MTSS, SEL, and Motivational Interviewing: Making the System Talk Part 2: Tier 1 Conversations – MI in the Classroom and Hallways

In Part 1 of this series, I provided an overview of how MTSS and SEL give you the structure, and motivational interviewing shapes the tone of the conversations that live inside that structure.

For this post, I want to drop all the way down to Tier 1. No referral forms. No special meetings. Just the daily classroom and hallway moments where students decide, again and again, whether the educators in their school are worth talking to.

Tier 1 is easy to overlook in a series about MI, because many people picture MI as something you do in an office with the door closed. In practice, the same habits that make MI powerful in counseling show up in ordinary teaching: how you respond when a student shrugs off an assignment, how you handle defiance with an audience of peers watching, how you listen when a student admits something vulnerable in the middle of class.

None of this requires you to become a therapist. It does ask you to play with a slightly different way of talking and being mindful of the MI spirit.

A small scene during last period

It is the last period on a Wednesday. A teacher is trying to move a class through a group activity. One student pushes their chair back and announces, “This is dumb. I’m never going to use this.”

Every person who has worked in a classroom knows the jolt in that moment. You have ten other things happening at once. You can feel the room watching to see what you will do. You have maybe five seconds to respond.

One version goes like this:

Educator: “You will use this. Just trust me. Put your chair down and get back to work.”

It is direct. It is quick. It asserts the expectation. It also invites a power struggle and gives the student very little room to save face.

An MI‑flavored version sounds different:

Educator: “Right now, this feels pointless to you. You don’t see how it has anything to do with your life.”

There is a pause. The teacher’s tone stays calm.

Educator: “If at some point a piece of this class did end up being useful to you, what do you think it would probably be connected to?”

That response is still clear about the teacher’s role. It does not agree that the class is pointless. It simply starts from where the student actually is, then invites them to think rather than defend.

That is MI at Tier 1. A reflection first. An open question, second. Advice and redirection can come later, once the heat has come down and the student has said a little more about their world.

Also, this approach works well if you have the room to start a quick conversation. If not, you can still use an MI approach by saying something like:

Educator: “Right now, this feels pointless to you. You don’t see how it has anything to do with your life.”

Pause. If there is a reply, then go ahead and reflect. If there isn’t a reply, you could proceed with something like:

Educator: “I’m curious to hear about what part of this class could end up being useful to you. Whether you think something would or wouldn’t be. For now, let’s do the group activity, and as soon as we’re done, let’s discuss how this will be applicable tomorrow or next year, or 10 years from now.”

Here, you are still setting the boundary around the activity and inviting them by being curious about their point of view.

Why this matters for SEL, not just behavior

If you read SEL frameworks, Tier 1 is all about helping every student build skills such as self‑awareness, self‑management, and relationship skills, usually embedded in everyday instruction.

You can have a beautiful SEL curriculum and still end up with students who experience school as a place where adults or “authority figures” talk at them more than with them. When that happens, the message underneath the SEL poster is, “We care about social and emotional skills, as long as you show them our way, on our timing.”

MI brings the SEL goals to life in the micro‑moments. When a teacher reflects a student’s frustration instead of shutting it down, they are modeling emotional literacy. When they ask a genuinely curious question about how school fits into a student’s life, they are practicing perspective‑taking. When they work with the student to find a next step that is both realistic and still aligned with expectations, they are doing shared problem‑solving. This is also what it means to embody the MI spirit (partnership, acceptance, compassion, evocation).

Responding to “I don’t care.”

One of the most common Tier 1 phrases in middle and high school is, “I don’t care.”

“I don’t care if I fail.”I don’t care if I get suspended.”I don’t care if I get kicked out.”

It is incredibly tempting to argue with that, especially when you know the student will care later. The righting reflex is tapping on your shoulder faster and faster to jump in and tell them why they should care.

An MI lens suggests something different. Researchers and trainers often talk about OARS as the basic posture: open questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries. The beauty of OARS skills is that they can be used with any person in your life. They could be looked at as the skills to use whenever you’re in anything past a surface-level conversation with someone. This is one of the reasons they are so effective, and using them, along with embodying the MI spirit, will help pave the way for better conversations with your students. 

For example, at Tier 1, start with a reflection.

Student: “I don’t care if I fail this class.”

Educator: “Part of you feels like failing would almost be easier than trying to catch up.”

The student might roll their eyes. They might correct you. “I didn’t say it would be easier. I just don’t think I can do it anyway.”

Either way, you have learned more than you knew a moment ago. Now you are hearing the fear and discouragement under the “I don’t care.” That is change talk territory: ability, reasons, and need are hiding under the surface, but you will not hear them if you go straight to persuasion.

