Webinar: Executive Function for Today's Student and Tomorrow's Leader

 The webinar that I have attended is under the title of: "Executive Function for Today's Student and Tomorrow's Leader".

 It is an incredibly important issue.

• What is executive function and how can it help students and schools?

       Executive function is a term used to describe skills that regulate our behaviour and our thinking.

       If nurtured in young people, executive function looks like the ability to act in a goal-directed manner. It will be manifested in making fast choices in getting out the right tools to play a certain game, in stopping an action when they are asked to for example: to stop clapping, stop talking, etc. Those young people are exercising their executive functions when they respond by stopping. In addition, this function is manifested by the ability to remember to do something at a certain time and place, the ability to choose the best strategy for solving a problem or for executing a task.

As kids get older it becomes the ability to:

• Remember and follow instructions
• Avoid distraction and control impulses
• Adjust or shift when things change
• Persist at seeking solutions after failure
• Plan and organize complex projects
• Develop good study habits
• Manage long-term assignments
• Initiate working on tasks
• Self- monitor and reflect on work

All of those abilities empower central academic tasks such as:

• Read long and short form texts
• Write essays
• Conduct research
• Give presentations
• Coordinate and complete group projects
• Work on independent projects
• Take tests

What happens if we prioritize executive function?

• These skills automatically promote success in learning and in life throughout:

- Leading to good health because kids become able to more positive choices about nutrition and exercise.

- Leading to school achievement by being able to remember and follow, avoid distraction, consistent problem solving, manage tasks and assignments.

- Resulting in more positive behaviour, being better in collaborating, developing leadership qualities, being aware of one's and others' emotions.

- Affecting employment throughout growing to be well-organized individuals, being able to solve problems, adjusting to changing circumstances and surpassing challenging ones.

Actually, we are not born with these skills, we are born with the potential to develop them. They continue to grow as we get older. However, it is important to spend time on executive functions in early stages of life and continue to reinforce them as students get older.

• Executive Function Enablers:

There are three factors that enable executive function:

1- Relationships with adults: As adults we have to be the kind of person that students can rely on and guide them to become gradually independent over time.

2- Experiences in the classroom: Foster social connections, open-ended creativity... Definitely we need to incorporate challenges in educational experiences like in games.

3- Environment: Spaces that promote executive functions have to be safe and children have to feel safe. They need to perceive the space as safe one. 

• What happens if we don't develop executive functions?

If executive functions weren't well-developed the academic skills will be affected:

1- In Math: Students will have the inability to show their work to remember steps and to check and review their work. 

2- In writing: Students show the inability to initiate writing, generate ideas, organize ideas in an essay or a paragraph, to identify appropriate evidence to support their points.

3- In reading: Students show the inability to retain what they have read and identify the main points.

Executive function deficiency also manifests itself in a non-disciplined classroom behaviour. 

• Where do schools go wrong with executive function?

1- A lot of our strategies in terms of implementing a pedagogy of executive function or exercising it are inconsistent.

2- To turn a skill into a regular habit, we need repeated practice. Students are not practicing executive skills regularly. They need to practice them in their everyday life in school and home.

• Executive function for today's student and tomorrow's leader:

To reinforce executive function efforts we need to take a holistic approach and broaden our pedagogy and have it as a school culture.

There are three parts of this approach:

1- Strategies: Storytelling, active listening, guided practice , explicit modelling, direct instruction.

2- Activities: -  Games, puzzles, riddles that need exercising the memory. 

                      - Dramatic exercises: collaborating, timing, creative thinking...

                      - Journaling: reflective writing activity which promotes self-awareness.

3- Physical activity: Help in making decisions.

-