Seven Ways Schools Can Support Executive Function (Hint: None of Them Include the BRIEF)

Written By Tera Sumpter

Executive function is a hot topic everywhere. I do a lot of presentations around the country, often for school districts, and I see first-hand that so many educators are trying to address this issue with kids in school. Even with the best intentions, though, we are often getting it wrong. I get this–it took me a while to find my way to techniques that actually support executive function. But now that I have found methods that work, I am absolutely going to speak up about the things that don’t. Our kids deserve our best.

Why standardized assessments are not helpful

Yes, I’m coming down hard on a way that many, many professionals identify executive dysfunction. I’m not alone in this. Russell Barkley is one of the leading clinical neuropsychologists studying executive function. (His book, Executive Functions: What They Are, How They Work, and Why they Evolved is one of my top ten book recommendations for learning about executive function.) He goes as far as saying that standardized assessments for executive function are not only unhelpful, they’re negligent. I know from personal experience and from talking with thousands of other therapists and educators that standardized assessments often miss executive dysfunction entirely.

Teacher and students gathered around a globe.

To understand why, it’s important to know what executive function actually is. Barkley defines executive function as self-direction for a future goal. Executive function is how we look into the future and organize our actions to get where we need to be. It’s the boss of the brain, the part of our cognition that tells us when, how, and with what intensity to do things. I like to distinguish between the cueing part of our brain and the doing part of our brain. Executive function is the cuer, not the doer. It’s not the part that does the reading or the math, it’s not the part that finishes the homework, it’s the part that determines when and how the rest of the brain accomplishes those things.

One common example of executive function difficulties illustrates this point really well. One of the first red flags I see when I’m assessing kids is when their parents and teachers say they are capable of doing a task (say, a math problem), but that they do not do it consistently. This can be very frustrating for everyone involved. Melissa can do multiplication problems. Why doesn’t she just DO it when she needs to? The skill is there. The behavior has been learned. Something else is not working right. That something else is almost always executive function. Her brain is not cueing her to engage that already-learned behavior when it’s needed.

So, if you understand that executive function is not a behavioral problem, you may begin to see the issues with an assessment like the BRIEF, the BEHAVIOR Rating Inventory of Executive Function. It’s not about behavior! It’s about our brains cuing the behavior.

Missing a homework assignment may be a sign that a child has difficulty with executive function. But we cannot tell for sure from that one behavior. We have to look at the behavior comprehensively so that we can see patterns across many behaviors and activities. We need to understand what part of the cuer needs support when the child doesn’t turn in the homework assignment. Did the child miss the assignment to begin with? That may be a perception need, where she did not realize the teacher was giving the assignment. Did she get distracted when she went to do the homework? That might be an attention need, where her executive function didn’t cue her to pay attention to what was most important at home last night. Or maybe she did not know how to get started? That could be a problem with working memory or planning, where she had difficulty visualizing the steps she needed to take to complete the assignment.

This is a deep subject, and you can learn more about identifying specific executive function skills and recognizing deficits in my online learning community, or even book me to come present for your district or professional group. The important thing for you to take away here is that it is not a behavioral problem. It’s not a DOING problem, it’s a CUING problem. Any assistance that focuses on giving the child skills to do the task is going to fail and frustrate. Just understanding that will go a long way toward helping the kids in your school.

Now that you understand a fundamental concept of executive function, here are some practical tips for supporting executive function in schools.

Seven ways schools and educators can support executive function

  1. Stop giving planners and timers to kids struggling with executive function

Unfortunately, I see many professionals trying to support executive function with tools. An accommodation might include tools like planners, to-do lists, or timers. The problem with tools like that is you need a strong executive function system for them to work well! It’s like a hammer or a screwdriver–you need a functioning arm to use them properly. Handing a kid who has executive function difficulties a planner is like asking a child with a broken arm to use a hammer. Executive function isn’t about behavior, so behavioral tools and accommodations won’t help. Let’s be real here: don’t we all stack fancy planners on a shelf somewhere hoping they will make us organized and efficient? Do you actually use yours? I don’t…. 

2. Put hard classes early in the day 

We all have limits to our executive function. Can you recall a mentally taxing day where your brain just didn’t feel like it was functioning after a certain point? Even when executive function works optimally, it is possible to overload it. When it is not working as well, it is even easier to overwhelm it. That feeling you had after a mentally taxing day? A kid with executive function difficulties may feel that way before he even gets to your classroom in the morning. He’s been bombarded with stimuli and decisions that his executive function needs to sort for him since he woke up. His poor executive functions have been running every which way, trying this, that, and the other thing, failing at some of them, and completely wearing themselves out. He has passed a thousand distractions he has to ignore and remembered hundreds of things he already forgot. There were five items of clothing to put on and a breakfast to eat, all without getting distracted by baby sister or video games or birds outside the window or thinking about the movie he watched last night. And that is just to get dressed, out of the house, and into the classroom.

Understand that each topic the teacher covers in the classroom will continue to add to the daily executive function load. It’s helpful to cover difficult topics earlier so that kids have more executive function capacity. This doesn’t just benefit kids who have difficulty with their executive function, it helps everyone.

