What To Do About Executive Functioning

When Organization Doesn’t Fix Grades

Do you know this kid? He's failing three classes. He's got 47 missing assignments, and his backpack looks like somebody picked it up, shook it really hard, and then put everything back in it upside down. So when everybody at your school sees this, they instantly agree. This is executive functioning. And I mean, we get to work. We teach him how to organize his binder, we color code his folders, we give him a planner, we teach him how to break big assignments into smaller pieces. And maybe he even meets with somebody once a week to clean everything out, figure out what's missing, and to make a plan. And it works. His binder looks fantastic. He can show you exactly where the math assignments go. He can tell you how to break down assignments. He knows how to use the planner. He has learned all the things. But six weeks later, he's still failing those three classes. And now we've got a really interesting problem on our hands. Because we taught him executive functioning skills. He learned executive functioning skills. And he can demonstrate executive functioning skills. So why isn't he functioning any better?

Observations Aren’t Explanations

Hey school counselor, welcome back. Last week we talked about the way we're using the phrase executive functioning in schools. And we talked about something pretty important. Executive functioning gives us the neighborhood for understanding the issue, but it doesn't give us the address. And sometimes, honestly, we're not even in the right neighborhood. Because missing assignments, losing papers, not starting work, forgetting directions, or staring into space, those are all observations. They don't tell us why those things are happening. But then once we figure that out, we make the second mistake. We identify an executive functioning concern, and we instantly go looking for an executive functioning intervention. And those two things don't necessarily go together. So if you're ready for some straight talk, my friend, some clarity on your work and maybe a little bit of rebellion, you are in the right place. I'm Steph Johnson, and this is the School for School Counselors podcast. There is

Transfer And Why Skills Don’t Stick

a whole bunch of research out there that basically asks this question. There is a name for that. It is transfer. And as school counselors, we care about transfer a lot, or at least we should be. Because we're not teaching a kid how to use a planner because our life's ambition is for them to demonstrate beautiful planner skills in the school counseling office, right? We want something to change somewhere else. We want it to change in English class or at home or during independent work, when the teacher is giving too many directions at once, or when they have four assignments due and they have to figure out where to start. That's the outcome. And this is why some of the executive function research should really catch your attention. Kasai and colleagues looked at executive function training in children and found that you can get improvement on tasks that are similar to the thing being trained. That's called near transfer. So basically, you practice something and you get better at things that look a whole lot like what you practiced. Makes sense, right? But when we start asking whether that same improvement can spread out into other skills and into broader outcomes, things get a whole lot less exciting. Other researchers have raised these same concerns. We can train a task, we may improve performance on that task or get pretty close to it, but that does not automatically mean that we've given this kid some sort of broad executive function upgrade that now follows them around like a software update. And that should change the way that we're thinking about some of the things we're doing. Because our kid, we were just talking about, we taught him how to organize the binder and he organized it. We taught him how to use the planner and he can use it. We taught him how to break down an assignment and he can show us how to do that too. So technically, our lessons worked beautifully. But also, he can still be failing three classes, right? That's the problem. Because sometimes we're measuring whether the kid learned what we taught when what we actually needed to know was whether anything changed when we weren't there. And

Knowing Versus Using Skills

I think this is where we get ourselves into trouble. We teach information because it's something we're comfortable doing. We can teach lessons, we can guide groups, we can explain coping skills, we can teach organization and time management, we can show them how to use planners, and all of that is great. But then it's really easy to make the leap from they know it, therefore they can do it. And you know better just from your own life. You know that you have to put your phone down before you go to bed. You know that you should start things instead of procrastinating. You know where your keys are supposed to go, and you know that opening your email when you're trying to finish something else is probably not a great idea. And yet, here we are, right? Me too. Knowing is not always the problem. And there are really three different things going on here: knowing about a skill, demonstrating the skill, and using the skill when it matters. And those three things are not interchangeable. A student can know that breaking a big assignment into smaller pieces is a good idea. They can sit beside you and demonstrate exactly how to do it. They can make the prettiest little color-coded calendar plan that you've ever seen. But then sixth period rolls around and none of that's happening. That doesn't necessarily mean you didn't teach them. It means we haven't solved the performance problem. And that changes the question. Because instead of asking, what executive function lesson should I teach, we need to start asking, where specifically is this kid's functioning breaking down? Because now we're getting somewhere.

Practice And Feedback That Works

When you look at some of the more promising school-based interventions in the literature, there's something really interesting about them. They are amazingly unfancy. Let me give you an example. One of the better-known organizational interventions for students with ADHD is called HOPS, Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills. And as we're running this program, we're not just sitting kids down and having fascinating conversations about the cognitive constructs of organization. No, we are looking at actual school behavior. Did you write down the assignment? Where did you put the paper? Do you have the materials you need? Is there a system? Did you actually use the system? And then on top of all that, there's practice, there's monitoring, feedback, repetition again and again and again. And we're doing all of this right where the problem is actually happening. Research from Langberg and colleagues has shown improvements in organization, homework behaviors, and functioning with these kinds of interventions. And that's a big deal. Because when we do these, we're no longer trying to make a kid generically better at executive functioning. We're trying to change specific behaviors that are interfering with their school day. So let's go back to our kid who's failing three classes and has 47 missing assignments. Instead of saying he needs organization or he needs task initiation skills, all right, Karen, slow your roll. Pick one of those missing assignments. The teacher gives the assignment, then what? Does he write it down? Does he understand what he's supposed to do? Does he know where to start? Does he start and not finish? Does he finish it and then lose it? Does he finish it and forget to turn it in? Does he get started if an adult stands beside him? Does he need a prompt? Or does he need 10 prompts? Or does he never get started at all? We have to find the moment the wheels come off. Because that's the most interesting part. Maybe he needs that first step to be stupid simple to be able to get started. Maybe the assignment needs to be broken down into chunks. Maybe he needs a visual cue or a system for recording assignments, or maybe he needs to practice that system in the classroom instead of practicing it with you. Or maybe he needs feedback on whether he's actually doing it right. But in all of that, we need to push it one step further.

