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Descriptions of effective teaching often depict an idealized form of "perfect" instruction. Yet, pursuing perfection in teaching, which depends on children's behavior, is ultimately futile. To be effective, lessons and educators need to operate with about 75% efficiency. The remaining 25% can be impactful, but expecting it in every lesson, every day, is unrealistic. Perfection in teaching may be unattainable, but progress is not. Whether you are aiming for the 75% effectiveness mark or striving for continuous improvement, this podcast will guide you in that endeavor.
Gene Tavernetti: Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom.
This show is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network shows that help you go beyond education.
Find all our shows@bepodcastnetwork.com.
I Am Gene Tavernetti the host for this podcast.
And my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at least once and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching.
A quick reminder, no cliches, no buzzwords.
Only stuff that
works.
I'm very excited to have two guests today on Better Teaching, Dr. Sarah Oberly and Mitch Weathers.
They are the co-authors of executive functions for every K classroom, promoting self-regulation for a strong start.
Sarah Oberly is an educator, writer, and professional learning designer with 18 years of experience as a primary classroom teacher.
Her work centers on helping educators understand how learning happens and how that understanding shapes daily instructional decisions beyond the classroom.
Sarah designs and facilitates evidence-informed professional learning for teachers and school leaders, both in person and virtually.
She works with national and international organizations to ensure professional learning, is research informed, practical, and responsive to the realities of teaching.
Her work focuses on attention, memory, and executive functions with an emphasis on pedagogy rather than programs.
Our other guest, Mitch Weathers, is an educator, author, and nationally and internationally recognized voice on executive functions in the classroom.
Mitch is best known for translating brain science into practical strategies that hold up in real classrooms.
His work focuses on helping students strengthen skills such as organization, task initiation, self-regulation, and follow through without adding to teacher's plates.
Through his writing, speaking, and consulting, Mitch challenges us to rethink why students struggle and how intentional systems and structures can unlock their potential.
Mitch's ideas give educators with a shared language, concrete tools, and a renewed lens for supporting our students.
I think you're really gonna like this one.
I.
Gene Tavernetti: Hello, Sarah and Mitch.
Welcome to Better Teaching Only stuff that works.
Mitch: Thanks for having us, Jean.
Gene Tavernetti: been looking forward to this for a while.
And just to let people know Mitch and Sarah have a new book coming out, and we'll talk a lot about that.
But the other thing I want people to know is that if you have an Alexa and you she'll tell you when it's coming, just ask when Sarah's book's coming story.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so that is that's exciting stuff.
So, and, and so you, you have a book that you wrote together, and then you have your first book on executive functions, is that right, Mitch?
For grades three through 12?
Mitch: Yep.
Yep.
Gene Tavernetti: And Sarah is K three?
Mitch: Yes,
Sarah: correct.
Gene Tavernetti: Okay, great.
So, I talk to folks all the time who who have co-authored books and it's always interesting.
There's usually a story about how the, the project got started, how you guys met, and could you fill us in a little bit about that?
Mitch: I'll let you take that, Sarah.
Sarah: Oh, okay.
Mitch: She, she's the catalyst Jean.
Gene Tavernetti: Okay.
Sarah: Yes.
For this whole project.
It's, it's, you know, my persistence.
So I heard Mitch on a podcast, maybe, I don't know, maybe like four years ago now, I'm not quite sure.
And he can make the corrections talking about executive functions, and I was like, but talking about executive functions for tier one.
And I was shocked because I've never heard anybody talk about executive functions in the context of just general education.
I. And so I was so impressed that I reached out.
I found Mitch on social and reached out and heard nothing.
And so I went on his website and I reached out to him via his website and he finally made time to get back to me.
At which point we, you know, were going back and forth about his work.
And I said, you know, I'm a primary teacher and this is so extremely relevant even though I'm a gen ed teacher, this is you know, dealing with a lack of executive function development is a huge part of our day.
And I said, we, we, we just need this content.
So the two of us went back and forth for a couple of years there, and we did some other things besides EF work.
Kind of danced around it for a while.
And then one day Mitch just called me up and said.
I have an idea, I think we should write this book.
And I said, I think, I think we should do it.
I think now's the time.
Gene Tavernetti: Is that all true?
Mitch?
Mitch: Yeah.
Yeah.
She left out a lot, Jean, but you
Gene Tavernetti: know Yeah.
All the, the high
Mitch: points of the story.
Gene Tavernetti: So you guys Yeah, go ahead.
Mitch: The other side to that, my, my experience with that, and she jokes about social, but it's true, I'm kind of notoriously a bit of a ghost on social, and I went back and looked at my messages and I was like, oh yeah, this person did try to contact me.
