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Mini Modules - Navigating College Administrations
Back to Onboarding
Mini Modules - Navigating College Administrations

High School

ACADEMICS AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING

As an Executive Functioning Coach, your role is to focus on the systems and skills behind academic performance rather than on the specific academic subjects themselves. This might feel counterintuitive at first, as clients may be accustomed to receiving help with particular assignments while never addressing the organization, time management, and self-regulation practices that contribute to success across disciplines. You are not a tutor and are not expected to have expertise in every subject that the client is learning about. Instead, your expertise lies in the techniques and strategies that the client can use to organize his time, work more efficiently, and begin to plan for the future. With this in mind, you should prepare to manage resistance and set expectations in the first few sessions to emphasize a focus on building skills and developing processes as opposed to troubleshooting individual assignments.

Week 1: Initial Assessment and Course Syllabi

How is the client currently spending his time? What are his major obligations and commitments?


  • Client will better understand how his values either coincide or contradict the way in which he spends his time
  • Client will consider how to be more efficient with his time and more productive with his daily activities
  • Client will develop a clear picture of his current academic commitments and upcoming assignments
  • Client will identify any outstanding assignments and plan out specific dates for catching up

What information do you need about this client’s schedule and workload in order to best support him?

 

  • Note any discrepancy between how the client wants to ideally spend time and the actual ways in which the client is allocating time presently. Gather numerical data and represent visually to highlight disparity in time allocation
  • Prompt client to locate syllabi for each class and gather information about client’s knowledge and awareness of class materials   
  • Begin to foster dialogue around the factors that may have impacted organization in the past

Week 2: Digging into the Academic Calendar

How will the client begin to manage academic stress and develop greater awareness of his workload?

  • Develop a better understanding of the volume of recurring academic tasks that can be completed weekly and establish a more consistent weekly routine
  • Identify important or unique assignments that may require a specialized planning process
  • Gain increased awareness of upcoming assignments and begin to create plans for completing work on time

What do you need to know to best support this client?

  • Probe for how the client likes to learn by asking about his favorite teachers, classes, and study methods
  • Review any existing organization systems that the client may be using or has used in the past

What should you do in the session to help the client visualize his time commitments and responsibilities? 

  • Create a framework for how 168 hours per week will be efficiently and comprehensively spent. Represent that framework visually to help deepen understanding and create a usable tool
  • Model planning out work to completion and prompt the client to engage in time estimation in order to strengthen his planning skills
  • Identify a calendar format that works for the client, focusing on a method he will actually use consistently

Week 3: Reflecting on Strengths and Weaknesses

How will the client apply and build upon the lessons learned from the initial assessment phase? 

  • Client will engage in “metacognition” (thinking about his thinking) to foster greater awareness of his learning needs, challenges, and differences
  • Client will be exposed to different organizational processes that can assist them in developing a more structured approach to academics
  • Client will feel more grounded with the use of an academic approach that they can apply in a consistent and repetitive fashion 
  • Client will begin to see value of replicable process, and can begin to examine the application of those ideas in other domains

How does the client respond to challenges or obstacles?

  • Support client in considering how unique profile has lead to both strengths and challenges in his academic career; consider areas of resistance that have caused challenges in these respective domains
  • Provide thoughtful feedback with regard to challenges or limitations observed in previous sessions while adhering to a strengths-based approach

How will you prompt reflection and increased self-awareness? 

  • Provide the client with information about his learning profile, based upon increased familiarity with key terms 
  • Create options within specific parameters by giving the client the chance to choose between a few pre-set skills to work on or skills to reflect upon
  • Engage in an ongoing review of academic assignments, mapping onto weekly calendar, and reflecting on time estimated versus time actually spent

Week 4: Putting Knowledge into Practice

How can the client use the skills he has been practicing to plan for a real-life assignment?

  • Client will work with his coach to identify 1 large scale future assignment. Client will map, outline, pre-write, and scaffold to reinforce these concepts
  • Client will experience a decrease in stress and anxiety through the use of various types of “pre-work” approaches 
  • Client will develop understanding of process regarding how to effectively “pre-plan” upcoming work
  • Client will identify a preferred method (i.e. outlining, pre-writing, mapping, et. al.) to use in planning for assignments based on the experience

How will you support the implementation and application of new knowledge?

  • Anticipate the best ways to effectively introduce client to the practical application of ideas that can help them pre-plan and organize content based on your work in previous sessions
  • Consider when to deploy different organizational strategies, based upon client’s degree of understanding

Weeks 5-7: Ongoing Support

Now that the client has been exposed to and practiced with a few methods for planning and organizing his assignments, he is now ready to build towards independence. Work with the client to develop a consistent routine while gradually extending greater ownership and responsibility to the client. This is also a good opportunity to check-in with the client’s family to manage expectations and provide an honest assessment of the client’s progress. 

What will the client work on in each EF-focused session?

  • Client will review academic assignments, map them onto his weekly calendar, and consider both the approaches he will use to complete each task as well as the time each task is likely to take 
  • Client will experience an increase in productivity and a decrease in stress and anxiety as he begins to develop competency in the implementation of this new daily and weekly approach 
  • Client will be able to reflect on his effectiveness in implementing specific aspects of each approach

What techniques and strategies are resonating with this client?

  • Consider how to best help client manage workflow through the implementation of a daily and weekly process of work completion 
  • Examine personal techniques (i.e. modeling, constructive feedback, encouragement, exposure to new tools, et. al.) to determine what the client responds best to

What content should you focus on in session?

  • Use the largest-scale assignment as session content, employing “5-W” worksheets to scaffold academic content

If the client is ready to apply these skills on his own and can demonstrate consistency outside of sessions, move on to Week 8. If the client needs more reinforcement or would benefit from additional skill development, circle back to Week 1 for a status update on each of his classes, big picture review of his academic calendar, and additional guided practice in implementing executive functioning strategies. The typical client will benefit from at least one additional cycle of assessment and skill building before concluding the module.

Week 8: Conclusions and Next Steps

Equipped with a new set of tools and techniques, the client is ready to begin taking on greater independence. In the conclusion stage, the client will practice sharing his plan for staying organized with his family and anticipate obstacles and challenges that may come up in the future. With the foundation in place, the goal now is to build resilience such that the client is able to keep up with his executive functioning habits even as his schedule fills up or unexpected events complicate his plans. 

How will the client contextualize his progress and work towards greater independence?

  • Clients should be able to speak to parental reservations around future plan and overcome prospective objections
  • Client will be able to articulate his vision with confidence and enthusiasm
  • Client will feel accomplished based on the sum total of the work he has completed

How will you help the client synthesize new learning and share his new approach with his family?

  • Anticipate possible objections related to execution and implementation of plan and coach the client through a possible response
  • Brainstorm possible curveballs or “unknown unknowns” that the client may encounter to build resilience
  • Create a concrete takeaway packet or folder for the client to keep handy
  • Consider different question sets, modes of communication, and frameworks to effectively present the client’s plan and body of work as a tangible “walkaway” for both client and family upon discharge