7.16 Executive Functioning Demands

Episode Transcript
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Shannon Betts (00:02):
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Hello and welcome to the Reading Teachers Lounge.
I'm really excited todaybecause we're going to be
talking about that one big topicthat's near and dear to my
heart, which is executivefunctioning and how to best
reach our students, and we havesome great guests with us today.
We have Doug Fisher and we haveMatt Strader, and we're really

(01:06):
excited because they have longbeen in the field of literacy in
many different areas, and so Iknow that they're going to bring
a lot of insight into thisconversation today.
I have a feeling this is goingto be one that many of our
listeners are going to want tobookmark, so, without further
ado, I'm going to startintroducing Matt Strader.

(01:27):
Thank you so much for joiningus.
Can you tell us a little bitabout yourself and the work that
you do within the world ofliteracy?

Matt Strader (01:33):
Absolutely Well.
Thank you for having me.
I'm Matt Strader and I was aliteracy teacher and coach for
just under a decade.
As well as being both a schooland district administrator
accountable for academics andspecifically multiple literacy
programs across buildings, Itransitioned just under a decade
ago into creating materials forschools and in that capacity I

(01:56):
serve as the Director ofAcademic Design for Secondary
Literacy at McGraw-Hill.
My personal research centers onself-efficacy and I'm
particularly interested in therealm of digital education and
what we do and don't know aboutself-efficacy as it relates to
digital learning, and Dougactually recently released a
book that compellingly bringsthe idea of self-efficacy into

(02:16):
the science of reading.
And in a similar way, I justview motivational processes as
being inextricably linked to theways we teach literacy and to
the way students learn.
So I'm really interested in howwe do that, and my team and I
at McGraw-Hill are just reallyfocused on literacy education in
the world of increasingtechnological adoption and
advancement, the shiftingpriorities of schools and

(02:40):
society society and then justalso really thinking about how
motivation and literacy play arole in the uncertain future of
the workforce and what that willlook like as our students today
graduate and enter that realm.
So that's some of the thingsI'm interested in and working on
at the moment.

Amazing.
And then we have Dr Doug Fisherwith us too, too.
So, doug, would you mindsharing a little bit of
information about yourself andyour work in the world of
literacy?

Douglas Fisher (03:10):
Sure Based on your when we were first planning
this conversation and learningabout some of your backgrounds,
I think I'll say that I enteredthis profession in speech
pathology.
That's where I wanted to be.
My degrees are in that.
Special ed, specifically arounddeaf ed and speech language
development, was my originallylike how I was going.

(03:33):
I was working in a pulloutprogram in an elementary school.
Did not love it, did not feellike I was having an effect and
Matt would tell me I did nothave high self-efficacy in that
job.
So I went to the director andsaid I don't love these pull-out
programs.
I don't feel like I'm making adifference and I think kids are
missing out from the coreclasses, so I want to do push-in

(03:54):
.
He said no, so I quit and Ibecame a classroom teacher.
There were not really very manyjobs back then, so I had all
these split assignments to tryto put together something
full-time and I didn't feel veryeffective.
So I went back to graduateschool, which I never thought I
was going to do.
I thought I was finished and Iwent back to graduate school,
really liked it, met someamazing professors who kind of

(04:16):
pushed me into deepeningunderstanding about young people
who have a hard time makingsense of print, for whatever
reasons.
So I had some people, somefaculty in special ed, I had
some people in general ed, I hadleadership so this great
experience of perspectives onwhat it takes to teach the world

(04:39):
to read, and so I loved it andI ended up being recruited to be
a faculty member.
So and I and I run a schoolwith my colleagues in San Diego.
So I think about like how do wedo all of these things and put
them into practice every day?

I will personally just share that one of my
assignments teaching.
I was working in a sharedclassroom for resource pullout
and the other side of myclassroom had deaf ed population
and so they also did a pulloutand push in.
But in every of our every oneof our general ed classrooms we
had interpreters and so I feelvery familiar.

(05:26):
That was seven years that I wasat that school.
You know working in that realmas well and I think when you
have experience working with thedeaf population, recognizing
what print look is and readingprint it is, it gives a
different perspective and adifferent flavor.
So that's really interesting.
It took me on the path oflearning more about children

(05:48):
with dyslexia.

And.

I really I find it really interesting.
I have also shared on thepodcast with our listeners that
I love speech pathologists somuch.
I have always found that theyare my number one partner when
I'm working with a child who'sstruggling with comprehension,
because I'm trying to figure outif it is a language

(06:10):
comprehension, if it is areceptive language issue, and so
I love just kind of having thatthink partner with an SLP.
So it's really interesting thatyou share that we have similar
kind of backgrounds.

I wonder.
I mean, as you say this, Iwonder if I had actually been a
deaf ed teacher.
So it's really interesting thatyou share that.
We have similar kind ofbackgrounds, network signed and
you know, my, my social worldwas around deaf ed and or deaf
deaf individuals and but my workwas around speech, only, ieps,
and so it was all put pull outto the boiler room and you know

(06:54):
like blow a candle and fog amirror, and those are not
unimportant things.
I just didn't feel like I wasmaking a difference.

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We're here to help you and your students.
Well, I'm glad you brought thatup, Mary, because you do always
say you know, go make friendswith your speech pathologist,
because I'm very jealous of thecoursework that y'all have.
I really wish that they wouldmerge more of the coursework for
reading teachers with thetraining that speech
pathologists get in theundergrad, Because I never had

(08:28):
linguistics or any of thoseclasses.

Oh sorry, we had international phonetic code so
we had to be able to transcribephonetically long pieces of text
and count morphemes andmorphological units.
And so this is my undergraduateprogram from a really long time
ago, and now I think about theworld's knowledge on morphology
now that we didn't have backthen, but SLPs were doing

(08:53):
morphological awareness way backwhen I was in school.

Exactly, and I'm just learning about morphemes.
Like literally, like this year,20 years into my career.

Well, today we want to really kind of focus on
executive functioning andmotivation and efficacy.
So many of our listeners reallydo have a baseline
understanding of executivefunctioning skills those small
cognitive and connective tasksthat we do to get things done
throughout the day right.
So I want to just see if youcan give us kind of a brief

(09:26):
overview so that we're all kindof starting with the same.
Why are we talking about this?
So if you could just describe alittle bit of the executive
functioning skills that ourstudents need to kind of get
through the day in theelementary K through six setting
, in the elementary K throughsix setting.

So executive functioning is actually
cognitive, neurologicalprocesses that involve three
things that happen in the brain,mostly in the prefrontal cortex
.
So those are inhibitory control, working memory and mental
flexibility.
And so I, when I was thinkingabout this topic, I found the
phrase executive functioningskills to be very interesting,

(10:10):
because executive functioningitself is actually cognitive
processes, and so when we thinkof skills, we think of things
that are observable, and theonly way I can think of that
cognitive processes would beobservable, potentially in the
classroom, would be, you know,if we had electrodes and things
hooked up to our students so wecould see where their brains
were lining up.