From there, an MI‑flavored question might be, “If some small part of you did care how this turned out, what would that part be worried about?” or “When you picture yourself a year from now, what do you hope is true about school, even if it feels far away right now?”

You are not promising them an easy path. You are simply giving their more hopeful side a chance to speak.

Redirecting without humiliation

Another classic Tier 1 moment happens when a student is disrupting, and the whole class is watching.

Imagine a student tapping loudly on the desk, talking over others, pushing the edge of what you will tolerate. You ask them to stop. They make a joke, and a few students laugh.

The fastest way to reassert control is often to name the behavior, issue a consequence, and keep moving. The risk is that the student feels called out and responds by escalating or shutting down completely.

An MI‑informed redirect does not mean avoiding limits. It means pairing limits with some sign that you see the student as more than a problem.

Educator: “You’ve got a lot of energy right now, and it’s starting to pull the class off track.”

There is a beat.

Educator: “I need the noise to stop. Can you help me figure out where that energy can go that doesn’t derail everyone else?”

Sometimes the student will shrug and settle down because you named what they were doing without attacking who they are. Sometimes they will offer a half‑serious suggestion that opens the door to a better compromise. Either way, you have put a little more weight on the relationship side of the scale without giving up authority.

That balance between structure and autonomy support is at the heart of both SEL and MI, and research has linked it to better engagement and fewer behavior blow‑ups.

When students tell you hard things at awkward times

Tier 1 is also where disclosures happen.

A student lingers after class and says, “I’m not sleeping.” Or blurts out in the middle of a lesson, “My mom is gone again.” Or quietly tells you, “I think I’m going to drop out.”

MI does not replace your mandated reporter obligations or your crisis protocols. It does influence what you say in the thirty seconds after a student takes the risk to tell you something real.

School counseling literature on MI often emphasizes the power of a single good reflection in that moment. Instead of launching into reassurance or a flurry of questions, you might say:

“That sounds really heavy to be carrying around by yourself.” Or, “You’ve been trying to handle a lot on your own, and it’s starting to feel like too much.”

Then you can add, “I’m glad you told me,” and, “We do have to loop in [counselor, social worker, admin], and I can go with you so you don’t have to start this conversation over alone.”

The MI piece is the empathy and the choice of language. The MTSS and SEL piece is the system you connect them to next. It’s the language working within the system.

Keeping this grounded for busy teachers

A common question at this point is, “How on earth are we supposed to add MI to everything else we are asked to do?” The answer, at least at Tier 1, is that you do not. You start extremely small.

From the MI side, there is strong evidence that even brief training and practice can shift how educators talk to students and increase student engagement in behavior-change conversations, especially when educators consistently return to open questions and reflections rather than advice. 

From the classroom side, this usually looks like picking one or two phrases and one or two moments in your day to experiment with.

For example:

• When a student says, “I don’t care,” you reflect once before you respond.

• When you are about to correct a behavior, you try naming what the student seems to be feeling or trying to do, then naming the limit.

• When a student hints that something is going on outside school, you practice one empathetic reflection before pivoting to logistics.

That is it. No new lesson plans. No long scripts. Just a slight shift in how you use the seconds you already have. This is laying the foundation for stepping into the MI spirit and using the OARS skills. 

While these examples don’t necessarily constitute an entire MI conversation, it’s these elements that will be present in every MI conversation that you have. This means that if you can get used to these foundational skills now, come Tier 2 or Tier 3, or even harder conversations down the road, you’ll be less likely to get stuck looking for a way to help your student, a student’s family member, or a colleague.

If you are a school leader, Tier 1 is also where you can model MI for your staff during staff meetings and check‑ins, which some MTSS and coaching initiatives are beginning to explore formally. The next post in this series will pick up that thread at Tier 2, where brief, structured student supports live.

How this fits into the rest of the series

So far, across Parts 1 and 2, we have stayed mostly in the world of everyday interactions:

• Part 1 made the case that MI can sit inside MTSS and SEL as the “how we talk” layer.

• Part 2 has zoomed in on Tier 1, where classroom and hallway moments either erode or reinforce SEL and relationship work.

In Part 3, I will look at Tier 2: the short check‑ins, mentoring programs, and small groups that are supposed to catch students before problems get bigger. That is where MI moves from quick micro‑moves into slightly more intentional, five‑to‑fifteen‑minute conversations.

Part 4 will then tackle Tier 3, where the stakes are highest and it is easiest to slip into courtroom mode rather than collaboration.

For now, if you try even one MI‑flavored response in your next “I don’t care” or “This is pointless” moment, you are already doing the Tier 1 version of this work.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to have these conversations, we help schools upgrade everyday conversations inside MTSS and SEL using motivational interviewing so Tier 1, 2, and 3 supports actually move students toward change. We work with you and your team on real conversations and situations you face so that your school, campus, or organization delivers fewer lectures and drives more change.