okay so tonight's special session with Miss Julie Miller um on Executive functioning skills for college and Beyond I was super excited because um a cooworker shared at a conference earlier this year um that they had um known Julie gone through her program and that it was absolutely fabulous and I think everybody can use some executive functioning brush up so I am really happy to have her share some skills and then Resources with you um I will also share with you guys at the end the resources that we have available to clients in your files based on this as well Julie will be sharing the opportunity if your student or even yourself needs support in this process how you can engage with her in order to make that happen so Julie I'm gonna let you take it away okay well Crystal thank you so much for having me tonight I'm really thrilled to be here um so I'm going to tell you a little bit about our company it's called executive functioning success you can find it on the web uh by Googling that um our company was started uh by Mary dcar uh she is a very interesting woman and she has been studying executive functionings for at least the last 20 years and before neuroscientists were even calling it executive functioning skills um she herself is time blind she will say or her time challenged and she is an educator so while she was uh teaching she noticed that her students were some of her students were having some issues with getting things done or turning things on in on time or being organized and so she developed uh this curriculum and now this company so that we can reach out and help those uh who want to have a little support um and to spread the knowledge about executive function skills and how important they are and how we can improve them and so this is just a picture of the curriculum that we use seeing my time I myself have been an educator for almost 30 years I have been in the classroom and just retired last year uh to do this full-time with Mary D I began my I'm Julie by the way um I began my deep dive into executive functioning when my oldest son was in Middle School so this is going on 10 years ago um he super smart kid didn't turn in any homework ever uh big struggle it was a big struggle for us um he was diagnosed with ADD um and so we were given Mary D's book 50 tips by the counselor at the school and it just was so helpful to me it's an easy read I loved it and then she came to speak I'm lucky enough to live in Portland where she operates the business um and I heard speak and I was like oh my gosh everything she's saying is like she can have a camera into my house and what we're going through so as an educator and a parent I embrace the curriculum um I have been using it ever since in my teaching my parenting and now um as my career to be able to spread it to other people my promise to you tonight is that you're going to come away with at least one useful thing that you can do to support your brain um time is really valuable as we all know so we are going to just send you on your way with some knowledge and some tools you can use so why do we want to know about executive functions well John Medina several years said executive function is actually a better predictor of academic success than IQ all right since then this has been backed up by many organizations um for lots of information check out uh Harvard's center for the developing child they got a lot of infographics and activities there um this has been studied and is true executive function is necessary for academic success and for Success out in the world but we need some knowledge in order to get to that success tonight we're going to focus on the brain to understand and strengthen skills that you will need or your students will need so we start our program always with education um understanding executive functions is key to building on them and so tonight we're going to look at how the brain is wired why that brain may not be doing what we expect it to do and what tools and supports can we add in order to be successful without a lot of stress so the way the brain is wired affects our ability to get things done and that part of the brain is called the it's all in the prefrontal cortex and the skills are called executive function skills now neuroscientists don't all agree on which skills should be included which skills shouldn't it's very complicated and it's like a knot that they're trying to untangle all the time we use the method developed by Dawson andu for adolescence and so I'm going to go through these skills pretty quickly but I want you to think about your child or yourself and think about whether or not this is a skill that is easy for your brain or their brain okay so the first one is metacognition this is thinking about your thinking this is your self-awareness your ability to understand that there is a problem and maybe I want to change it um this is the head honcho of the skills so to speak it's it it sort of directs all the others goal directed persistence is your ability to finish things so finishing things is important to you so once you start something you finish it the next skill is flexibility this is the brain's ability to adapt to change direction to transition to think outside of the box sustained attention this is an interesting one um because the brain is never not paying attention right your brain is always paying attention the issue comes when the brain isn't paying attention to what we want it to pay attention to which is one of the biggest things uh that was happening with my son he was very hyperfocused on what he wanted to do and very difficult for him to focus on things that other people needed him to do response and ambition this is your brain's ability to delay gratification if anybody knows about the marshmallow task that's what this is okay it's your ability to say I'm going