(10:30):
And so, in terms of the brainbeyond the prefrontal cortex,
the areas of the brain that areinvolved in behavior control,
error processing, reactions,responses, reason,
decision-making, interpretationof rules and expectations,
reason, decision-making,interpretation of rules and
expectations those are involved.
But then that still left me alittle short with the skills

(10:54):
part, and so the skills that arerelated to executive
functioning are often actuallythe skills of self-regulation.
And I also started thinkingabout human behavior.
And it's kind of interestingbecause what we're looking for
as evidence of executivefunctioning for students is what
they're doing in the real world.
So we're looking for actions tosay do they have appropriate
executive functioning?
But in my thinking and researchthere's a space that exists

(11:18):
between thinking and action andlots of things happen in that
space and so actually for thepurposes of this conversation, I
would like to kind of separatethose words into executive
functioning, the cognitiveprocesses and the skills to

(11:46):
think about what happens thereand why might a student who has
just fine cognitive processesnot exhibit the behaviors that
we would associate with strongexecutive functioning?
And how is that playing out ininstruction in our classroom and
how can we support those skillscoming to life in the real
world?
So I'll pause there and I havea few thoughts about just ways
we might conceptualize executivefunctioning.
But you know, doug, did youwant to add anything into that?

Matt, as you were talking, I was thinking
about one aspect of this.
Executive functioning is whenstudents get started on a task
and then work through the task.
And so students with challengesaround executive functions are
not the only ones who getstarted on a task and then don't
finish it.
But that's the challenge for ateacher If the learner doesn't

(12:31):
have good learning strategies.
If you look at like a Chew andChurbin article on cognitive
barriers to learning, theirsynthesis some learners get
started on a task and then don'tfinish it because they don't
have a learning strategy that isworking.
That's not executivefunctioning.
Some learners get started on atask and say this is not
relevant, I don't need to dothis.

(12:52):
That's not executivefunctioning.
Some learners get started on atask and they realize they don't
have enough prior knowledge tomake sense of what they're being
asked to do Again, notexecutive functioning.
To make sense of what they'rebeing asked to do Again, not
executive functioning.
So I think the first thing wehave to look at is, when we see
their behavior, what might becontributing and if it's

(13:20):
relevance, prior knowledge, lackof strong instructional
strategies like students don'thave a go-to strategy, then we
need to go teach that.
Like students don't have ago-to strategy, then we need to
go teach that.
And if those are not theanswers, then we need to start
thinking about how are wesupporting this kid who might be
experiencing some executivefunctioning needs.
Now I would be really carefulbecause if you're talking
15-year-olds versusfive-year-olds, there is a

(13:41):
developmentally appropriatenessto perseverance in a task, for
example, as one thing aroundexecutive functioning.
So people will say kids whohave challenging experiences
around executive functioning getstarted on a task and then
don't finish it.
That is true, but other kidsalso do that for other reasons.

(14:01):
So we got to become much moreintentional and specific around
was it the environment?
Was it the relevance here?
What is contributing to thekids not finishing the task?
And if it is really aroundexecutive functioning, then,
matt, like you were saying, thenwe go into the strategies.
How do we actually teach that?
But teaching that strategy isnot all of a sudden going to

(14:22):
make students say this is reallyimportant.
I need to learn this.

Yeah, I think Doug was describing several of the
specific academic reasons that astudent might not exhibit the
behavior we're looking for.
That we might just assume isexecutive function, but I would
zoom out even more and say theremight be motivational processes
.
So Doug mentioned relevance.
Relevance is key to any humanbehavior.

(14:48):
Outcome expectations Banduratalks a lot about these that we
have to see the value in thecompletion of our work and how
that's going to benefit us.
Otherwise we don't need to.
I also have a story from one ofmy colleagues that she talks
about all the time.
Her son never completes hishomework but he is, you know,

(15:10):
just off the charts in terms ofcognitive ability and is
graduating high school this year.
And the teachers will say, well, why don't you do your homework
?
You're such a wonderful student.
And he says, well, what is ityou're trying to assess that I
have mastery of?
And the teacher will tell him.
And then he will explain theconcept to the teacher, perform

(15:30):
a task and say I have a masteryat this and my time is better
spent playing video games orhanging out with my girlfriend
than completing my homework.
So I think that's just anotherexample.
Beyond, do I have the academicstrategies and skills and two
other metaphors I found in myresearch that I thought were
really interesting and mighthelp us kind of start to
understand this concept.
So Dr Deborah Phillips talksabout executive sorry, executive

(15:54):
functioning being kind of likethe air traffic control.
There are tons of thingsbombarding students all the time
, so social pressures,expectations, who they are,
their interests, and then youknow, for some students we could
go all the way back to thehierarchy of needs.
Some students arrive at schoolhungry, hired, having to take

(16:14):
care of the family while parentswork multiple jobs, and so all
of those things are competingfor the runways of our students'
thinking and cognitive capacity.
And so executive functioning isis what is kind of the traffic
control there and says, okay,well, you can enter now and you
can enter now, and obviously inthe, in the pressures of today's

(16:35):
society, I think students couldbe really overwhelmed with that
.
The second analogy that I reallyliked was from Dr Lynn Meltzer,
and she talks about this ideaof being at the top of a
mountain and having the panoramaof all of the trees and the
birds in the sky, and then atthe foot of the mountain, before
you summit it, you are actuallyjust seeing a bunch of trees

(16:56):
and you might not even be ableto see the top of the mountain.
And I think both things aretrue for students.
They need to understand the bigpicture.
Doug talked about the why, therelevance.
So I think there's a bigpicture on multiple levels.
There's the big picture of whyis this important today, why is
this important in my education,why is this important for school
?
But why is this important formy life?
And, as Doug said, a15-year-old is going to be a lot

(17:18):
more interested in how is thisgoing to benefit me in the long
term, versus a five-year-oldmight be more oriented to making
sure the adult in the room isvalidating me.
You know and so Dr Meltzertalks about executive
functioning is not actually thetop of the mountain all the time
that it is the conscious effortand ability to switch between

(17:39):
those two views to understandthe tree when I need to see the
tree, but to understand thepanorama when I need to see that
.
And so you know, thescholarship includes and
excludes things that belong inexecutive functioning, depending
on who you're reading.
And so I thought that those twometaphors, just kind of as
guideposts, were really helpfulfor me.

I really appreciate that, that really
solid base, because one of thethings that I'm not seeing as
much of in many classroomsanymore, or really even hearing
from teachers, is that, likedefensiveness, that teachers
often kind of fall back on.
Taught them this.

