PODCAST TRANSCRIPTSteve [Intro]: 00:00 Hello, and welcome to the teacher edition of the Steve Barkley Ponders Out loud podcast. The complexity of teaching is both challenging and rewarding. And my curiosity is peaked whenever I explore with teachers the multiple pathways for facilitating student engagement in the exciting world of learning. This podcast looks to serve teachers as they motivate coach and support their learners.

Steve: 00:31 Building students’ executive functioning skills. Today we’re joined by Brenda Watkins, a teacher and teacher educator experienced in developing students’ strengths and executive functioning. Welcome, Brenda.

Brenda: 00:48 Hello, I’m glad to be here.

Steve: 00:51 I’m wondering if you’d start off with telling us a little bit about your your, your teaching background?

Brenda: 00:58 Absolutely. I’ve been teaching in public education for the Williamsport Area School District, the past 21 years. The first 14 years, I taught learning support and itinerate emotional support. And then the past seven years, I’ve been teaching fourth grade all subjects. We do full inclusion model in my school. I also taught elementary education science principles at Lycoming college in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. And then I’ve been with PLS 3rd Learning partnered with Wilkes University since 2010, and I’m certified to teach 13 of those graduate courses.

Steve: 01:44 Wow. Lots of experience. I’m guessing from the start, the executive functioning has been a focus area for you within your teaching whether it was formally described or not.

Brenda: 01:59 Yes, absolutely. It has been, especially in the area of special ed and itinerate emotional support, having that direct, explicit teaching, and then bringing it into a full inclusion classroom with differentiated learners.

Steve: 02:18 Can you start by by giving us a kind of a working definition for executive functioning?

Brenda: 02:23 Yeah. The best way to explain executive functioning is it’s kind of like a brain’s air traffic control system. It’s where you manage, you organize direct and control, and it integrates with all the brain’s functions to control those impulses, to make plans in order for a person to stay focused and even basic facilitative thinking. And executive functioning, every function has its own rule, but they’re interconnected and they work together in order for us to navigate the world. So another way to look at it is if you had a Rubik’s cube in your hand, and you were trying to turn that Rubik’s cube, one executive functioning skill can activate can impact the others and the deficits in one area can interrupt and create issues in another, just like if you had that Rubik’s cube and you’re trying to turn it, it’s all based on how it works together.

Steve: 03:34 I know a lot of schools, especially as they went into COVID, increased their focus on social-emotional learning. Is there a connection with social-emotional learning and executive functioning?

Brenda: 03:49 Yes. The formal term of that is inhibitory control and that’s one of the three dimensions of executive functioning. And it is controlled by the prefrontal cortex, which is mostly associated with that part of the brain. And since the prefrontal cortex is the last to develop, we see more issues with that control in children, especially at the elementary level. And it naturally matures as a child develops. However, students with that weak inhibitory control, they may struggle throughout the school years and things like any kind of impulse, resisting temptations, any kind of distractions, and we know with like technology and stuff, our students are so used to having everything right in front of them and in their hands. So inhibitory control keeps us from completely being impulsive creatures.

Steve: 04:54 So is it fair to say that that quite often working on students’ executive functioning is embedded within a content focus lesson that a teacher would be delivering? In other words, two outcomes you’re working on at the same time?

Brenda: 05:15 Yeah. And I’m going to go back to that basic explicit teaching of self-regulation and how your behavior equals a choice and how educators practice these skills on a daily basis with things such as like organization, time management, how to like transition from one thing to the next. And in order to develop that executive functioning skill, it requires our students to know what they should be doing and particularly at specific grade levels. And they have to know the strategies and that’s why it’s important for teachers, even as you’re going through anything, you could be teaching, reading, writing, math, science, it’s the educator’s responsibility to support and develop those skills that empower them, but it can be taught through anything.

Steve: 06:13 I’m wondering if you could label an example for me. I’m thinking if you could share an example for primary, middle and high school students. An example, what would a teacher with primary students be doing to help build their executive functioning? I’m sure there’s a ton. But if you kind of pick one at different grade levels, it’ll help us here.

Brenda: 06:35 Honestly, Steve, you could use them throughout the grade levels, starting such as like the, “I do,” “we do,” “you do,” model using that metacognitive language. For example, like with a younger student, something, if a student you see that the student’s missing a pencil and you go back to the “you” language. You need a pencil to complete the assignment where could you find one in the classroom? And teaching things in small chunks, two to five minutes times the age. And I think a lot of times people forget that if you have a nine-year-old and you are teaching a nine-year-old, you have to think of it, like you’re going from two to five minutes, times their age and breaking things into those manageable chunks of time. Also engaging learners with multi-sensory instructions, where the activities are interactive learning opportunities.

