We're not only thrilled to welcome Aristea Arabie as a new team member at Bridge, but in an entirely new role that aligns with our re-imagined mission to build the systems of support necessary to accelerate academic achievement. Aristea was born in Massachusetts but raised and began her teaching career in Louisiana, where she gained over ten years of experience as a grade-level lead teacher, division leader, and Director of Special Education Intervention (all special populations) in a large charter school network.

Aristea was drawn to Bridge not only by our mission but the ways she could see us executing it each day. Once she learned of the vast human and programmatic resources available to students and educators in our community, she thought: there's no way you can't help students grow here.

As Director of Academic Intervention, Aristea has envisioned and leads a new department at BBCS - one that focuses on developing and enacting comprehensive systems that put students in need on a path toward academic success. 

Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS)

Bridge educators have always cared deeply about our school's ability to meet the specific needs of each child and walk alongside them in their growth and development. Our students have a multitude of various needs; whether academic in specific domains, functional, or developmental, Aristea and her team of highly-qualified Academic Specialists and tutors use a multi-tiered system of support to provide intentional and targeted interventions to help students meet their specific goals.

According to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, MTSS is “a comprehensive continuum of evidence-based, systemic practices to support a rapid response to students’ needs, with regular observation to facilitate data-based instructional decision making.’’ The six tenets of MTSS include: 

• All students are capable of grade-level learning with adequate support.
• MTSS is rooted in proactivity and prevention.
• The system utilizes evidence-based practices.
• Decisions and procedures are driven by school and student data.
• The degree of support given to students is based on their needs.
• Implementation occurs school-wide and requires stakeholder collaboration.

At Bridge, MTSS begins with diagnostic testing to determine students’ proficiency status in relation to benchmark standards in ELA and math. From there, our team analyzes student data to make appropriate student groupings for a protected scheduled intervention period that we call "iBlock." Unlike many schools, Bridge provides this intervention instruction each day, tailored to meet the needs of students in each intentional grouping. 

After a period of Tier 1 Intervention and thorough data analysis, teachers are able to refer students who are not Responding to Intervention (RtI) to MTSS. Anyone can refer a student: teachers, specialists, directors, parents, etc. Once referred, Aristea and her team organize what they call a School Building Level Committee (SBLC) meeting to diagnose the challenge and create an individualized intervention plan to help each student work towards achieving both individual and benchmark goals.

In true Bridge fashion, SBLCs are a collaborative effort that includes a child's parent/guardian and any educator in the building who might take part in the intervention: grade-level teachers, associate teachers/academic tutors, speech-language pathologists, social workers, occupational therapists, special educators, division directors, and more. While it may seem like a lot of cooks in the kitchen, Aristea has experienced the power of teamwork and effective communication to help students progress. Bridge has truly embraced this process, and by drawing on the multi-disciplinary expertise of the many educators available to students here, we ensure that our students are truly receiving the most appropriate levels of support to meet their specific needs.

It's systems like MTSS that allow Bridge to execute our mission and produce the levels of academic growth that students need to succeed.