to work now and play later it's also your ability to not blurt out interrupt people or to say things that maybe might not have wanted to say on text or phone calls that sort of thing working memory your working memory is your your ability to hold on to information and do something with it okay so we like to think of working memory as a desk that you have in your brain and that desk has enough room for a certain amount of information and when it gets overloaded the information that's there goes away right and often it's like thinking that people didn't forget or it wasn't important to them but really it's their working memory so I think you might have experienced this what happens with working memory is say you're in the kitchen and you think oh yeah I wanted to start the laundry so then you go into the bedroom to get the laundry and by the time you get there that thought's gone you're like why did I come into this room what am I doing right so you go back to the kitchen and the memory comes back and you're like oh yeah yeah I wanted to go and get the laundry okay what happened is your working memory got overloaded so what you were doing left the desk and you had to go back to the kitchen to access your visual memory to bring it back so super super interesting that brain planning and prioritization okay this skill is important in order to succeed in academics right especially when we're making that change to college where we might have multiple things we have to prioritize J yes question somebody unmuted keep going oh okay I thought it was my name okay um so anyway planning and prioritization is about your ability uh to hold something that's going to happen in the future and work on it interestingly adult brains go out three months which is not very far when you think of everything we're trying to accomplish young brains go out five to seven days right so their brain is always in the now um and so it is very hard for them to remember projects or multi-step things until the brain becomes fully mature and even then it can still be really hard time management is your ability to un to your ability to know how long things take and then use that information for your own benefit or purposefully okay some people have an internal clock and they know how much time is passing others don't um and if you don't we need to use timers to find out organization believe it or not is an executive functioning skill and it doesn't include piles organization is having a home for everything so that you're not misplacing things and you they live in a certain place task initiation is your ability to get started without being nagged all of these 10 that we have talked about are located here in the prefrontal cortex okay controlling emotions is the 11th skill and it is located at the base of the brain deep inside okay why this is important is because that amydala controls the flow of information and it only sends information to the prefrontal cortex when it feels safe and when it doesn't it floods the prefrontal cortex with cortisol and your brain flips and literally your prefrontal cortex and all of those skills are offline okay so that's a quick rundown of them let's look at how they are interconnected in some of the big Pro s that your you and your students are going to be facing so the first one is if we're going to apply to college right it's probably not something we've done before so you have Crystal to help um but before you got to that step you had to realize I need to have some help or guidance on this and in order to do that you need to have really good self-awareness and metacognition you're going to have to gather documents that are needed so you're going to need organization to find those and task initiation to get started you might have to fill out multiple applications so you need time management planning and prioritization to make sure it all gets done you have to stick with this process long enough to complete it right that is goal directed persistence and sustained attention and you also want to complete those applications on time right if we miss that deadline we miss out on the scholarships or the financial aid so that requires time management and we have to remember to click submit like we think we finished everything but we forgot to actually turn it in so remembering to do that is working memory okay so all the skills are interrelated and it takes lots of skills in order to do a task like apply for college so we've applied for college we've gotten in now what skills do we need to get through the first term college right this again this is something new we haven't done it before so if we're moving into a new housing or a shared space that's a different experience for some of us that's going to require a lot of organization a lot of metac cognition a lot of flexibility um we're gonna have to go to class on time it's time management we're going to have to get started on not just our homework but our studying and our reading and our reviewing for quizzes all of that requires enormous task initiation there isn't going to be someone there saying did you do this did you do this did you do this right so we have to make sure we can do that turning our homework in or hitting submit again working memory the idea that you might need to ask for help you're doing something you haven't done before you might need some help that's going to again require your metac cognition being aware of what's going on and lastly in college it's different in that you're going to have a lot of assignments due at the same time um a lot of multi-project multi-step projects um and if we're going to make progress on them without getting overwhelmed we're going to need sustained attention goal directed persistence planning and prioritization metacognition right so all of these things are really really important not