Description:

Executive skills are a set of mental skills that develop self-management, leading to independence. They are critical to success in school, work, and life. We use these skills every day to track information, assess risks, and manage tasks. Struggles with executive function can make it hard to focus, follow directions, and handle emotions.

Study skills are the part of executive skills that involve thinking – working memory, planning and prioritization, organization, time management and metacognition (thinking about thinking). With good study skills, you can learn efficiently by taking in and organizing information in a way that allows you to retain and access it when needed.

Study skills alone do not lead to success; teens also need to develop executive skills that involve behavior – self regulation, sustained attention, task initiation, flexibility, and persistence.

There is no one size fits all way to develop executive function skills, and everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. What works for you may very well not work for your child. Through games, activities, exploration, self-assessment, and “thinking about thinking”, this class will help students to discover how they can learn, think, and function at full potential and capacity in their environment.

Each week they will take the tools that we learn in class and apply them to a real-world situation such as completing homework, maintaining a job, setting and achieving goals, managing their schedule, and developing solutions to problems. Over the course of this class, students will create a personalized toolbox that will help them to guide their behavior as they make decisions in school, work, and life.

For what students say about this class, watch this video.