Find The Exact Breakdown Moment

Because maybe he doesn't need an executive function intervention at all. Maybe he isn't starting the English assignment because he can't read the passage. Maybe the work is too hard. Maybe he's convinced he's gonna screw it up. Maybe he just doesn't understand the directions. Maybe the room is so crazy and chaotic that he can't focus on anything longer than 30 seconds. Maybe he's exhausted. Or maybe he knows that if he sits there long enough, somebody's eventually gonna break down and walk over and walk him through the whole thing. So maybe the problem isn't entirely in the kid. And when we look at it that way, suddenly our executive function intervention might be explicit academic instruction or changing the directions or changing what happens right before the assignment or something in the environment. So I think we need to be really careful. Because once we've made up our mind that the problem is executive functioning, it is very tempting to assume that the solution needs the same label. Executive function problem. Here is an executive function intervention. It feels nice and tidy and logical. Except human behavior is not usually nice and tidy and logical. And sometimes the best intervention for something that looks like executive functioning deficits isn't an executive function intervention at all. Because the target is not executive functioning. The target is successful performance. And that's a really important distinction that we need to carry around in our brains at all times. We need to be able to explain how the thing we're doing is supposed to produce the outcome that we want. And that is different from just randomly assigning kids to executive function groups, which is what everybody loves to do in the school counseling world. Could you use a group to teach students how to use a planner? Absolutely. Could you teach them how to break down long-term projects? Yeah. Could you practice identifying first steps, estimating time, organizing materials, or noticing distractions? Yes, of course you could. And some kids may genuinely need that instruction. But the lessons are not the finish line. There has to be a bridge between I can do this with my counselor and I remembered to do this in class when nobody was standing next to me. That bridge could involve a lot of things. It could need some cues or practice or feedback or environmental supports, or maybe some adult prompting that gets faded over time. Whatever it is, there has to be some reasonable connection between what we're teaching and what we want the student to do. Because otherwise, we may have just created a lovely counseling experience for the student that maybe they even enjoyed a little bit, but changes absolutely nothing when they walk out our door. And I don't want any of us measuring success by whether a kid completed the executive function curriculum. I want us measuring whether the kid functions better. Did more work get turned in? Did they start sooner? Did fewer things disappear into the black hole of the backpack? Did they need fewer adult prompts? Can they actually solve the problems that were giving them trouble? Those are the outcomes. And then there's one more piece of this that I think is pretty important.

External Supports Are Real Functioning

Because a lot of the time, functioning better doesn't mean that the kid's brain somehow gets better magically at executive functioning. Sometimes it's because the environment needed to get smarter. Think about how you manage your own life. I do this too. I have calendars, reminders, lists, alarms. I have my bills on automatic payment. I have notes and routines. And I put some things in places where I see them every day because that is the organizational system that my brain requires. I do not sit at home at night trying to strengthen my work and memory so I can become the kind of person who remembers everything. Right? I externalize it hardcore. I build systems around myself. And at no point in my life does anybody look at me and say, Well, Steph, I mean, did you really remember the appointment if your phone reminded you? Of course not. It doesn't matter because I got to the appointment. The system worked. But in schools, sometimes we act like providing those external supports mean that the kid hasn't really learned the skill. I think we need to be really careful with that mindset. Because if a support helps a student function more successfully, that's not cheating or gaming the system. That's functioning. And maybe we eventually fade some of those supports. Maybe they learn how to create some of those supports for themselves. Or maybe some of them stick around indefinitely. That's okay. Because the goal is not to produce a child who can hold 17 things in their head without writing any of it down. The goal is for them to be able to navigate their day successfully, to be able to complete the work, keep track of what they're doing, start when they need to start, be able to recover when they get off track, and to be able to recognize when things start falling apart. Those are the true targets we're aiming for. So the next time somebody says to you, this student needs executive function interventions, don't go scrolling TPT just yet. Ask, what does this student need to be able to do that they're not doing successfully right now? And get painfully specific. Get granular. Then ask, where does it break down? Find that moment, that one specific moment, and then ask, what could we change, teach, practice, cue, or support in that moment? That is so much more useful than, hey, do you have an executive functioning curriculum? And it brings us right back to our kid. Failing three classes, 47 missing assignments, gorgeous binder, and knows exactly how to use the planner. If we stop at, well, he learned the executive function skills, we could maybe call that a success. But if he's still failing three classes after all that, who cares how pretty the binder is? In the last episode, we said the label is not the explanation. This week we're saying the construct is not the intervention. And maybe most importantly, out of all of this, the goal is not for kids to get better at executive functioning worksheets or games. It isn't for them to be able to recall the right vocabulary. It is not even for them to become better at doing everything inside their head. The goal is not to get better at executive functioning. The goal is for them to function better. Take

Target Performance Not A Label

care.