Brenda: 07:40 If you think of encouraging attention games, like free time to sit down, oftentimes kids don’t have that free time, but that encouragement of when you are done with this, you can work and having those rich conversations with the students, that’s more of the primary grade going back, like Simon Says and things like that. But when you move into the middle grades, you should be working on like more of like a mind games and the visual teaching strategies, like choice boards. You can do those in the young years too, but it is important to eliminate technology distractions. And that’s hard because –

Steve: 08:24 Adults are struggling with it.

Brenda: 08:24 Yes, just even last year – so for example, in my classroom, the students were given Chromebooks and when it was time for direct
instruction, oftentimes they still had that Chromebook open. And I would say, “okay, let’s put it in crocodile position during instruction.”

Brenda: 08:45 And that sounds silly, but it worked.

Steve: 08:49 I’ve heard teachers do that.

Brenda: 08:49 I’ll say we have a parking garage for our pencils. We actually do, it’s a parking garage and the students put their pencils in a parking garage. We do similar things with technology. I know my own children, we have a parking garage for their cell phones at certain times, like during dinner and things like that, because you think about this – conversation is missed. That communication, all of those things and how better to get our students knowing and even adults, executive functioning for adults, because that technology is taking so much of it. It’s stealing that creativity.

Steve: 09:34 So Brenda, I know that you are teaching a graduate-level course for teachers around executive functioning. I’m wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what’s in that course?

Brenda: 09:46 Oh, absolutely. In the course, we explore strategies that strengthen the idea of executive functioning skills in different areas of organization, planning, attention, and memory, as well as that behavioral emotional component. And then teaching kids to move into more of that self-directedness and then cognitive flexibility. And we also discuss ways to establish a culture of thinking in the classroom and different routines. We learn how to develop cognitive flexibility for different activities that we do as adults in the classroom that they can take back the next day and use. And it helps them to see that thinking from multiple perspectives.

Steve: 10:38 I’ll put a link to that course in the lead in to this podcast so that folks can find it. Go ahead and share it with folks so that those who are exercising while they’re listening will still catch it.

Brenda: 10:53 So they would simply go to plsclasses.com and there, they would select an online or on-site course. Now I’m teaching mine as on-site. And there’s ways that you have the opportunity to choose. Just like we practice what we preach with our students, we do that for our adults as well. And PLS 3rd Learning has many accredited college partners and all of the courses are research-based and they can take them right back to the classroom the next day.

Steve: 11:25 Terrific. Brenda, would you share a way that people can contact you directly with the questions they might have?

Brenda: 11:33 Absolutely. It would be bwatkins@pls3rdlearning.com

Steve: 11:41 Alright. We’ll be sure to stick that in the lead-in as well. I’m wondering, signing off here Brenda, if there’s a last thought of encouragement that you have for teachers look looking at exploring executive functioning?

Brenda: 11:57 Yeah. I think that this course was developed and researched with such high efficacy and that it’s important for teachers to understand educators, to know that these are things that it’s not going to be a new thing. It is something that we do as best practice on a daily basis, but being conscious of what we’re doing and explicitly teaching them. So it’s not just a new thing. It’s going back to what we know as best
practice.

Steve: 12:33 What was going through my mind as I was listening to you, is the phrase empowering the learner.

Brenda: 12:39 Absolutely. And the couldn’t be any better than that, because we want our students to have that self-efficacy and if they cannot be confident learners and move into the 21st century and be successful, that’s what our ultimate goal is. They’re going to be taken care of us someday and running our country, and that’s what we want. So we might give the ability to do that.

Steve: 13:05 Thanks, Brenda. I appreciate the time you’ve shared with us.

Brenda: 13:11 Thank you.

Steve [Outro]: 13:13 Thank you for listening. You can subscribe to Steve Barkley, Ponders Out Loud on iTunes and Podbean. And please remember to rate and review us on iTunes. I also want to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter @stevebarkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com. And don’t forget to visit plsclasses.com to learn how you can further your education and career with online on-site and remote courses.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTAd: 00:00 Are you interested in career advancement? Do you want to have a greater impact in the classroom? If so, PLS Classes is waiting for you. PLS Classes as a resource designed to empower and advance educators by teaching them valuable research-based strategies they can apply in the classroom. By completing a PLS Classes course, you will discover how to motivate and engage learners while elevating your professional expertise. Visit plsclasses.com today to learn more. Your future awaits.

Steve [Intro]: 00:32 Hello and welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. Instructional coaches and leaders create the environment that supports teachers to continually imagine, grow and achieve. They model an excitement for learning that teachers in turn model for students. This podcast is dedicated to promoting the important aspects of instructional leadership. Thanks for listening.