(18:22):
I can't explain why they don'tdo it, or the awful L lazy word,
but I think that what you havejust covered is exactly all of
these skills that we as teachersare responsible for
understanding and knowing aboutthe developmental nature of our
students, and it is very complex, so I'm grateful for that

(18:44):
really strong overview.
I think that what we need to dois really know our students and
we have talked about that manytimes on our podcast here is
really get to know your studentsso that you understand those
motivating pieces, but also whatare those underlying things
that may be detracting fromgetting a runway that's clear

(19:07):
for learning and all of theexpectations that we have for
our students in the class.
So I guess what we want to talkabout, then, is that we're
hoping to understand a littlebit more about what.
Can you recommend that teachersdo to really recognize some of

(19:27):
these for our students, or maybewe can talk about it as an
example in a reading lesson.
Tell me how you think thatexplaining some of these
motivational pieces can kind ofbenefit our teachers.

Let me jump in there.
Amy Berry, back in March of2020, put out an article on
teachers' perspectives onengagement, and she argues that
engagement is not a dichotomy.
Yes, students are engaged.
No, they're not.
But it actually occurs across acontinuum.
And when I read her article, Isaid why aren't we teaching this
to students as part of theirself-regulation?

(20:02):
Why aren't we showing studentsthat there's a range of
engagement?
It's passive in the middle, itgoes active in both directions.
You can be actively disengagedor you can be actively engaged.
So I really appreciate thisidea of a continuum and teaching
about engagement versusteaching for engagement.
And so, when I think about ourconversation, we make

(20:25):
assumptions that students knowwhat it means to engage in this
class at this age level, and thequestion we should be asking
ourselves is did we teach whatit means to engage or do we
simply expect it?
Now, in terms of academics, wewould not assess something that
we didn't teach.
That would be unfair.
But in terms of self-regulation, we expect things that we

(20:49):
didn't teach.
And so I started working withteams to say let's teach about
engagement Whole class lessons,small group lessons, individual
support lessons.
How do we have studentsunderstand the cognitive and
behavioral aspects of what itmeans to engage.
What are the things you shouldbe doing?

(21:10):
How do you then learn to setyour intention for the lesson
and then reflect on it?
Now, this was something we weredoing like school-wide,
class-wide, et cetera, and whatI noticed?
I have this video of this fourthgrader who would be identified
and his parents allow me to saythis as having some very
challenging executive functionfunction experiences, this

(21:33):
teaching of the engagementcontinuum.
Let him in on, quote what hesays the secret that all the
other kids knew, that he didn'tknow.
And this fourth grader talksabout how come no one told me
this?
These are the things you'resupposed to try to do for when
you're in class.
He said it's hard for me andsometimes I slip back to

(21:55):
avoiding my learning, but I knowI have to put my brain over
here to go to investing in mylearning.
And he used all the languageout of Amy's continuum.
And I talked to his teacher,fourth grade teacher, and she
said it wasn't a one-day lesson.
It was days and days and daysof having this learner set his

(22:15):
intention and then reflect, nother telling him Now what you
heard about setting yourintention, what you heard about
reflecting, about being veryexplicit about what we mean by
these actions and behaviors,both cognitively and
behaviorally.
That's all supports for kidswho experience challenges around
executive functions, but it wasembedded in the whole class so

(22:37):
it wasn't pulling out this kidand saying, okay, you're bad at
this, you have to get better atthis.
I'm going to have a consequenceif you don't do this.
This was just part of thenatural flow of this fourth
grade class.

I love that.
I'm reminded of when I wasteaching second grade as a
homeroom teacher and I had aculture of like this phrase
every turn learns.
And during the first month ofschool, when we were teaching
rituals and routines andprocedures, I taught all of
those on task behaviors.
I didn't know anything aboutthe continuum I've just heard

(23:10):
about it when you mentioned itbut I just realized it made my
classroom very efficient andalso orderly, and so that's what
I was doing, it and I wouldteach students.
You know this is how to trackme as a teacher or any of the
other kids when they werespeaking and answering questions
or when I was teaching the minilesson or writing the anchor
chart.
This is how to take notes, thisis how to follow the
conversation, and I also hadthem set intentions every day on

(23:34):
sticky notes.
So I didn't even realize I wasdoing those things to benefit
executive function, but it didhelp and I really like how you
just shared how that student,that fourth grade student, was
able to explain themetacognition around what he
learned about it.
That's really cool.

That's what I was going to share too.
We often talk a lot aboutmetacognition and I think for
Shannon and I this year in ourcareer, since we're both
privately tutoring, it's a bigimpact when you're working
one-on-one with a student andyou're able to really recognize
what their strengths and needsare.

(24:12):
But really talking through,does this make you feel sure
about your answer or unsureabout your answer?
And I have found that there area lot of kids who do not have
that, that gauge of what issureness, or I feel solid in
this understanding.
Sometimes I wonder too, if thepace of our lessons go so

(24:33):
quickly or our the way thatwe're chatting through a lesson
goes so quickly.
The kids aren't able toformulate the questions that
they're looking for, andquestioning is a higher, you
know, skill for students to beable to do.
But I think that starting rightin kindergarten, in a
traditional school setting,being able to help kids gauge

(24:54):
this, set their intention andthen also reflect on it is so
essential.
I often find that the bigquestion I think that teachers
will have is when am I going tofit this in?
But I think what we can do andI hear what you're saying is it
has to be a layered approach andit has to be part of your
routines and procedures.

(25:15):
Right, okay, I'm going to letyou guys keep continuing.

You're doing a fantastic job so I would say I
think of things similarly.
And, at the risk of repeating atrick, when you said reading
lesson, I divided the two wordsand so there's reading, and then
the idea of lesson conjured forme that there is actually a way
that we do school.
The the industrial model ofeducation that happens in the

(25:42):
classroom is not, I would guess,by and large does not match the
lived experience of students athome, and so some areas I could
think of were some that werealready mentioned.
So routines and expectations.
So how do we do things?
How often do we do things?
Is there an expected way to dothings?

(26:03):
And I'll touch on this a littlebit more when we think about
you know what, what, what mightit be like for a student who
struggles with these things, butwhat teachers could do?
As far as routines, shannon,just some of the things you just
said was making those routinesexplicit, practicing them.
You said the first month ofschool.
You know a lot of us think abouthow much time we need to spend

(26:24):
on instruction.
Let's get right into text, andit's not that these things need
to be taught separately.
I remember when I was teachingnight in seventh grade, I wanted
my kids to really discuss thebook and think about what they
were reading, what it meant tothem, and I needed them to be in
small groups.
So my desks were in rows.
So if you even think of that,rows is not the natural

(26:44):
organization of things usually.
And then we had this routinewhere we would turn the desks
and we got it down from about aminute and a half to five
seconds to get into your group.
So if you think about, you knowwe spent about four or so weeks
in this novel.
How many minutes were saved byspending 10 minutes really

(27:08):
focusing on that routine.
So, making it explicit,teaching your students
step-by-step.
And to what Doug mentionedearlier developmentally, what do
those steps look like?
They might be larger steps forolder students, smaller steps
for younger students, makingsure that we know that feedback
is the number one impact forstudent improvement.
So don't just have them, do theroutines, provide them feedback

