Executive Functioning Defined, Beyond Just "Being Organized"

Many people think they’re working on executive functioning, but aren’t ACTUALLY working on executive functioning.If you have students who have access to planners, visuals, lists, and other organizing tools, but still seem unorganized, this may be the case for your students.Especially if you have students who flat out refuse to use organizers, or just forget to use them. Even though people with strong executive functioning skills present on the outside as people who are “organized”, this is just the external \presentation that happens as a result of the internal cognitive skills that enable them to appear like they have their act together. That’s why when we jump right to the obvious tools for students, we’re often leaving a huge gap, which is why students often don’t know how to utilize tools they have at their disposal.In episode 267 of De Facto Leaders, I elaborate on the definition of executive functioning, because this is the first step in determining how to help our students get to the point of “being organized” (plus many other things, which you’ll realize when you listen). In this episode, I mention the Task Execution and Planning Protocol, which gives school clinicians an intervention strategy that takes students from “demand avoidance” and prompt dependence to independence during daily academic and functional tasks. You can learn more about the Task Execution and Planning Protocol here:  https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/taskexecutionIn this episode, I mentioned School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers design scalable executive functioning interventions to ensure students get the scaffolding they need across the school day. You can learn more about the program here:  https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/clinicalleadership