Steve: 01:00 Encouraging teachers to build students’ executive functioning skills. Experienced teacher and teacher educator, Brenda Watkins, is joining our podcast today. Brenda has substantial experience in working with executive functioning. Brenda, I’m wondering if you’d share some of the insights that you’ve gained across your years of teaching that caused you to have this focus on building students’ executive functioning skills.

Brenda: 01:35 Yes. I noticed that students with strong executive functioning skills, they’re able to navigate the multiple requirements of an everyday school day by paying attention, making transitions and organizing their work. So as a result, they’re more successful learners. But then on the other hand, I noticed that the students with executive functioning deficits, they struggle with things such as inhibitory control, which is basically staying in their seat, paying attention, trying to stay at organized. And then as a result of that, their deficit can affect their learning and their grades and also lower their self-efficacy.

Steve: 02:21 So there’s this strong connection between students who are struggling with executive functioning skills, having their academic learning be influenced and impacted by it. So building those skills increases students’ success from an academic standpoint. Have I got that straight?

Brenda: 02:45 Yes. f students don’t have the basic executive functioning skills such as organization, we have to remember as well that we can give them all that organization we want, but it has to come from what works best for that child. When I first started, I had this idea that I was going to do this – to organize and everybody would use the same exact thing and I would explicitly teach that. Well, that’s good, but at the same time, they need to have their way that works best for them so that they can learn it.

Steve: 03:22 So, Brenda, I’m wondering, as an observer in a teacher’s a classroom, what are some of the things that as an observer, I might see that illustrate for me that the teacher is either consciously or unconsciously addressing opportunities for building students’ executive functioning skills?

Brenda: 03:44 So you would walk into a classroom environment that supports the idea that you would see teachers who have procedures in place for organization. Those smooth transitions, maybe social guidelines that are established and even posted, different rules that are posted and then also enforced with that consistent idea and pervasive idea. Also, they would notice that teachers are emphasizing thinking strategies and they’re making that visible through strong discussions and essential debriefing of whatever it is they’re learning. You would notice that teachers who expect their students to be that idea of an independent thinker and self-directed responsible and being accountable for their learning, building that strong self-efficacy in the classroom. So that classroom environment would support the idea of consciously or unconsciously addressing executive functioning.

Steve: 04:54 As I was listening to you, I did a flashback to a teacher’s classroom that I observed and I certainly didn’t have the phrase executive functioning in my head at the time. But when I found the teacher doing was at the beginning of the year, she had her classroom rules written on sentence strips and the sentence strips were hung up at different spots around the room. And then she was informing her students that her goal was to be able to take down all of those sentence strips, meaning that, as the social skillset of the class came into play, that those rules would no longer be needed. The rules were only there now, because we hadn’t had the chance to develop that yet.

Brenda: 05:52 That is amazing. That’s a cool way of thinking that. That’s throwing back in the kid for self responsibility.

Steve: 06:00 So then there was a ceremony when they would reach a day and decide that they could take that one down and roll it up and put it away. And then if a problem occurred, she, in effect, brought it back out. It looks like we weren’t quite ready. We put it away too soon and it went back up as a way of of reinforcing the kids to it. And it just jumped out at me remembering that, I thought it was impressive when I saw it. And I’m seeing now that in effect, she was labeling those as executive functioning skills for kids to develop.

Brenda: 06:35 And that’s very important that we do label those and that we make the students aware of the rules and that we need to explicitly teach them. Like if a coach is responsible to come in and help assist the teacher or an administrator needs to come in and assist the teacher in that, it is important that they understand that explicit teaching is best practice teaching. Because how are you better to learn something if you cannot expect the behavior if you do not teach a behavior. I like that idea of the sentence strips. How creative.

Steve: 07:16 So I guess I’m hearing teach it, model it and coach it.

Brenda: 07:21 Yes.

Steve: 07:22 So is executive functioning something that’s important for teachers to be taking a conscious look at at all grade levels?

Brenda: 07:32 Absolutely. We have to understand since we’re not born with these skills, they develop as we mature and well into our twenties, our early environment and educational experience, they influence whether our potential is fully realized. So it is imperative that educators understand and work to foster that idea of executive functioning and correlate it with the developmental stages in different grade levels as we teach, because you can’t expect a student to go and plan something out when they’re in first grade. Maybe the basics of planning, but you can’t expect something if it was not taught. And executive functioning is developmental and it happens throughout a person’s life. So, as I said, I’m thinking too, like, as I send my own children off into the world, it develops well into your twenties. So students that are in college and things like that, they’re still working on those basic executive functioning skills.

Steve: 08:45 Am I hearing almost assessment as as part of the teacher’s role here? The ability to assess where students are in their development of executive functioning skills, and then being able to plan for the appropriate instruction and opportunities that a particular student or groups of students would need in order for them to move ahead?

