Supporting Students with Non-Compliance: Building Emotional Capacity Series – Developing a Tiered Intervention Playbook

Join us in this session presented by: Alex Hirshberg, Psy.D. Alex Hirshberg is a clinical psychologist and founder of Hirshberg Behavioral Health Services. He has spent the last several years providing consultation, professional development, and assessment services for dozens of districts across Massachusetts. He received his doctorate from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. Schools frequently encounter student difficulties that appear unrelated on the surface—attendance concerns, task refusal, emotional dysregulation, excessive reassurance seeking, social withdrawal, and dependence on adult support. This session introduces a unified framework for understanding these challenges through the lens of avoidance coping and demonstrates how schools can develop a tiered intervention playbook to guide responses. Participants will learn how to align prevention, early intervention, and intensive supports within an MTSS framework while ensuring consistency across classrooms, student support teams, and administrative decision-making. This is Part 2 of the 4-Part Supporting Students with Non-Compliance Series. The series explores practical, tiered strategies for supporting students who experience non-compliance, avoidance, emotional dysregulation, and difficulty managing challenging situations in general education settings.