only for high school college but also for life when you go to get a career all of these things come into play so if these executive functions are so important what factors affect them right the first factor is that most of our students brains are not done growing they do not have pre pre they do not have mature prefrontal cortexes so if we look at this study they looked at inhibitory control and they're they are um monitoring it over time how it matures and an average inhibitory control or what we called response inhibition is not mature until after 21 right so that's the that's our ability to say oh yeah I'm not going to go to that party tonight at College I'm going to do my studying instead really hard uh for young people to do working memory working memory is involved in everything we're doing knowing where to go what we're doing what we have to study all of that not until 24 even older maybe right have to really think about that our students that are going off to college do not have fully mature prefrontal cortexes goal setting and problem solving this is a mix of what we called metacognition goal directed persistence and flexibility way up at 25 way up at 25 so until tell our brains mature we need to have some support with these skills because it is expected that we can do them in order to be successful um car insurance companies have used this information for a very long time if you turn 20 when you turn 25 your car insurance goes down because they know that that is what the science tells us that the prefrontal cortex matures after age 25 in addition if you've been diagnosed if you have a brain with add your skills that brain's skills tend to be three years behind their the neurotypical peers right that means that a senior in high school really has executive functioning skills around 14 or a freshmen right and that doesn't mean they aren't mature or they aren't smart or they aren't you know great kids it doesn't mean any of that all it means is that those 11 skills are not fully developed yet invironmental and situations affect these executive functioning skills they are very uh influenced they are influenced by everything around us so stress increased demands we have more work to think about new challenges that we haven't done before if we're thirsty or hungry or tired all of those things will cause our brain to not work as well as we want it to then we can have mental health issues depression or anxiety those things affect our prefrontal cortex and the way it functions so what I want you to remember is that we have a feeling brain that thinks that amydala is very strong and it grows first we have a feeling brain that thinks we do not have a thinking brain that feels I'm going to say that again we have a feeling brain that thinks we do not have a thinking brain that feels also when we change Lifestyles there is an increase in cognitive load so that means that the things we're expecting our brain to track and the energy it takes to do that increases the brain will only spend a certain amount of energy on things that it feels will lead to its survival and if it doesn't it's not going to spend the energy so when we have increased cognitive load on our skills to get things done it leaves less energy for us to study and learn okay so whenever expectations go up like starting kindergarten going to middle school going to high school going to college having a career having kids all of those things increase expectations on our brain and that causes our skills to go down for a while and it causes us a lot of frustration so what I just want you to be aware of tonight is that it's normal and that it will pass your brain will catch up and there are lot of tools you can use until it does because of neuroplasticity our brain is amazing it grows new neurons it makes neurons stronger it makes Pathways stronger and using tools is how we do that executive skills adapt and become stronger with practice explicit instruction and tools so stop for a minute and just think what is your key idea so far and put that in the chat and I'll give you just about a minute for that so Julie when you say key idea what do you mean by that great question so what I mean is what stuck out to you what is something you didn't know before what is a piece of information you want to make sure you remember okay so it's important that we process information and grab onto something in order for learning to occur okay guys so on behalf of your children or yourself or others put in the chat then for us what is something that you can see that you want to remember or something that you think is super helpful Abraham you raised your hand is the chat not open everyone and anyone directly everyone aha there we go it's normal for the brain to feel overloaded when others are expectations rise the amydala can inhibit the executive functions of the prefrontal cortex when you don't feel safe nice yeah so it was my bad I didn't have the chat on no no that's okay I surprised you with that one yeah okay so I'm going to go to the next section but please you oh look there's more coming through big changes reduce your skill for a little while the ADHD brain us three years behind immaturity I do love the science of all of this it's kind of crazy yeah yeah all right excellent job okay feel free to keep posting and we can look at them again at the end as well again if we uh grab on to something that was important to us that's going to help your brain remember uh what we talked about all right so we've understood that the brain is certain skills it's wired to get things done the growth of those skills depends on genetics right we're born with a design so to speak that's going to happen how strong long that design gets depends on our practice the opportunities we have to use it and it is very much affected by life around us so when we