So ever since then, I've been better about that and I think Sarah can attest to that.
But the, the other piece of all this is when my first book came out focused on grades three through 12 because that's really kind of been my, as a middle and high school teacher as a practitioner.
And then work with a program I designed called Organized Binder that those grade bands.
And, and third, really being the youngest I felt like.
I could speak to that as like my area of expertise and provide value in a very authentic way.
And I didn't want to try to pretend that I'm a primary teacher or that I understand first grade or second grade beyond spending time in my mom's classroom.
'cause she taught second grade her whole career.
But Jean, the overwhelming, like the, the first book was really well received.
And that's been great.
Lots of good work happening.
But consistent feedback, like at every school, every district, every county, wherever we've done book studies is, well what about K one two and K 1 12 3?
'cause that's such an inflection point.
So that was like really like when heavy on me.
And then one day I was driving to get my youngest daughter from school and it kind of just clicked.
Like, this book needs to be written.
This work needs to be out in the world.
I don't believe it is yet.
And I know who.
I need to coauthor this with, and that's when the phone call came.
So,
Gene Tavernetti: okay, great.
So, so Sarah, you, you knew Mitch from his three 12 experience.
So just briefly should start out with this, what our executive functions.
Okay.
And then why, why the, why the split, what did you notice that was missing from, from Mitch's work that you wanted to be shared, that you covered in this book?
Sarah: Yeah, I think the context, I mean, primary context is so different.
And so the examples, the suggestions there's a lot of extrapolation that has to happen to make it relevant for the little ones.
And you know, I just really felt like.
We need someone who can speak directly to us about executive functions, who can explain them in a way that is relevant for us, that that
contextualizes it in a primary classroom and talks about what it would look like if there's issues in a primary classroom and how you might handle it.
The other thing is, and this brings me to what our executive functions, there's their cognitive processes and there's a group of six of them.
The, there's core, three core and three higher order, and the three core are most relevant for the primary grades.
So we have working memory inhibition and cognitive flexibility.
Now those are relevant for everybody, even adults, but those are the ones that are really developing during those primary years.
The higher order are problem solving, planning, and reasoning.
And those are the ones that you start to see develop like late elementary to middle school.
So Mitch's book for three 12 was much more relevant for older kids, whereas my students in primary, I'm not worried about reasoning, problem solving and planning as much because they cognitively are not there yet.
Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: Okay.
So again, let's talk about if there was any overlap because you, you both shared third grade.
So is there, is there as, as you went into the, to the K three book, was there anything that surprised you, Mitch, or that you really wanted to be in this new book?
Mitch: You know, my initial thought and in Sarah and i's initial plan and the co-authoring thing's really an interesting process too, right?
Because you.
We're, we're bicoastal, you know, there's all this stuff we had to like figure out like how are we gonna do this?
But the, the, the initial thought was, okay, this book, we, we'll, we kind of have a roadmap, right?
We have topics, we have chapters.
And although it's going to change and evolve for the context of K 1 23, we we'll use that as a starting place.
And, and what was probably the biggest epiphany for me, gene early on was after, I think Sarah was the first couple months of us writing and coming back and just like not, there wasn't like a flow.
And we both kind of realized like this, this isn't a roadmap that this primary, this K one two, and I'll speak the three in just a moment, like why it's in both, it's just so
different that to try to take something written for the older kids in that context and make it somehow fit for the younger context in particular around executive functioning doesn't.
It just doesn't work.
It's, they're two completely different spaces and yet there's a continuum, like there is an actual shown, like research has shown the, the developmental continuum.
So there's, they, they interrelate for sure.
And we chose, and Sarah tell me if I capture this, but that third grade, there's really kind of this inflection point for most learners where we oftentimes non-verbally just
kind of assume or expect that students are going to start to become more independent learners to start to develop some of these quote unquote higher order executive functions.
But that third grade classrooms that I visited could, some, could skew and lean maybe towards second, and that may be who the kids are in the room.
It may be the teacher's style, or it could be trending and leaning towards fourth.
So we deliberately chose to include it in both books.
Did I capture that, Sarah?
Sarah: Yeah, I think so.
I think we.
We wanted to acknowledge that third grade could go either way.
Mitch: Right.
Sarah: And, and so we wanted to include it and we include examples from third grade classrooms too in the book to say like, here's what this might look like for you.
But recognizing also that, you know, some of them may already have really well developed core executive functions.
And so in that case, the teacher can start to look to those activities that challenge, you know, your reasoning, your planning, your problem solving but knowing you can have a high class or a low class or, or everything in between or a combination.
We wanted to give the option there.
