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Executive Functioning Coaching
Executive Functioning Coaching
At Starkey Educational Services, we have experience working both institutionally and independently with students at the K-12 and college levels who fall behind academically.
While causes vary, many students struggle due to a lack of management and/or organizational skills, attitudinal or behavioral issues, or a general inability to focus.
Conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD),
Asperger Syndrome (AS), or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may also be involved.
While some students may benefit from prescription medications, a majority of these conditions continue to manifest themselves without other interventions.
In regard to your struggling student, it is important for you to ask yourself the following questions:
1. Am I working harder than my son or daughter to keep them afloat in school?
2. Do I care more about my son or daughter's success than they do?
3. Is my son or daughter struggling despite great effort and time commitment?
4. Am I frustrated that my son or daughter is not reaching their true potential academically, socially, emotionally, or athletically?
Key Concepts
Key Concepts
Executive function and self-regulation skills
are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully.
Executive function and self-regulation skills depend on three types of brain function: working memory, mental flexibility, and self-control. These functions are highly interrelated, and the successful application of executive function skills requires them to operate in
coordination with each other.
Not simply subject tutoring
Not simply subject tutoring
Executive Functioning Coaching is not simply subject tutoring.
Executive Functioning Coaching encourages your son or daughter to make positive long-term changes by:
1. Assisting them in eliminating poor organizational, time management, or behavioral habits
2. Establishing guidelines in addressing organization, time management, and behavioral objectives, i.e., "What is the best way that I can make myself succeed?"
3. Encouraging them to put forth their best effort (looking beyond simple achievement)
4. Providing positive reinforcement in order for them to set goals and achieve them on a consistent basis
Executive functioning coaching is best utilized when it directs its focus with respect to areas in which a student struggles. For academically challenged students, for example, a coaching focus would be on the specific areas of academic achievement where a student has had difficulty.
Many students benefit from one-on-one support with academic assignments and projects in order to establish coping skills. They are encouraged to apply learned coping skills to the challenges that lay before them.
Academically, coaching may do the following for a struggling student:
Academically, coaching may do the following for a struggling student:
- Deconstruct the difficulty of a nightly, weekly, or long-term assignment in order to make it more manageable
- Develop strategies to counteract these issues.
- Create individualized graphic organizers.
- Design and develop strategies to address problem areas.
- Formulate plans to utilize these newly-established strategies into other areas of their academic work