(27:30):
on the routines and make sureDoug loves to say success is a
more powerful teacher thanfailure Make sure that you're
giving feedback on the successthat they're having, not just
the ways that they can improvethat.
I'm going to talk about thisquite a bit probably in this
conversation but values.
So there are expectations andrules that stem from values that

(27:50):
may or may not be shared in theschool environment and the home
environment, and so, thinkingabout values of respect, that
might mean two things in twodifferent places.
So in school, respect lookslike raising your hand, not

(28:11):
blurting out, taking turns, andwe might have to actually
educate students that theversion of respect that works
for them outside of the buildingdoesn't necessarily work here,
and that's part of doing school,as is following directions.
I also just thought aboutrelationships.
Students have different ways ofrelating to adults outside of
school, but school is reallyhierarchical for students, in
terms of authority often, and interms of what is owed to

(28:33):
different constituencies in theschool building, and that may or
may not be the same inside andout.
So, with the question being youknow what is the demand in a
reading lesson?
Well, for the lesson part, Iwould say those are some of the
demands, and then, if we were toget to the reading part, I
would say sustained focus.
So, going back to those runways, you know what happens when

(28:54):
there's a new demand or aircraftentering the space.
How do I deal with that?
And especially in reading, whenwe're asking students to read
or write for a sustained periodof time.
How do we teach them to ignoredistractions, process that with
them?
And part of that goes back torelevancy.
Do they see the sustained taskas being more important than the
thing that's interrupting them?
And we have to evaluate that.

(29:15):
We have to prioritize ideas Notall ideas in a text are equal,
not all ideas in writing areequal and which ones are most
important?
And how do we think throughthose and help students process
that?
Cognitive flexibility so that'sone of the three big
neurological processes that goeson with executive functioning
is massive in reading.

(29:35):
And so some examples I canthink about.
For younger students, whathappens when a decoding pattern
veers from the rule I was taught?
I have to deal with that, youknow, I have to actually sit and
think about it for a second andI have to try out some
strategies.
And for older students, whathappens when there's a flashback
or something that's, you know,really popular sometimes is, all

(29:56):
of a sudden the story shifts tothe perspective of a new
character and we may have a wordor a chapter break.
That is the only clue to that.
So that cognitive flexibilityof saying I was on this path in
my reading or writing, and now Ineed to choose a different path
is something that we can teachstudents and really work through
with them.
Working memory, so acquiring newinformation and thinking about

(30:19):
how do I use what I know and Ihave automaticity with to then
enable those skills and thenfinally process work.
You know it takes a while toread a novel, especially if
you're digging into everysentence sometimes, and it also
takes a while to write a pieceor to do a project.
So teaching students to breakdown that larger goal of I want
to complete my project intosmaller goals along the way, and

(30:42):
then teaching them thoseself-regulatory skills of
monitoring your goal, reflectingon it and creating time for
that, just as you would createtime for teaching the routines
and processes.
And so I'll also mention TimShanahan wrote a great blog on
executive functioning in 2022,in which he says that there is
no agreed-upon set of skills orlessons outside of the text and

(31:06):
the reading instruction thatwill support students' executive
functioning.
So it's really about inside thetext how do I attend to these
things as part of the lesson,not thinking about it as a
separate curriculum from whatyou're teaching in your reading?

He was explaining that during our discussion.
The text cohesion and payingattention to all that.

Yes, I think too, when you are noticing that
students are really strugglingwith it, if you can help them
maybe build a routine within.
I noticed that all of a suddenthe text has changed.
Do I need you know?
Maybe I have a sticker on mychart or something like that.

(31:49):
So I'm thinking about maybelike a fifth grade student where
all of a sudden they're readingsome texts and maybe there's a
point of view that shifts,explicitly teaching students
that and mentioning it andcalling it out several times,
not just a one-time deal.
I think that that is reallycrucial.
I also know too that a lot oftimes those students who have

(32:12):
this it might be a diagnosedthing or it might just be the
way that their brain isprocessing.
They're probably performingbelow their peers, even if they
have really strong cognitiveabilities in many other levels.
So what we're talking about arekind of these like unique
skills and at times, as long asthere's a routine built in, then

(32:34):
they can independently performthat.
You might need some extrasupport, and so what I always
saw my job is as a specialeducation teacher was to
identify those and create thosescaffolds.
So maybe it is a list of theprocedure for if it's a reading
task or a math test or something, don't hesitate to write it

(32:57):
down and keep it on their desk,or show them where that resource
can be and let them know thatutilizing a resource is not
anything bad.
Some people are able to do itreadily, some people aren't able
to call it to mind, but many ofus have already determined as
adults probably by the age of 30, that, oh, I'm going to need to

(33:20):
recall that information, I'mgoing to have to have a resource
.
Maybe it's something saved inyour phone or something like
that, but it's not anythingnegative if you're giving them
that opportunity to find aneasier or more efficient way for
their own brain to process it.
And I think that that's wheremany teachers are struggling,

(33:41):
because they don't know how toprovide that support.
That's what I'm really seeing.
All of these are specific to allof our learners, but then we
need to also identify theindividual needs of each of the
students in our class,specifically the ones that are
struggling, and I think, likeDoug had mentioned with the
fourth grade student, givingthem some language to identify

(34:05):
what's going on and allowingthem to express something that
maybe they never recognizedbefore.
If it's happening inside yourbrain, you're not able to really
visualize or see it orunderstand that other people
might be having differentiatedthoughts.
So I think that that part isreally crucial and I think that

(34:25):
it's probably a topic foranother discussion that we can
have, but I think opening upthis big conversation is really
important.
I know that parents are alsovery curious about this too.
So what are some of these likedo's that teachers can do to
make this a little bit morehelpful for their students?

I'll add something that's on my mind, as
you were just talking, andconnecting to something Matt
said earlier.
All of us have asuccess-failure ratio.
All of us experience, acrossour content, our academic
learning, some successes andsome failures.
Interesting research is youhave to experience success way
more frequently than failure topersevere.

(35:11):
And so we talk about kids withexecutive functioning.
If they experience failurerepeatedly and their success
failure ratio tips to failure ona regular basis, they come to
expect failure.
And why try if you're going tojust fail again and again and
again?
When their success failureratio tips to success, they come
to expect success and they seemistakes and errors as temporary

(35:33):
, transient and unimportant.
The teacher can structureexperiences to increase the
frequency that studentsexperience success.
Chunking makes a difference andyou are tutors and so you know
in your work you got to get themto feel successful with you or

(35:53):
they're not coming back becausethey vote with their feet and
they say to their parents I'mnot going to that tutor anymore.
That doesn't make me feel good.
They don't say it exactly thatway, but I think we underplay
the success-failure ratios andthe ways in which we structure
classes, learning experiences toincrease the frequency of

(36:16):
learner success.
Our job is not to tell themthey failed all the time and we
say it all the time Failure.
You learn from failure.
You don't learn from failure.
It's not true.
You learn from what happensafter the failure.
If I gave you a calculus testright now and you failed it and
I gave it to you again tomorrow,it is unlikely you're going to
change unless you do somethingafter experiencing the failure.