Mitch: And, and in addition real quick, Jean, that executive functions are so highly variable.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Mitch: In, in one, let's just say it's a third grade class.
You can, each individual student, you could almost span that, what you would think of like, oh.
Quote, unquote, normal development of executive functions over a couple years, you can have variability in, in learners.
So that feeds into it as well.
Gene Tavernetti: You mentioned about, mentioned about different ability levels and we all struggle and how to, to describe that now, you know but when you, when you are teaching executive functions, are you teaching executive functions?
Are you teaching it within the context of a lesson, an activity, et cetera?
Well, Sarah, that was for Sarah.
That was for Sarah.
Sarah, okay.
Sarah: So thank you for that lovely question.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna twist it a little bit and just say that we're not teaching our kids executive functions.
We are understanding that there's a.
Broad developmental continuum.
We are understanding their potential limits, and then we are adapting our environments, our instruction, and our routines accordingly.
So basically we are honoring what our students are bringing to us, but we are not trying to, in any way, improve or strengthen their executive functions.
We are supporting what they have, if that makes sense.
I,
Gene Tavernetti: I, it makes a lot of sense.
And I think of I'm just gonna say administrator.
There could be other people walking through your classrooms if they don't know about executive functions, but they still say, wow, Sarah's doing a great job here.
Listen how, look at, look at how she made these instructions.
So, so getable for the kids, they can understand them.
So could you expand a little bit on, on the idea of that, that executive functions, happened all the, you know, we're, we're doing that all the time, but I need to be sure in the classroom that I am honoring this, where they come in.
And so I need to, to make some changes in, in my procedures or how I run my classroom.
Can you talk about some of those things that you have done yourself, and then as you're across the country, you know, giving presentations that, that the teachers are, are interested in.
Mitch: Is that for Sarah or me?
Gene Tavernetti: That's for Sarah, yeah.
Yeah.
Mitch: Okay.
Sarah: I'm sorry, what was,
Mitch: I'm gonna give you one, I'm gonna jump in and, okay.
I'll be back on that, Sarah.
So I, Jean, if I understood that like someone walks in, school leader, whoever they don't know, efs, they're not thinking, like walking in with an EF lens on and they walk into Sarah's classroom and they're like, wow, like this is going really well.
Like, and I think I heard you say like, how did you adjust the environment?
Your instruction and what routines do you have in place that might help promote or support the development of efs, even if I'm not really thinking about it through that
Gene Tavernetti: lens.
Mitch: Yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: So, so what would they, what would somebody come in and see that was different than how you did it years ago based on what you have learned?
Sarah: Yeah, yeah.
Which, you know, a lot of it was through trial and error over almost two decades.
So wouldn't it be nice if we could share some of this with our novice teachers and not have them spend most of their career trying to figure this out?
If they do you know, it to an administrator coming in, no.
They're not saying, wow, you really know a lot about executive functions.
I could really see that you are preserving their working memory and you are protecting their inhibitory processes.
Absolutely not.
But what you will see is.
Fine tuned routines that are short and sweet.
So I'm not gonna give five steps.
I'm gonna give one, and then once that's done, I'll give another one.
You are gonna see activities that are also chunked.
So I'm not going to explain an entire activity and have you go do it.
I'm gonna have you get your materials out first, prepare your paper, then you're gonna learn.
Then you're going to hear maybe what to do on the first two of your first two tasks of your independent activity or whatever it is.
That within the activity there might be different types of questions.
So I'm not gonna explain all of it.
I'm just gonna say, okay, we're just gonna do this, this, and this, and then stop.
So very deliberate pacing and very deliberate procedures that we're, we are.
We're driving efficiency and we're trying to eliminate as much ambiguity as we can.
Ambiguity in terms of what do I do routinely in the classroom, but also how do I complete this assignment?
During instruction, we're using cues as a routine to orient attention.
So I'm just saying eyes and all my students turn to me and they know that they're directing their attention at me.
Or I say board and right away they know we're all gonna look at the smart board for this time.
You know, I'm stopping, I'm stopping very purposefully during instruction to check for understanding.
So I'm just being very respectful of the fact that I don't want to make them have to remember a lot of content at any one time, a lot of directions, at any one time.
And I'm trying to make sure that whatever capacity they have with their, from their working memory at the moment, working memory being, you know, the mental space where you are not only holding information, but you're manipulating it.
So doing doing some kind of sequencing activity or computing a math problem or anything that requires that mental juggling.
I want whatever my students have available in their working memory to be used towards learning.
I don't want them to be distracted with anything.
I don't want them to have to use it to you know, prepare materials.
I want to conserve as, as much of that as I possibly can for the learning piece.
