East Ridge Elementary (Clear Creek Amana Community School District) in Coralville, Iowa, opened its doors to students in the Fall of 2024. The newness was palpable: the aroma of fresh paint, the pristine floors, and the unblemished desks. The physical building was ready, but Principal Ryan Paulson knew the harder construction hadn't even started yet—building a supportive culture for his 78 staff members and 450 4th- and 5th-grade students.
Even before the first students walked through the doors, Paulson rallied staff around a shared, school-wide commitment to every student's academic and emotional success. He turned to the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) model—a research-based framework that gives schools a consistent approach for supporting all students.
In East Ridge's inaugural year, that meant rolling out Tier 1 practices school-wide like establishing core values, setting universal expectations, and building a culture of acknowledgment and relationship at every level. To further equip teachers, the team also adopted the Second Step curriculum, giving staff practical, easy-to-use lessons designed to strengthen both learning and emotional well-being in the classroom.
After having a successful Tier 1 plan in place from year one, Paulson had just started thinking about how his team could build on last year’s progress when he received an email announcing an immersive, two-day Advanced Tier 2 training in Iowa City in August 2025. Tier 2, the next layer of student support, focuses on targeted interventions for students who need more than the universal classroom practices, but are not yet ready for a full Tier 3 intervention plan.
That email and the subsequent training were exactly what the East Ridge team needed to launch the next phase of their work.
The Training: Built for Real Schools
Offered by the University of Iowa’s Scanlan Center for School Mental Health, Advanced Tier 2 training was designed for school teams ready to deepen their Tier 2 practices across social-emotional and behavioral needs.
“It only took me 90 minutes into the training to be fully bought in,” said Paulson. “What I loved about the training was that it was tangible and practical. So many trainings I have been to, lectured on theory, theory, theory. And it’s like, you don’t need to convince me that we need to support specific student needs. Give me something I can bring back into practice. This training did just that, with expert facilitators, moldable templates, and ongoing support throughout the year.”
Allison Bruhn, Executive Director of the Scanlan Center for School Mental Health and Professor of Special Education at the University of Iowa College of Education, and Sara McDaniel, Professor of Special Education at the University of Alabama, led the training. The duo guided teams in matching students to appropriate interventions, using data to inform decisions, evaluating Tier 2 effectiveness, and building a ready-to-use implementation plan for the 2025-2026 academic year.
The training inspired immediate shifts in thinking for the East Ridge team, especially around the misconception that Tier 2 is a one-size-fits-all intervention. “Previously, I thought the only Tier 2 intervention was the Check-In/Check-Out method. However, during the training, we learned that, when using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), we can determine a more appropriate and personalized intervention for each student’s needs,” shared Blake Wilson, East Ridge Elementary Dean of Students.
Putting the Plan Into Action
Following the August training, East Ridge Elementary Tier 2 momentum continued to build once they returned to their building. This meant bi-weekly meetings, inviting staff feedback, investing in data systems, and monthly coaching sessions with Dr. Bruhn.
“East Ridge has been a model for taking a systems-based approach,” said Dr. Bruhn. “By having a dedicated Tier 2 team, a data system that enables them to track students and the interventions, engaging in ongoing professional development, active engagement from administration, and technology for tracking, they are putting the systems in place that allow those practices and implementation to happen.”
The team grounded its implementation approach in setting realistic goals, following what the data showed, and empowering students to take ownership of their progress.
During the summer training, the importance of reasonable goal-setting was emphasized for its ability to develop confidence in both teachers and students and to enable more personalized plan adjustments along the way. However, it asked something different of staff—a willingness to rethink what progress was supposed to look like. “If a student displayed 37 instances of profanity last week, let’s not set the goal for zero for next week,” said Paulson. “Perfection is not practical. Instead, maybe we strive for a 20 percent reduction, celebrate that progress, and then build from there.”
Additionally, a robust system for tracking behaviors—both individually for each student and collectively across the school building—was a key cog in East Ridge’s Tier 2 implementation. For individual students on a plan, this could mean tracking trends around daily and weekly instances of physical or verbal aggression based on incentives. Also, when the team looks at the aggregate data for other students on the same plan, they can assess the overall impact of the intervention. This helps identify which students need a different pathway and offers insight into alternate approaches. In the future, East Ridge will use the data to assess the overall impact on building and classroom cultures.
Wilson says that having the kids work with a mentor to self-monitor and self-graph progress has been another welcome change: “Seeing the kids take ownership of their behavior and success has been a point of pride. The graphs go home with the students, serving as built-in communication between the mentor and the parents at home, strengthening the full system of support between school and home.”
Results Beyond Measure: Student Outcomes
Not long ago, a parent email arrived in Paulson's inbox. It read: "Thank you for not giving up on our daughter. We love this plan. We can't wait to be a part of it." For Paulson, Wilson, and the staff at East Ridge, that email said everything about the Tier 2 changes made.
The drastic improvement in student behavior in one teacher’s classroom was another powerful testament to the team’s work. At the beginning of the year, the teacher had three students with significant behavioral challenges. After instituting the Tier 2 plans, the teacher noticed a “night and day difference,” affirming that the more restorative approach to individualized student support led to more conversations with parents and more empowered students who felt ownership for their education and growth.
Now almost nine months into Tier 2 implementation, the hard data have also shown positive trends in the number of referrals, student time in the classroom, behavioral performance, and discipline issues within a class.
Substantial progress has been made, but the Tier 2 team knows that continual refinement of the system will be essential to their ability to provide the best possible support for students. One plan enhancement East Ridge is excited about is integrating parental permission for an SDQ into school registration forms for the 2026-2027 school year. This small change will speed up their ability to help students. Additionally, next year, the team will continue to build on their PBIS supports, turning attention to Tier 3 supports.
While not every school will start its journey to better student supports with a new building, East Ridge’s lesson is universal: culture isn't something a building provides. It has to be chosen, structured, grounded in evidence and training, and then nurtured…student by student, plan by plan, interaction by interaction.
Is your school or district interested in learning more about the Scanlan Center for School Mental Health’s Advanced Tier 2 training? Contact scsmh-main@uiowa.edu for more information about attending the next session or scheduling one.