(36:40):
But cumulative failure inacademics is very demoralizing
and, as Matt will make aconnection to this, it
compromises our efficacy, ourbelief that we can put forth
effort and make anything goodhappen.
But efficacy I want to separateefficacy from our individual
personal success, failure ratiosand what teachers can do to

(37:02):
increase the likelihood thatstudents experience success.

And I will happily dive into that self-efficacy
piece in a little bit.
But there was one thought Iwanted to offer here as far as
what teachers can do.
I've trained a lot of teachersand I think the key to
successful practitioners isself-reflection and then having
that reflection change the waysyou interact with students.
And so I would say one thingyou can do is reflect

(37:29):
specifically on the values andculture of school and
particularly how students may ormay not share those values
outside of school.
So I'll offer an example ofwhen I was a rambunctious little
kid annoying my grandfather andhe tells me to go to the other
room and so I go singing andskipping and I jump off the
hearth of the fireplace and I doa cartwheel and I talk to

(37:51):
grandma and I jump on the couchand then I turn the TV up as
much as I can.
Those were the values of mygrandparents' house, the values
of play, the values of childhoodand of spontaneity and
engagement.
But then I go to school and I'mtold go to the rug for reading.
There's a whole different setof values there the values of

(38:12):
intentionality, the values ofexpeditiousness if that's a word
, I might've made it up but theplayfulness that exists as a
value elsewhere wasn't meant toexist in that moment Now, as a
child, if an adult hadn't toldme that and also hadn't just
told me go to the rug silentlyin a straight line, with your

(38:33):
hands by your side, not talkingto your neighbor, don't stop,
make sure you get to your seatand then sit in this way.
And then told me why.
Why do we want to do that?
We want to preserve our timefor learning.
We want to make sure that weare able to go safely and not
harm anybody else who might bewalking, and make sure that it's
predictable and it's safe andthat we get to the story,
because that's the fun part oftoday.

(38:54):
If that weren't made explicitlyclear to me as a child, I would
be very, very confused about thedelta between the values of the
place where I feel safe andschool, and then I might start
to think school is not a safeplace.
So that is one do I would offerto teachers is to step back and

(39:16):
evaluate the values of schooland how that may or may not be.
The same as students and Iwould also like to offer.
I taught primarily in schoolsthat had students of color and
the values of American society,the research shows, are
traditionally white,middle-class values.
If that is not your studentpopulation, then you have even

(39:38):
more reflection to do about whatare the values of your students
in their communities and how doyou bring those values to life
in the classroom while meetingthe values of school that is a
really important do.

Thank you for mentioning that.
Thank you, um.
You said we would circle backto um what the day feels like
for students.
Um, especially the literacyperiod, um, if they have
struggles with executivefunctioning, and I think, as we
circle back to that, we're goingto come up with some more dues
that teachers can do as well.
So can you shed some light intothat of what the reading period

(40:18):
might feel like for a student,or the writing period?

Yeah.
So I had a lot of thoughts hereand I actually connected with
Tim Shanahan before thisconversation, and one of the
things I thought of was thething he thought was the most
important, and that is confusion.
And what he said to me wasimagine someone told you you had
to play a game and you had towin it, but you couldn't know
the rules and you couldn't knowthe objectives, you just knew
you had to win.

(40:42):
And so, going back to thosevalues that I just talked about,
you know that you have to getto the rug, but nobody taught
you how or why, and you knowthat if you don't get to the rug
, you are going to get some sortof punishment.
How confusing would that be fora student day to day and so

(41:02):
something.
I'm going to return to this ina moment but we as humans
evolved to be part of the tribeand so, with very, very rare
exception, every single humanbrain on this planet is working
to be a part of the tribe,meaning that they are acting in
ways that are fully logical andsupportive of their tribe, in

(41:26):
the ways that the world appearsto them.
Now, the world appears to asix-year-old differently than it
does to people our age, so wehave to take that into account.
But I would be very confused aswell if the way I saw the world
at my age all of a sudden, Iwas just hitting walls all the
time.
A couple of things I could alsojust think about about the
experience of a student is wesee students increasingly

(41:51):
becoming depressed and full ofanxiety and other things like
that.
I think a lot of that isrelative to how much information
is available to students.
I believe the average age of astudent having a cell phone is
somewhere between 11 and 13 now,and you know, none of our
brains were meant to have accessto that much information, much
less young brains.
And so some students mayexternalize that failure that

(42:12):
they have and have thisexperience of being angry at
everyone.
But some students mayinternalize it and think that
there is something wrong withthem or the way that they're
going about living life.
So I think that those are twopotential possibilities, but it
really depends on the student.
You can't monolithically sayyou know.

(42:33):
Depends on the student.
It's really.
You can't monolithically sayyou know students experience
things this way.
So those are two potential ways.
I would think about that interms of what the experience
might be like.

I saw two in my experience as a push-in resource
teacher and I mentioned this alittle bit for the discussion
but I want to bring it up forthe listeners is I would come
into like a fourth or fifth orsixth grade classroom at the
beginning of the reading periodand at the start of the period
there might be about 10 minuteswhere they were reviewing the
previous day's concepts by goingover the homework and just in

(43:05):
that 10 minute period there wasa lot of movement of like space
and materials and things,because the teachers, the
students, had to get out acertain color pen from their
pencil bag and then they had toget out their homework folder,
which might be in their book bagor might be on their desk, and
then they had to dig for thepaper and then they had to get
it out in the time and then theyhad to like be listening and
following along as the teacherwent through all those things.

(43:27):
And then they had to get outtheir planner to be able to
write the next day's, thatnight's, homework down, and then
they had to put all that awayand then get out all the
resources that were needed forthe actual reading block of the
skill or strategy that they werelearning that day and I would
walk in and I knew which classstudents to kind of go around
because they were three stepsbehind everybody else in the in

(43:47):
the class.
And I saw that after havingconversations with Mary as
executive functioning problemsof like, like they were
struggling to um, I don't knowif it was you can help me
understand, if it was workingmemory, if it was time
management, if it was some otherthings but they just couldn't
keep up with the pace and I wasstruggling to like provide

(44:09):
enough scaffold and support toget them to be like okay, and
sometimes I was having to do itfor them, basically to just keep
them paced with the classbecause otherwise they seemed
already worn out by the time themini lesson came about just
from that homework review timeand then switching the materials
that then they were like theirbrain was tired and they weren't

(44:29):
even ready to learn the newmaterial.

