HayU Blog

A new academic year is upon us. It’s an opportunity for a fresh start, a time to formulate new goals and implement better systems of organization. While some students relish the joy of color coding and archiving last year’s assignments, others feel tentative about this season of new courses, rising expectations and rusty routines. 

It all has me thinking about the timing to realize academic success, and a research rock star named Dr. Peg Dawson.  

I recently moderated a webinar with the esteemed Dr. Dawson, a personal hero of mine, for the Association of Educational Therapists (AET). Based on decades of research, Dr. Dawson highlighted coaching as an effective way to teach executive skills (EFs are a set of brain-based skills that help you get things done).  

It sounds straightforward enough, but building executive functioning skills takes time, and student and family buy-in remains crucial for success. 

With so many aspects to EF skillbuilding, it’s often difficult to prioritize the build itself. Sometimes it’s even harder to know what we can expect of our students, and how fast.  Luckily, Dr. Dawson developed a helpful schematic to help us think of this process in layers.

Let’s start with foundational skills. These earlier, building block skills tend to develop in the order presented here:

Foundational skills 

• Response inhibition → delay an action and reflect
• Working memory → holding information in our mind while we work with it
• Emotional control → use and respond to emotions in a healthy way 
• Flexibility → adapt & adjust to changing conditions 
• Sustained attention → ability to maintain attention despite fatigue, boredom, etc. 
• Task initiation → ability to begin tasks 

Next we have a series of more advanced, next level skills. The order in which we develop these abilities is more arbitrary and organic in nature, other than metacognition–that one is typically last to develop.

Advanced Skills

• Planning/prioritizing
• Organization
• Time management
• Goal-directed persistence
• Metacognition → the awareness that you have thoughts and that you can use those thoughts to understand the world, solve problems, make sense out of things.

From here, we can think differently about developing these layers based on each student. And remember that age and developmental readiness should play a huge role in setting goals and expectations. 

• For elementary students, focus first on the foundational skills because those are the first to develop. 
• For middle school students, most executive skills are emerging and inherently inconsistent. They may look great one day and lousy the next. 
• When in doubt, continue focusing on the foundational skills from which the others will follow. 
• With more advanced and older students, it’s time to turn to the suite of advanced skills.

Now that we’ve examined a layered look at EF skills, let’s return to the tricky timing of emotional buy-in and why the right coach at the right time matters most.  

So when? 

It’s all too tempting to jump right into this kind of work with an impatient eye on the end result.  Successful coaching allows the parent to step back from the headache of supervising schoolwork, gives the student a voice and helps the student evaluate their performance and course correct as needed. We all want this for our kids of any age–and the sooner the better.

But not so fast:  first, your child must be a willing participant in the process.  Otherwise progress will be doomed from the get-go. Ideally, your student will be personally invested in the outcome and participate in goal setting. 

We even recommend letting your middle or high school student play a role in selecting their coach. At Hayutin, we appreciate the opportunity to meet with your learner for an intake to get to know them and recommend a coach they will love. Every step of the process can and should be collaborative. 

What if my student isn’t ready for coaching, but I know they need it? 

You’ll know they are ready for outside support when they ask for help that isn’t from you.

When they are willing to commit to making changes.

When they are willing to try new systems for organization and time management. 

And when they’re ready, we’re ready for you. 

~Courtney Wittner