want to support our brain what are the best things that we can do the first best thing that you can do is use time tools right time is invisible we can have a clock that shows us the passage of time but we can't actually see it the break does what it sees and it can't see time right so one of the tools that we're going to talk about is an analog clock we're going to talk about how to use timers and we're going to talk about dry erase Sports Richard Fineman said when the CIO watch came out the first digital one that like cost $1,000 um he said digital watches will be the end of our civilization wow he said that on NPR it's a pretty big statement right um and what he means I think is is digital clocks are a sentence okay it tells us it's 6:15 that's great that gives us information we can extrapolate from that we know it's 45 minutes till 7 however more of our brain is dedicated to visual processing than anything else and an analog clock gives us the space of time so the brain sees a quarter right and it Compares it to 3/4s and that's different the picture of three quarters versus a quarter is different for the brain so analog clocks are really very very important in our lives and changing digital like watches or whatever to an analog face great start so analog clocks are needed wherever we get lost in time wherever you're sitting there scrolling and you forget what time is or reading or playing a video game or whatever it is an analog clock is very helpful it's also very helpful to have it in front of you when you're working it just helps ground the brain so take a moment and you don't have to put in the chat but just think to yourself where where do I need an analog clock where might I put one okay the next thing we're going to talk about is dry erase boards so remember I said the brain does what it sees so what we want to get done needs to be in sight all right dry erase sports are great for this they're all kinds this is a small one that would just go on your desk and actually your phone fits in that little curvy part um but it's like this um it's like a task list I'm sure many of us have done you write down what you're going to do and then you cross it off Crossing it off releases dopamine which makes you feel good and you do another one all right this is because of the dopamine reward system um which we don't totally have time to go into tonight but this is why some of you make a list and then you do something that wasn't on the list and then you go back and put it on the list and cross it out right it makes you feel good it's dopamine so not only are we keeping in sight what we need to do but we're using the way our brain is wired to motivate us to keep doing it or to do it again timers there are all kinds of timers um I like the cube timer because it doesn't count down time right I'm not seeing my time go away when I use it we want to be very careful with timers we never want to use them to finish we don't want to race that can be very anxiety producing what timer's purpose is is to uh alert us to our metacognition to make us aware we have a choice and also to monitor progress right those are the two purposes of the timer and the way that we can use it is one in transitions or I call uh breaks I call them intermissions so transition or intermissions um if you're going to take an intermission set a timer so that your brain knows oh now it's time to go back um if you're going to have to leave somewhere and be there at 7 and you know you need to leave at 6:30 set a timer for 620 because it takes time to transition it takes time to get out of the house and so you need to account for that so that you won't be late that's going to come into play on campus as well because we think oh the class is just right over there but really it's across the quad in a 15minute walk and we forget to to account for that focus and motivation we can use the timer to get through things we really don't want to do so instead of saying I'm going to finish that say I'm going to work on it for 20 minutes set a timer work on it for 20 minutes when you're done you will get dopamine and maybe you'll do another 20 minutes right so let break things down into very small pieces so that your brain will do them we need need to use timers to know how long things take if we don't already know we cannot manage our time if we do not know how long things take they're also great for remembering to do something so those phone alarms are fantastic right because they can go off at a certain time of day or even when you're in a certain location and they can remind you hey I was going to go to the store or hey I was going to uh stop at the library and get a book whatever it is okay future thinking is the key to success and remember that's a skill in the brain that is not fully developed so naturally our brains are in the present and we need to build future thinking the best way to do that is with a planner the issue or the challenge comes in that many of our students are given uh calendars or planners before they're ready to use them and they're given without any brain science behind them so they don't understand why it's helpful and it all just looks really complicated okay so be careful when you're picking out a planner and also encourage your students or your children to play with it right you don't have to do every page and make it perfect you just have to see what parts of it are helping your brain which parts of it are bringing down your anxiety so I'm going to use our planner as an example so it starts with a year right students need to have a picture of when class starts and when it ends and we can use color codes in order to make things easy always start with the fun so in pink are the vacations right when do I not have to go to school that's what we all want to know when do I not have to be at work when are