Yeah, so I would put that in the working memory
category to begin with.
So I tell educators all thetime our brains are like
computers that have a certainamount of RAM.
I'm a video gamer and if I tryand play a video game that is
more demanding on RAM than mymachine has, all of a sudden the
screen stutters and tears ormaybe even just shuts down, and

(44:55):
so some of the things you werejust mentioning around materials
organization I tend to see inthe literature under
self-regulation skills and, aswe said at the beginning, those
are not unrelated and in factmost of the time when I see
executive functioning skills,the skills are actually
self-regulation skills.
But one thing the literaturealso tells us is that
self-efficacy is prerequisite toself-regulation.

(45:18):
So that might be one of thethings that's existing in that
little gap that I was talkingabout before between the
thinking and the action, I thinkalso on the reverse side.
You were also talking a littlebit about your experience as an
educator, as you're runningaround the classroom and you're
just trying to keep kids afloat,and so yes, there's the
experience of what those kidsare going through, probably

(45:41):
related to their working memory.
They're also potentially theircognitive flexibility Some
students, and in a moment I'dreally like to advocate for
students who have, you know,neurodiverse diagnoses in
particular.
But some of those students mayhave decided that they really
wanted to write in red today,not blue or whatever it was, and

(46:01):
you are changing the script onthem, and so now they're having
to use their inhibitory control,they're having to use this
behavior modification portion oftheir brain and you might have
actually stimulated the amygdala, which will shut down the
prefrontal cortex, meaning theyhave no ability to do anything
anyway.
So, you know, I would encourageteachers to not speculate on

(46:24):
what's happening in the brain,because we can't see at that
moment.
What you can see and react toare the behaviors, and then what
you can build is empathy forwhatever it is that is unseen,
that you don't understand.

Thank you for saying that, because that's the
kind of conversations I wastrying to have with the teachers
post lesson it's, you know, doyou see, because I don't even
know if the teachers you knowthey were so busy like teaching,
you know that they couldn'teven see like how I was running
around trying to keep the kidson pace and I was wondering, the
days I wasn't there, how thekids were even possible to keep
on pace or if they were evenaware, you know, cause sometimes

(47:01):
teachers can also get justcaught up in that.
You know well, a couple of kidskeep raising their hand and
seem to get the right answer.
So the whole class must begetting it, you know.

Yeah, I was going to mention too that you know
sometimes the piece that youwere speaking to about the
self-reflection that theteachers have trying to figure
out how can I take away, youknow, some of the busyness of me
racing around the room?
Can that be provided with avisual?
I think we don't use enoughvisuals because we think it's

(47:32):
going to be a big task to createa new visual, but it might even
just be writing the materialson the board.
If you have a student who hastrouble seeing it, giving them a
partner to give them that extrareminder, because working
memory, I think, is acomplicated task and especially
when you have 20 to 40 minds inone classroom, you can't be

(47:57):
responsible for all of that.
So you have to learn to be ableto delegate that in other ways,
and so I think part of thisself-reflection can be oh, how
can I lighten the load a littlebit this way?
But it's the actual act of doingthat reflection, and I think
that in this very busy worldwe're constantly moving to the

(48:17):
next task, because there's moreinformation and more information
that we have to give to ourkids.
We all feel it as adults aswell, and so all of this is
connected.
But, but I think that the bestpiece of advice really is this
self-reflection.
So I really appreciate you, youknow sharing that perspective.
And then the self-reflection.
So I really appreciate you, youknow sharing that perspective.

And then the self-reflection.
Then the teacher can decideokay, well, what, which
direction do I want to do tohelp lighten that load?
I was remembering you weretalking about visuals and I was
remembering I had a picture onthe front of my classroom,
really big, about how the deskshould be organized.
And yeah, that does take awaysome freedom, but it really did
help the students to have alltheir textbooks on the left side
of the desk and all the foldersand softbooks on the right side

(48:59):
.
And then I taught them they didnot know because they were in
second grade, but even likeolder kids don't know how to
pull a book out from a stack.
So I would, we would practicethe first week of school of like
, okay, if it's the fourth onein the stack, then you pick up
with one hand the top three andpull out the fourth one, and
then it's like then the stackstays neat.
And they were like, wow, it'salmost like magic, but that's a

(49:23):
routine that you can teach tothen make that those routine.
You know that swapping of thepulling out the folder and
swapping out the books andeverything go a lot easier.
And same thing lift up thebooks to put the other one back
in when you're switching themout again.

And I would share that.
Once you have that success likethe students saying, wow,
that's success.
That's what Doug was mentioningback to showing them how to
feel and be successful,especially within the culture of
the classroom that we'retalking about, nobody wants to
be the one who spills all thebooks.
That's super embarrassing, andespecially if you're the kid who

(49:59):
is always spilling the books,or you're always the kid who's
dropping your pencil on theground because for some reason,
you just are busy with yourhands and your hands and your
mind are not coordinated at thatpoint.
So I appreciate.

Can we add to that?
If you're a teacher and you'rereflecting and you're like, I
wonder which of my students arelike this peek in their desks at
the end of the day and thatwill give you a clue of at least
who to start watching.
Am I right?

Yes.

And their book bags.

Yeah, and their notebooks, depending on their
age group, their laptop desktopscreen and how organized that is
.
There's a lot of indicators.
One of the things that's on mymind about this is around shame,
and I think we didn't hit onthis that a lot of students that
we are talking about experienceshame.
For what?

(50:49):
The way they experience theworld and in a trusting
classroom where kids arerespected and we all know that's
just the way so-and-so livesthe world and they're learning
new behaviors that they'reacquiring.
It's different than everyoneturning their attention when the
kid spills the pencils orwhatever we just said earlier,

(51:12):
or can't find the paper becausethe notebook is so disorganized.
And when you experience shameand humiliation, it really shuts
down that learning.
And so I think it's thetrusting, growth-producing,
humane classroom environmentthat allows kids to try on these
new strategies and say did thiswork for me?

(51:33):
Did this help me?
Oh look, I feel really goodabout this.
I'm going to practice again.
I might make a mistake nextTuesday, but right now I'm
really practicing this new thingthat my teacher and my peers
are helping me with.

Something that's coming to mind and I wanted to
talk about briefly was we justtalked about what are the
indicators that these are thekids that need support.
We also talked about how do I,as a teacher, make some sort of
evaluation that there's anexecutive functioning issue here
, and I want to advocate forstudents who may be
neurodivergent, and that mightbe part of the reason that

(52:09):
they're dealing with some ofthese issues.
So I think that the number oneindicator, at least as an
educator, I looked for as far asstudents who might need
additional supports, was a 504or an IEP.
But I want to say that,especially in this realm, that
executive functioning can behighly impacted by
neurodivergence, particularlyfor students with autism or ADHD

(52:31):
.
And many of these students areundiagnosed.
And we hear a lot right nowabout the rising rate of
autistic diagnosis, and part ofthat is due to the history of
autism.
And you know, for a while wedidn't even think female
students could have autism,because the behaviors exhibited
by most autistic individuals aresocietally desirable in females
, and so that's why it wasconsidered a male disease.

