Anyone who spends time around education will see an alphabet soup of terms floating around — long and complicated concepts shortened to acronyms. Now, the Redmond School District has a new one, and it’s well worth understanding.

BRYT is an intensive intervention for students facing mental health conditions and extended school absences who struggle to stay and succeed in the classroom. The program is designed to provide short-term intervention that gets students back into their regular academic schedule and prevent students dropping out. Each student has an individual plan and goals — and the top goal is that students will gain the skills necessary to be successful in the classroom and exit the program. Intervention is designed to take between eight and 12 weeks.

BRYT — short for Bridge for Resilient Youth in Transition — is based in Brookline, Mass., and is also being implemented in the Bend-La Pine Schools and other school districts around the country.

This fall, the Redmond School District began implementing the program, targeted at kids who miss a significant amount of instruction. That absence could be the result of something as basic as being in the office as part of an in-school suspension or other behavioral issue, or it could be due to hospitalization for a mental health crisis.

The school district has added student success coordinators and student success instructional assistants to the teams at nearly every school. Their role is to support the BRYT work. Each school has also added a dedicated classroom space that serves as a home base for students in the program.

The rooms, which help students who may struggle with sensory overload, are designed to be soothing, offering calming lighting, seating options, and things like kinetic sand that can help students regain control of their emotions. The rooms are also filled with information to help students understand their brains, emotions and their progress in the program.

The goal of BRYT is to teach students self-regulation strategies. Students will learn what their personal triggers are that cause their problematic behaviors, and allow them to take charge in controlling those behaviors.

Students who may benefit from BRYT intervention are identified by school teams, who then invite the child’s parents or guardians to discuss whether the program is a good fit. The BRYT program requires a great deal of family involvement — families also learn the strategies their students are learning in school, so they can practice them at home. Communication between the family and school teams is vital to BRYT’s success.

If a student needs therapy, the program identifies that and helps families access qualified professionals to assist in that work.

Typically, a BRYT staff member will observe a student to see what is going well, which environments seem to trigger the behaviors, and then help that student come up with a plan. For example, if a student tends to struggle in math class, that student may practice strategies, then go with the IA to the math classroom to put them into action in class. That allows the IA tvo help the student, but also help the teacher learn the strategies as well.

Ultimately, the district hopes all school staff will undergo professional development to learn the strategies that help students regulate their behavior. And districtwide, the goal is that this type of intervention will allow students to learn vital strategies and techniques, allowing them to be successful graduates ready to contribute to the Redmond community in the most meaningful ways.