3. DO NOT take away recess

This is a topic that really gets me fired up. Recess is a right! Kids need to exercise their bodies for their brains to work well. I don’t really know how we got to where there’s any question about this. It seems to me like it should be obvious to anyone who has spent time around kids. But, here we are. Schools keep finding excuses to get rid of recess, and it’s getting in the way of educating our kids.

Physical activity helps discharge some of the mental overload that builds up throughout the day. You probably experience this, even as an adult. What does taking a walk or run after a long day do to your brain? If you’re like me, it may be hard to motivate yourself to get active when your brain is tired. But don’t you almost always find yourself feeling more relaxed and recharged afterward? That’s what recess does for kids. As a therapist, I only see kids for an hour at a time, but I still find that it helps to incorporate physical activity into our sessions. When they are having trouble attending to the therapy activities, I often offer them opportunities to move their bodies. Sometimes I even incorporate it into our therapy plan that we build together, like a round of jumping jacks between each math problem.

There’s no point in filling recess time with more learning activities. Without recess, kids are not likely to retain more knowledge. And kids with executive function difficulties are going to have an extra hard time.

4. Remove distractions and temptations 

Distractions are difficult for all of us to manage, especially in this era with computers. I mean, have you gotten this far reading the blog post without stopping to do something else? Answer a text? Talk to a person in the room? Watch a YouTube video?

You’re an adult, and you’re fielding distractions constantly. Imagine being a kid who is still developing skills of focus and attention. Now imagine being a kid whose executive functions aren’t even working well for their age. Distractions are a lot of work to resist‌. When those distractions are more desirable or enticing than the task we’re supposed to be working on, they’re a lot harder to ignore. Even if a child successfully ignores a temptation or distraction, deciding to ignore it over and over and over takes a lot of mental energy. It would be a lot easier for them to not have to decide to ignore anything.

We can help kids by removing or toning down the distractions and temptations in their environment. My number one place to do this is on the computer, whether at school or at home. If they’re supposed to be working on a specific task on the computer, turn off or block any unneeded applications. 

5. Support development of foresight and hindsight 

Remember Russell Barkley’s definition from earlier in the post: executive function is self-direction for a future goal. Executive function is how we look into the future and organize our actions to get where we need to be. That can range from tying a shoe to planning for college and career. But our brains need a vivid, internalized vision for what that future goal is as a critical starting point.

It is not enough for the adult (parent or educator or therapist) to have a vision for what the end goal is. The child needs to have a picture in her own imagination in order to self-direct the tasks to get there. The process of internalizing the goal is not something we can dictate. We ask questions to help the child develop their own imaginary future. Then, once they have a vision in mind, we ask questions to help them plot out the steps it takes to get there. The more detailed, the better. Reflexive questioning is a great technique to help children imagine futures and plan their steps for accomplishing. You can read more about it in this blog post and this digital download guide.

Looking back at past actions and evaluating what did or did not go well also strengthens executive functions. Again, it is better to employ questions to help the child evaluate for themselves rather than telling them what went well. Developing executive function is all about cultivating internal self-leadership, making kids the boss of their own brain. Instead of saying, “You failed that math quiz, you need to do it over,” ask, “What do you think you could do differently next time?” This is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT when a child succeeds. Say. “Great job!” and follow it with, “What did you do to succeed? How do you think you can do it again next time?” This helps the child develop their own vision for accomplishing future goals.

Children gathered around a worksheet.

6. Bring goals closer to the present moment.

When we think of goals kids have, we often think like adults and plan years into the future. But even in high school, children are cognitively incapable of planning that far ahead. Asking a freshman about concrete career or even college goals that are three to five years out is like asking them to plan a trip to the moon. It’s just too much of a conceptual stretch.

The closer to the present moment we can bring the goals, the better they will work with the child’s planning abilities. If a child is having difficulty concentrating on a math quiz, don’t talk to them about how it’s preparing them for the big test at the end of the week. Talk to them about what successful quiz completion looks like, or even what is important right this minute. One of my favorite reflexive questions is, “Is that important right now?” Most kids know the answer to that. Birds outside the window aren’t important. The math quiz on the desk is important. The question brings the goal as close as possible. It reorients them to it, and hopefully helps redirect their attention to the immediate goal of finishing the quiz.

In our example of helping a freshman plan for college, it would be better to ask, “What goals should we set for this year/quarter that you think will help you get into the college of your choice?” Or, “What class on this list for next semester appeals to you the most? What can you do now to make sure you get in?” If going to college is a goal for your child, don’t wait until junior year to do college visits. Start now! Bring that goal into the present moment by experiencing college now. It will make the goal more meaningful and tangible.

7. Use input and output in teaching

The default teaching in classrooms is often input teaching, where students are presented with information through one or more of the five senses, typically through listening, watching/looking, or reading. This puts the information in the realm of our working memory, which is a short-term operating system that holds the information so we can process it for understanding. But information has to make it to long-term storage for us to truly learn it. How do we make that happen? Through expressive learning or output. In expressive learning, we actively produce something with the receptive information: we write, we take notes, we annotate, we draw a picture, we explain a concept, we create a visual image in our imagination. Studying must involve completing the receptive-expressive circuit until the expressive path can be accomplished without receptive supports. 

You can learn more about incorporating input and output learning in studying with my digital download Studying: Completing the Circuit.

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Teacher in front of a classroom full of attentive students raising their hands.
Tera Sumpter
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