(52:53):
So we might have students whoare undiagnosed who need these
supports.
And one thing I'd point outtalking, you know earlier, when
I was talking about equity andabout the values between
communities, particularly thedemographics of communities.
Dr Devin Price wrote a booktitled Unmasking Autism that I'm

(53:13):
currently reading and it's afabulous work.
But one of the things that DrPrice talks about is that these
diagnoses for neurodiversity orneurodivergence rather are
highly expensive.
They take trained professionalsthat certain communities,
particularly aroundsocioeconomic lines, may not
have access to.
They require a level ofacceptance of disabilities that

(53:38):
may be stigmatized in thecommunity, and so you may have
students who, for one reason oranother, are not diagnosed in
your classrooms but have theneeds that Doug was just talking
about.
So, for example, a student withADHD might need those
directions written out, mightneed it written that at 5.04,

(53:58):
you are going to need that bluepin, and having that written out
for them it means that they'regoing to have that blue pin
ready.
Similarly, a hyposensitive,autistic student may need the
ability to get up and jump upand down for a few moments or
perhaps have a plushie fortexture, and those are actually
what those students need tofunction in the classroom, and

(54:19):
if we don't talk about everyonehaving the equity to get what
they need, that makes thatplushie acceptable for one
person and the other persondoesn't need a plushie right now
, like we have to be talkingabout this, and then I would
just encourage us as educators.
Something we can do, or as amust do, is just having some
level of knowledge aboutneurodiversity and what these

(54:43):
students need in terms ofstrategies, and then building
into the cultures of ourclassroom that these strategies
are critical for their support.
And just because one persongets strategies that another
person doesn't, that is okay andthen we remove some of that
shame.

I'd so appreciate that.
I think a really easy way tointroduce this to students is to
give a visual of a fence, andsome students may be shorter
than others and they need tohave a taller box to be able to
see over the fence.
And there might be a studentwho's actually tall enough to
see over the fence and theremight be a medium one who needs
a shorter type of box.
Just allowing them to be ableto see over the fences is
critical.
That is a very easy piece tostart introducing and also to

(55:32):
build empathy within theclassroom.
I also think that there are anumber of people, especially in
the online social mediacommunity, that are really
trying to push and understandwhat empathy looks like,
especially in a neurodivergentcommunity, and so, if you happen

(55:54):
to have a person in your lifewho doesn't quite understand,
just sharing some personalstories goes such a long way.
Because I work in this realmand space, where I am often
helping students and theirfamilies navigate a new
diagnosis, I find that sharingcredible books sources, not just

(56:22):
social media, but making surethat they really see themselves
and see that there are otherpeople that are like them.
We know that neurodivergence canalso lead to a lack of theory
of mind.
It often means that people arenot as able to take the
perspective of another personshe to help them feel

(56:45):
comfortable can be such avalidating experience for a
person who's truly experiencingthat or a person who needs just
something to play with theirhands.
And allowing that to besomething that's allowable in
the culture of your classroommakes a huge difference, and I

(57:06):
know that this is something thatis very common in most
classrooms.
But I think that in familydynamics they haven't understood
because it wasn't maybe a partof the parent school experience
about what would be allowed.
Medication is another realmwhere you know we've.
I find that there are a lot ofparents who are really resistant

(57:29):
to medication but also lack alot of knowledge about how that
can be helpful for some studentswho are really experiencing
some difficulties.
That is a very personal familydecision but at the same time,
sharing to make sure thatstudents are getting what they
need I think is still part ofwhat we do as educators, not

(57:49):
just for our students but alsofor their families.

I want to ask both of you and I'm thinking
about my own son, who has a 504,and we were writing it in
between third and fourth gradeand I asked him for input of
like what accommodations hewanted, and he added one that
none of the teachers and I hadthought of, which is that he
wanted erasable pens, because hestruggles with pushing too hard

(58:15):
on the pencil, you know, andthen his writing is like really
light, because he has somedysgraphia, as well as some of
the other beauty of hisneurodiverse mosaic brain, and
he will remind the teachers thatthat's in his 504 and that he
needs those pens.
You know he needs those pens,and so what can we do to

(58:36):
encourage students to advocatefor themselves, for their needs,
and what could the parents sayto advocate for their children?
Of course, we're talking to theteachers mostly and we want
them to self-reflect and to, youknow, have empathy and provide
equity to the students, but alsohave them you know, the other
stakeholders advocate for whatthey need.

So this one was a little fraught for me.
I won't lie, yes, students needto be able to self-advocate.
I think that's a beautifulexample you just gave.
But I would go back to what yousaid before you talked about
your son's response, which wasyou just gave.
But I would go back to what yousaid before you talked about
your son's response, which wasyou asked him.
And there's a whole world thatexists in that.

(59:21):
So the first is I would tieback we've lightly mentioned my
research on self-efficacy.
We have to support our studentsin building self-efficacy.
The literature does notestablish a conclusive
relationship betweenself-evocacy and self-advocacy
and those are two very differentthings.
If you're not familiar, I wouldsuggest reading about them and
the differences.
But the general acceptedrelationship in the literature

(59:46):
is that self-advocacy isprerequisite to self-advocacy.
So how we do that is masteryexperiences, being successful on
similar things in the past andrecalling them in the present is
the most powerful way to dothat.
And so that goes back to whatDoug was talking about, about
the success failure ratio.
And these have to be meaningfulsuccesses, not just asking a
student what color is the sky.

(01:00:07):
Okay, you were successful, nowgo write a five paragraph essay.
That's not how that works.
So we need to have students becontinually successful.
We need to build relationshipswith students, because if
they're struggling, if theydon't have that relationship to
you, they might not reveal thefrustrations or what I was
talking about earlier about theway the world occurs for them.
They need to trust that you'retheir advocate and you're going

(01:00:27):
to show up in that space forthem.
By building those relationships, we can offer what's called
verbal persuasion, which is justgentle, verbal encouragement.
I believe in you, you can do it, and because the students trust
us, they can begin to trustthemselves and that will build
their self-efficacy.
And then, finally, modeling andwe talked about this when we
were talking about routines thatit's not just saying move to

(01:00:48):
the carpet, it's modeling how tomove towards the carpet.
And those are called vicariousexperiences, where students see
somebody else do something andthey believe they can do it.

Shannon Betts (01:00:56):
The final way to improve the example and
non-example.
It's always really fun to showthem what not to do, but that's
also a very teachable moment.

