: families reported that the services in Ottawa County were strong, but often hard to find. It took considerable outreach and personal conversations to locate the support they needed to help their children prior to kindergarten. Families, health providers, and schools were all working hard, but separately.

In 2012, the executive committee of the Great Start Collaborative gathered around a single question: How do we take a siloed system and create a county-wide approach to developmental screening and access to services that supports every child? That idea became Help Me Grow Ottawa, built on the National Help Me Grow Model and shaped by local stakeholders and family voices. This story is not unique within Michigan ISDs, since the Great Start Collaboratives serve as the catalyst, backbone, and community infrastructure for local implementation of Help Me Grow in 45 of the state's 55 ISDs.

The Help Me Grow Ottawa team began modestly. It started as a centralized access point, a single phone number, for families across OAISD. The first ring of the phone was answered by a home visitor willing to work a few extra hours. It was a team effort built on a shared vision that all families in the Ottawa Area would be able to navigate the complex early childhood system and access the supports, services, and programs their children needed. Help Me Grow provides a trusted point of connection for families, builds awareness, and strengthens partnerships with medical providers. Over time, data is collected and analyzed to improve systems and outcomes for children.

Over the last decade, OAISD has continued to refine and expand Help Me Grow, using data-driven strategies for improvement and growth. Through the Great Start Collaborative and 32p funding, Help Me Grow Ottawa has engaged medical providers, expanded developmental screening (Ages and Stages Questionnaire), tracked referrals through the Michigan Early Childhood Connect (MiECC), and connected children and families to essential services from Early On and Head Start to food pantries and PreK for All. The model goes beyond referrals and includes follow-up to ensure families successfully access services and that barriers are addressed.

When the pandemic threatened progress, Ottawa's early childhood leadership turned to implementation science, the disciplined use of research-to-practice frameworks. Help Me Grow Ottawa became a central hub for child care access for essential workers and a trusted source of information about community resources for families of all ages. OAISD's continued investment in staffing, consistent messaging, and community engagement helped sustain momentum through that difficult time.

That persistence has produced measurable results. Between 2013 and 2024, 28,904 developmental screenings were completed, with over 8,000 children screened for developmental delays in the past year alone. In 2024, Help Me Grow Ottawa connected 81 percent of children and families to early childhood services, well above the national average. Ninety-nine percent of families reported that Help Me Grow Ottawa met their needs, supporting 4,542 children across the county. Preliminary analysis suggests that for every one dollar invested, the community experiences a return of approximately twenty-nine dollars in social and economic benefits.

Today, Help Me Grow Ottawa stands as a strong example of cross-sector collaboration. Its backbone is powered by OAISD but animated by its partners, including home visiting programs, medical offices, libraries, and child-care providers, each contributing to a shared vision: every child healthy, thriving, and developmentally on track for kindergarten.

This story underscores the power of leadership alignment, data-driven systems, and community collaboration. Ottawa’s experience shows that when local leaders champion coordinated systems across sectors, maintain centralized access for families, engage medical partners, and persist through challenges, children arrive at school ready, not by chance, but by design. In 2024–25, third-grade ELA M-STEP results within the OAISD were 56.1 percent proficient or advanced, well above state averages. While there is still much work to do, the efforts described here directly contribute to those outcomes and to continued progress.

The Great Start Collaborative and early childhood systems work have helped bring our region to this point, and now it is time to continue building toward the future vision for early childhood systems through the Help Me Grow National Model, ensuring equitable access for all children in Michigan.

Read, Write, ROAR! Learning Adventures is a FREE, research-backed ELA resource designed for preschool through upper elementary learners.

Developed with Michigan educators and grounded in the Science of Reading and Literacy Essentials, this resource helps make evidence-based literacy instruction simple, engaging, and accessible for teachers, school leaders, and families.