my vacations when are the holidays the next thing that we want to put in is when classes start and when classes end right that's really important we also want to put in midterms or finals right if we have my daughter goes um and her her terms are only 10 weeks they're really really fast and so by the time she starts it's already final so they need to have a 10,000 view so to speak of these things so that's why we start with the year calendar the next view that we need so creating a 3D picture we have the big view we need to be able to see a month at once okay this allows the brain to do project planning again we're going to start with fun when do I get to go to the concert when do I get to see my friends right we need to have the fun on there first then we're going to use it for assignments that are due in the future not the ones that are due each week but the one that takes multiple steps and is due in the future and we're going to use draw it like sideways like this with a highlighter so that we are marking the space of time we have to do that project and so a different class would be in a different color we can also use the month calendar to write down the day homework is assigned this is regular homework or assignments that have to be turned in and then of course cross them off for dopamine when they're done um ours also comes with a little note place so you could say oh don't forget to make an appointment with your counselor this month don't forget to buy plane tickets home whatever it is okay this form takes a while to get used to um but this is helping students manage their classes so we start with the date at top then we have a class so it's double-sided so if you have more than five classes you can do that and then in college our courses or our class are usually requiring more pieces than just an assignment or just the reading so this is built so that whatever we have to do in Psychology is in the First Column so the readings at at the top this are the readings we have to do the next one is what's due this week and what day is it due so I can keep track and make sure I turned it in if we have some project steps again those long-term things they go right here we also need to review or study the information repeat to remember remember to repeat this is how the learning gets stronger um so that's this section we might want to have a study group right so we're going to put that there and then at the bottom you might put some notes that you don't want to forget to do but when we're planning we don't want to only plan the work we want to also plan our life so here's where we make sure we're getting exercise we're getting out into nature when are we going to see our friends right um maybe I have to work while I'm at school so I'm going to have to make sure I have a note of that as well there are chores to be done and don't forget to call the parents right that'll make us happy if they're calling us and saying hello especially if it's our birthday okay so you can take just another minute and think about which tool you would be most likely to use which tool would you be most likely to introduce to your student I will say I'm just going to tell everybody as you're putting stuff in the chat my favorite is this freaking planner but that's because I'm a big planner person and so um when I was actually talking to Julie about it it was how Ben beneficial when you're thinking about that huge shift and change for your student going into college like to be able to really organized stuff and I was like I mean you could change the title to that to say high school at the top of it and still be able to use it there um and start to get a lot of fabulous practice in in regards to it yeah I will say yeah I'll just piggy back on that Crystal so the one that I'm showing you is our College one we do have in school one which is very similar it's just that that managing homework piece is by day instead of by course uh so some of my high school students prefer the college one and some of them like the one that's by day totally and we got a good combo here analog clock weekly planner planner timer um planner introducing to my daughter to adjust to life in classes while on her own right yeah yeah great I'll put the link to the the planner in the chat for you guys yeah carry on we also offer the college planner well actually any of the planners they come with a QR code so that you can link to our online course so it's a just a set of videos on how to set it up they're very short uh Mary D does a great job of explaining the steps and why they're there um but if that isn't your cup of T we also offer two sessions with myself in order to get started on it so tonight we've explored executive function skills we realize that humans need strong executive function skills for school Success and Beyond by understanding how the brain is wired and what might affect my executive functions we can understand what tools we want to use and this will lead us to success so I am going to open it up now to questions and then I can show you some of the things we have to support you or Crystal do you want me to do these things first and then questions yeah do those things first yeah okay so actually so we're here to help um this is again our college planner is there everything I'm talking about tonight you can find at executive functioning success.com a lot of the tools like the timers and the clocks and things those are all there um we offer a a curriculum of 10 weeks to support individuals and families who want to go more in depth into their executive functions and learn more strategies we offer professional trainings in schools and workplaces we have an awesome newsletter so if you go to Executive functioning. comom I mean yes executive functioning success.com they'll it'll say do you want to join our newsletter uh join