Matt Strader (01:01:04):
Yes, and there's tons of resources about how to
model.
Well, out there, I think one ofthe things that is most skipped
is the durability of the model.
So if you model how to do andnot to do, that's a temporal
thing that disappears.
And we're talking about workingmemory.
If students don't have a lot ofworking memory, then that model
has also disappeared.
So how are you making thatmodel durable?
Through a visual and anchorchart, a video, something where

(01:01:26):
students can think about it?
The final thing is affectivestates, and when I began to
think about self-advocacy, whichis very different.
And when I began to think aboutself-advocacy, which is very
different, I thought what doesit take for me, just as an adult
in life who is, you know, I'mliving and not struggling too
much.
So what does it take for me toself-advocate?
And here's the list I came upwith I have to be

(01:01:48):
self-efficacious, I have to havepsychological safety, I have to
have a feeling of belongingnessin the community I'm advocating
in, I have to be in a cultureof vulnerability, I have to be
able to self-monitor, tounderstand that I need to
advocate and I have to have thevocabulary to advocate.
If all of those things aren'ttrue, I as an adult can't

(01:02:09):
advocate.
And as I looked at those things, I think that those are things
that the adults set for thestudents, that the students
aren't building a culture ofvulnerability on their own.
That's not their job, it's nottheir responsibility.
And then the final thing Iwould say is as students get
older, those things remain true,but obviously we want our older
students to take on thatself-advocacy a little bit.

(01:02:30):
So the number one thing I see isthat famous end of the semester
email that says hey, hey,mister, I'm failing, can you
pass me Question mark?
And what's our reaction to thatas teachers?
But when was the first time thestudent demonstrated that
they're on that track?
And what I would say is at thattime, say hey, did you know
you're off track?
What could you do to keep it ontrack?

(01:02:52):
How could you get back now towhere you need to be?
Do you have all the things youneed to do that?
If you look at the Gallupresearch in management, the
number one thing that preventspeople from staying in jobs is
that they don't have what theyneed to do to do the job.
And then, finally, why don'tyou try out what you think you
need to do and I'm going toprovide you feedback on how that
went and if you need to try itagain, you can try it again and

(01:03:22):
I'll still be here.
I think that's how we get ourstudents to self-advocate and to
begin to think in this realm,and I would re-voice the
question because I thinkstudents self-advocating is
really a function of adultsproviding the supports needed to
get them there.

Mary Saghafi (01:03:33):
I would like to commend you for chunking and
breaking down that reallycomplex topic, because it's such
a perfect example of how do wehelp people understand this
really complex topic.
Well, let me do someself-reflection.
Let me see what I need to do asan adult.
Let me chunk down about fivedifferent ways.

(01:03:53):
You know that I can express andexplain this concept.
That's exactly what we need tobe doing for our students, and
the way that you just expressedhow students can develop that
self-efficacy first, and thenalso how you can then begin to
allow for a climate that allowsfor advocacy.
I think that's the key ofexplaining it.

(01:04:17):
So I think, our listeners, youmight want to pause, rewind and
go back and reflect on a lot ofthose points, because I think
that that's really helpful onein a lesson on how to chunk
something that's complex andcomplicated, and two, what we're
speaking to, which is really totry to develop these learners
to their full potential, andpart of a learner's full

(01:04:37):
potential is recognizing theirpain points, recognizing when
they do need some assistance andsome help, and one of the
things that I have alwayspreached, especially when I'm
sitting at the small group.
We've established all of ourroutines.
We've established everything.
What I often share is thesmartest people in the room ask
the best questions and allowingthat vulnerability, allowing a

(01:05:01):
moment that you know you'regoing to fail safely, you're not
going to be left alone in this.
We are all going to support youand help you through that.
That creates such a big cultureof safety, acceptance,
vulnerability all of the thingsthat we really need to work to
establish this.
There was one other thing thatI reflected on, and that is

(01:05:25):
really helping students toidentify what they're doing well
and helping build theirconfidence at the very beginning
.
To start the efficacy process,and because I know that we'd
like to share these stories sothat people can kind of take
them in, I'm going to share abrief story about a
kindergartner that I was workingwith yesterday.
I noticed that he was reallygood at reading words, the whole

(01:05:48):
word.
If he memorized the entire word, he often will write his
letters backwards.
He will often.
He wasn't able to write thealphabet in a straight, linear
line, and so that was kind ofunique.
So when I went back, we wereworking on an alphabet arc for
our other learners.
That's a great FCRR resource.
The second piece of thealphabet arc is to fill in the

(01:06:11):
rest of the alphabet.
So they give you the A in thecenter, they have an M and an N
and then the Z at the very end,and his job was to fill in the
rest of the alphabet.
So they give you the A in thecenter, they have an M and an N
and then the Z at the very end,and his job was to fill in all
those letters.
Before we started it, I showedhim what the whole task was and
I said this is going to be hard.
Your brain is going to say, ohno, I don't know if I can do all
of this on my own.
But I said I put the paper downand I said I believe in you and

(01:06:35):
I'm going to help you.
And I said I want you to say Ibelieve in me.
And he did and, like at abeautiful, you know, moment,
existed in that, and I don'tthink that that has to happen
just on a one-on-one tutoringsession.
This is something that we cankind of like establish and let
our students know, and when theyknow that they have already
accomplished something, that'shard, just as Doug has has

(01:06:57):
reiterated, that success is themedicine that keeps them coming
back for more, and that's whatwe want.
We want them to be extendedlearners, so I so appreciate
this conversation.
It has been so helpful andenlightening.

Mary, thank you for that story because I think
that really models how todifferentiate for executive
functioning supports atdifferent grade levels, because
we have mentioned a lot of abovegrade level examples, you know,
like older grade level examplesin this conversation, but
that's.
I can just picture that student.
I can picture that lessonhappening with that kindergarten
student.
So thank you for that.

I'd like to just take that back to self-efficacy
for a moment.
You built a trustingrelationship.
You provided verbal persuasion.
Self-efficacy is predictive ofachievement, so their student
was able to achieve the task andnow has a mastery experience
the next time they're doing thatand you can refer to that and
build their self-efficacy.
So it becomes a virtuous cycle,and I think that kind of
summarizes a little bit what wewere talking about today.

(01:07:53):
There's a gap between executivefunctioning and skills.
What exists in that gap isself-efficacy, motivation,
relevance, instructionalstrategies, teacher support,
climate and values.
All of that is what we'rereally looking for, between the
demonstration of what we'rehoping to see our students do
and the cognitive processes inthe brain.

Wonderful summary .
I think we should end it there.
So, matt, where could peoplefind you online?
And we're also going to link toDoug's website.

Yeah, so I am most active on LinkedIn.
You can either search Dr MattStrader or linkedincom backslash
Matt Strader one.
And, as I said, my expertise isin self-efficacy and I tend to
offer a lot of resources thereas well as engagements.
And then I said, my expertiseis in self-efficacy and I tend
to offer a lot of resourcesthere as well as engagements.
And then I'll just also audioplug Doug here.
He is also very active onLinkedIn.
You can search Doug Fisher orhis URL is backslash Douglas

(01:08:48):
Fisher, s-d-s-u.
And then also he and Nancy havetheir website Fisher and Fry
Learning by Design.

We appreciate having you both here.
Doug had to slip out of thereading teacher's lounge for
another meeting, but we really.
I learned so much from thisdiscussion.
This is exactly I don't know.
I pictured this discussiongoing well, but it's above even
what my visions of this chatwere.
So thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having us.
It's a pleasure to be here.

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