Read, Write, ROAR! Learning Adventures provides:

• Video lessons and ready-to-use activity sheets organized by grade level
• Clear standards listed on every lesson for instant planning support
• Parent-facing “Ready to ROAR” messaging in Arabic and Spanish to strengthen home–school connections
• EduPaths online PD courses available — earn SCECH credits under Professional Learning

Click the link to explore by grade and start using Read, Write, ROAR! Learning Adventures today!

The Michigan Department of Education's (MDE) School Behavioral Health Unit in the Office of Health and Safety is proud to share the approved Guidance for a Comprehensive School Mental Health System of Supports, and a 2-page supplemental brief. Both documents are available on MDE’s Mental Health page.

To view MDE's official press release, click this link.

Our goal is for the documents to be a starting point to introduce Michigan schools to the value of creating a comprehensive school mental health system. We hope to expand on the initial comprehensive document with future iterations that include specific examples from Michigan schools and updated resources. The MDE School Behavioral Health Unit in the Office of Health and Safety will also provide technical assistance to schools looking to implement a comprehensive school mental health system.

Please feel free to distribute the documents to your networks and encourage anyone with questions or seeking technical assistance to reach out to us at MDE-OHS@michigan.gov.

As part of our robust plan to roll the documents out, we will be sharing them with the various associations across the state and some national ones, presenting at state and national conferences, using our social network platforms, and, of course, relying on good ol’ fashioned word of mouth and people sharing this information.

“At Glen Lake Middle School, we'll use MDE’s Guidance for a Comprehensive School Mental Health System of Supports to first support our staff—because when our team feels balanced and supported, they can give their best to students and families,” said Dina Rocheleau, Glen Lake Middle School Principal and contributing workgroup member. “The guide is packed with best-practice resources that will guide meaningful discussions and help us, as adults, be intentional about changes that positively impact students. One tool we’re especially excited to explore is SHAPE—the School Health Assessment and Performance Evaluation System—which provides a virtual workspace and resources for schools. We’ll be following the continual improvement cycle outlined on page 40, using it to strengthen our approach over time. Developed by leaders in Michigan, this guide will be our go-to resource as we work to help students build skills to handle stress, form strong relationships, adapt to change, and use healthy coping tools. We greatly appreciate this invaluable tool!”

Amber Zarb, Mental Health Consultant, School Culture & Climate at Oakland Schools, also contributed her time and expertise to this project. “As a member of the workgroup, I’m encouraged by the shared focus and expertise that went into creating it. This experience demonstrated that no one is working in isolation while navigating how to implement best practices for school mental health. The collective intentionality and knowledge behind the co-creation of this guidance document are an invaluable resource for supporting Michigan school teams moving forward,” Amber stated.

Michael J. Seaman, Mayville Community Schools Superintendent, said this about the guidance:

“This document is very easy to use and provides valuable information regarding mental health and supporting students. The document also provides informational links that allows the user to dig deeper and find solutions to their mental health system needs. This resource is the perfect playbook to help school districts provide the best mental health support that they can. This document should be reviewed by all staff and shared through professional development. I would recommend reviewing this document with your district school improvement team and using it to create support for your students.”

The Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potentials’ (MiLEAP) Office of Education Partnerships invites you to join our upcoming webinar, The Evolving Role of Family Engagement: Improving Student Outcomes through Best Practices.

Family engagement is a powerful tool for improving student outcomes—but too often, it doesn't reach its full potential. This session is designed for school leaders, district staff, family liaisons, and educators who want to deepen their understanding and strengthen their engagement practices.

Join us to explore the research behind effective family engagement and learn practical, high-impact strategies you can implement right away.

When: Tuesday, November 18

Please select one session time:

• 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. (ET): Register Here
• 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. (ET): Register Here

We look forward to learning and growing together in support of Michigan families and students.

To register, click here.

MAISA’s office will be closed November 27–28, 2025, in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. We will reopen on Monday, December 1, 2025.

Wishing you a joyful and restful holiday with family and friends!

Visit the MAISA Event Site to view monthly calendars and upcoming meetings and events