our newsletter we are a very small company there are only three of us um and the newsletters don't go out all the time and we don't sell it to anybody so and it's very easy to opt out if you don't want it and also check out the 50 tips book right this is a great resource um especially if you have younger children um around Middle School this is a a great resource it's also just great uh to just flip through and hear the science behind the tips and um Mary D has great advice in there okay that is me awesome so and I'm going to so I put in the chat for you guys um and and I know that um I had asked Julie the same thing about the planner is it paper only or is it electronic it is sorry go ahead Crystal but but it was conversation then of like well it' be pretty cool if we made it electronic so we put the bug in the ear yeah she did she did about that um and I wanted to so for those of you that are current clients that have access to college planner Pro um you have in your files one that is titled executive functioning and in there you're going to see the link link as well to um the college planner because I like that one better than the high school one but that's just me you can use it to get to the website either way um and then the other thing that's in there is um she you know the curriculum is called seeing my time so um Julie was great and and created this to give you that highlight real in regards to how the curriculum works and the overview of what functions you're going to be working on in terms of that process and then the final page has the what she was just saying which right now um I think you yeah so there is a session that she has starting September 24th so if you're like I would really like to get in on this but I want to be able to do this more as a group opportunity um in order to save on cost that is the next session that she has coming up so if you really want to get prepped and ready for the sake of supporting for this next academic year that's a really awesome opportunity or you can definitely reach out and be able to talk to her more specifically about the one-on-one opportunities and what that would look like for you or your kiddo um and so I just wanted to let you know I put this in the chat um I know sometimes people having um trouble getting things out of the zoom chat um so if you do um and you want um you can always just Reach Out directly um to Julie in order to get this this information um but reality is that um you have it in your files in college planner Pro for those of you that are clients so it is easy to access I also put my my email in the chat it's just Julie ATF success.com perfect yes um and I will um I'll put and feel free as I'm chatting guys if you guys have questions or clarifications on anything for Julie Julie in this process please do so um but I'll put the recording of tonight's file of tonight's presentation in your files so that will be in that same folder in the executive functioning folder um for those of you that are joining us from either my constant contact list or Facebook group or wherever else um I'm going to um post it in all of those places as well for the sake of the recording so feel free to share this with others that you feel um need to understand how this world of executive functioning Works questions that you guys have do you want answered we got to thank you so much you're welcome you're so [Laughter] welcome and I was really excited about this because I feel like I have had significantly more neurodiverse students over the years and we were actually talking talking about that today because we had an essay session and I was like we we have a lot of neurobi students in different capacities and just in general I think you had said this too right like this these skills are taught right they are learned they are not just a natural aptitude that we have and sometimes we forget about that especially as parents and and thinking like well my kids should have this figured out I heard something fabulous this weekend don't should on people yeah that's a great one yeah because it doesn't do anybody any good um but starting to recognize that you know my my kid too she's she got diagnosed with dyslexia this year well she's going to have to work a little bit harder at some of these skills she is very time and um not Adept and so I automatically start thinking about these things just as my kid gets older um then of course I get to see so many different things in working with all of the other teenagers in this process so it's super fascinating um so I want to thank you very much for doing this and um excited to get to post this session every year so that more people can become aware yeah that's great great yeah anybody have any questions they wanted me to go I can tou I want to touch on just two things quickly one is the virtual uh or the the digital versus the hard copy the difference there is dig the digital world is out of sight and out of mind so keeping that in in mind it it we have to have a balance with our students on how they're going to do things and where they're going to do it and the more choice you give them the better and the more experiments they can do the better try it virtual and see I mean try it electronically and see if it works if it works great if doesn't we might need to have it on paper to be able to see it um so we approach this as a very you don't have to do it exactly this way I love our planner I I have used it for almost 10 years and I wouldn't go anywhere without it however with my with students and younger people we really have to invite them into the tools in order for them to realize that they are helpful true quiet group you have Miss Crystal I know that's just because every you know it was all very clear like there's all very clear so okay well then I'm going to pause recording and we will