Brenda: 09:14 Yes. Since they’re at a developmental stage, we can’t expect things – there’s different windows of opportunity for those development, like different developmental periods with executive functioning and looking at research and the idea of neuroscience, they’ve found that there’s the different strategies and methods that educators can use to improve the skills and can benefit all learners snd it helps to keep students’ function deficits from falling through the cracks. And so it is important that we as educators know that and administrators as well, so they can jump in where it is needed.

Steve: 10:05 So, Brenda, I know that you are are teaching a graduate level course for teachers on on executive functioning and I’m wondering, in that course, what are some of the things you share with teachers as the benefits of teachers deciding to invest time and energy in having the development of executive functioning skills as a desired outcome of their of their planning and their instruction?

Brenda: 10:38 Well, I go back to saying, executive functioning skills support learning. And so without those executive functioning skills, you’re not going to have that learning idea. So when students can pay attention, when they can organize their work, exhibit self-regulation of behaviors and their emotion and be self-directed learners, then they know how to think. It’s easier to teach and it becomes less challenging for the teacher to do their job when you have strategies in place. I know that in this course, PLS 3rd Learning has done some research at looking at Project Zero, which is through Harvard, and there are a ton of resources and strategies for specific grade levels on that site.

Steve: 11:33 As I was listening to you, I was wondering about teachers working in professional learning communities and the degree to which that’s a time for teachers to be working together to look at building students’ executive functioning skills.

Brenda: 11:51 Yes. And I’m going to be honest – I am grateful that I teach in a building where my building principal, he fosters that idea of best practice. And we are actually working on that executive functioning skills and effective strategies that are best practice. Teachers are able to collaborate and we can see different procedures. We’re allowed to go in and observe each other and pinpoint things that might work. And we work together on a daily basis. Like every morning when I go to work, we have a PLC meeting and not only are we looking at data from like assessments, we’re looking at the student in general, and we’re trying to make that student a better productive citizen. And what way to do that then to partner with everybody at the grade level that sees those same developmental skills and we’re able to help each other, and we can plan those targeted interventions for students and help with those executive functioning deficits.

Steve: 13:04 Is it fair to say that as a teacher, I need my own executive functioning skills in order to work effectively in that PLC?

Brenda: 13:12 Absolutely. Because I’m going to be honest – it’s not always easy sometimes, people coming in on a Monday morning and you’re sitting there and you’re like, “oh my goodness.” Yes, it’s essential that teachers are able to model executive functioning skills that we want our students to exhibit. And I always go back to the idea of as teachers, we must be organized. We must be able to manage that instructional time well. We must be able to have those smooth transitions on a daily basis and doing our job in designing those lessons that stimulate and value problem solving, and the idea of perspective taking and creative cognition. We have to practice what we preach, or it’s not going to work. It’s not going to be bought in by the students. That is our job.

Steve: 14:09 I’m almost hearing the students have to have the experience and the practice to develop the skill more than – I guess what’s going through my mind is, I’m hearing that for kids to develop this teachers need to kind of be backing off teacher control in order for the student to experience what they need to experience.

Brenda: 14:35 And I always say to my students, I am your coach. I am facilitating your learning. I’m your coach yet we use the word teacher. And back in the day, if you look up the word teacher, where it came from, it was long ago and yes, that is our job. We are teaching, we’re expelling information, but really, we are facilitators of learning. We are coaching students to be self regulated learners, to go out into the world and take control of everything. And that’s what we need. We don’t need students sitting in rows being able to answer A, B, C, or D. That is not what is real life. We need real life learning.

Steve: 15:19 So learning how to learn is, in effect, a form of executive functioning skills.

Brenda: 15:25 Yeah. And that metacognitive thinking, they have to know how to think. They have to be able to think about their thinking and communicate it. And it is so important for them to be lifelong learners. I think of that all the time. And I say to the students, you are going to be taking care of me someday. I am teaching you how to take care of me. And they, they giggle, they think it’s funny. And I’m like, yep. That’s how it is. You’re going to be doing this someday. And so, I want the best care possible, so I’m going to give you the best care possible.

Steve: 16:07 Very cool. Very cool. Well Brenda, would you tell folks how they can get get a question off to you that you might respond to directly for them?

Brenda: 16:18 Yes, I can be reached at bwatkins@pls3rdlearning.com

Steve: 16:26 Alright. And we’ll be sure to to put that email address in the lead-in to this podcast along with the connection back to the course and to those resources that you mentioned from Project Zero. Yes. Thank you very much, Brenda.

Brenda: 16:44 Thank you.

Steve [Outro]: 16:46 Thank you for listening. You can subscribe to Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud on iTunes and Podbean. And please remember to rate and review us on iTunes. I also want to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter @stevebarkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.