Gene Tavernetti: When you, when I think about what you had said previously, I don't know if it was before we started recording or, or that's some conversation that we had, that the, what you're talking about in your book is tier one.
Mitch: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: This is, this is for everybody.
Every, all the students need to, to learn this, to be successful in school.
Something else that you talked about was.
It's kind of a corollary to whether it's tier one or not, is that it's not for special ed, it's just kids.
It's, it, it it's who we are.
And so so having said that, as the kids move from as the kids move from grade to grade, what is it, what should you expect them to break in?
And I'll ask Mitch this, you know, since, since you've got the whole gamut now, what would if what would a teacher see in a kid that said, Ooh, they had Sarah's class.
They're, you know, their executive functions are, are pretty good because I know you're out, you're solving problems for folks.
Are they still hangover from the problems that Sarah had or just different context, or
Mitch: what do you think?
Yeah, I mean, I refer to that as the, you've probably heard of the iceberg effect where un unlearned content.
Underdeveloped skills, things they do compound from grade to grade to grade and gets bigger underneath like the iceberg.
So ideally, and that's one of the things we are pretty clear about in the book, is that the, that the core EFS that Sarah's mentioning right now,
if students are lucky enough to be in environments where those are being, we're being mindful of them and really supporting and creating both.
And we, and the reason I, I had mentioned environment instruction and routine.
We break, there's three kind of chapters on that and looking at how do you practically do this work in the classroom.
And it really is about preserving or protecting working memory capacity.
But if I had kids coming into my upper elementary classroom that were lucky enough to be in Sarah's classroom, my, my hunch is, in, in some ways, and just go with me on this, is that they would know how to do school in a way, or have the ability to do school.
And, and you see that, like for me, as spent most of my career as a ninth grade teacher, and there was just a very clear distinction, and it's a, in my mind it's an equity issue 'cause everyone, most of us can do school.
But as these executive functions start to develop and, and then you get into the higher order, where we're really looking at, and I think this is even true of core efs, what I would be looking for in my upper elementary is behavior.
Because although executive functions are cognitive processes and we know in the brain, like geographically where they're, where that's happening, and that's all fine and interesting.
But if I'm a practitioner with 35 fifth graders showing up to my classroom, I need to, when I'm hoping to spot is the behaviors that manifest.
From the development of those executive functions.
So when I say do school, it might look like, you know, you can inhibit and stay on task in realistic chunks of time for your grade level and your age.
You might know how to get and stay organized.
You might be able to demonstrate goal oriented behavior.
No, that's all curated with the teacher.
But those would be the things that I would, my assumption, my hunch would be that either that's gonna they're gonna get that pretty quick, or they might even have some of that on board when they're coming into my class.
Gene Tavernetti: So, Sarah, what are, what are some of the I know this is not a cognitive question, but what are some of the behaviors that you want your kids to exhibit based on the work that you do with executive functions?
Is it, is it a never ending or is it, are we gradually releasing part of it or gradually increasing from one step to two steps?
As you give directions or,
Sarah: Not necessarily.
I mean, I think like in terms of by the end of the school year, can I just give the five different ways to do the five different tasks on the one independent activity?
No.
Because my kids are six and seven and I just, I still don't think that they are ready for that.
Some are but many are not.
I think as you go through the grades, the demands increase and the expected independence is also increasing.
So I don't teach kindergarten.
I'm not, you know, walking my students to the bathroom.
So I expect when they come to me that they can handle themselves in the bathroom.
Right.
And it's funny, I had, I was doing a training and I had preschool teachers in the training and we were talking about teaching some of these, doing school type
behaviors that Mitch and I sometimes will say like the hidden curriculum, things that we take for granted, that we expect our students to know to do or know how to do.
'cause we just think they should.
And that's not always the case.
I had a preschool teacher say I had to teach my students that they had to pull their pants up before they come out of the bathroom.
And I just thought, I mean, I was so tickled by that, but I was like, yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't think that, you know, I would assume that they knew or, or it wouldn't even, it wouldn't even cross my mind.
But yeah, it makes sense.
And same as, you know, I've told Mitch so many times my students, I'm always amazed that I have to teach them.
Before you raise your hand to answer a question, you have to think of, you have to have an answer in your mind.
You have to have something you wanna say.
And so.
We have to be really explicit about these things.
But in terms of, you know, just their nine or 10 months that they spend with me by, certainly by now, but you know, I spend the first couple of months being really regular with the routines.
So in that sense, we're like a well-oiled machine.
We're not still, I'm not still saying, don't forget you have to do this, or I didn't say, or, you know, you're supposed to wait.
They operate so well.
They know what every queue means.
So in that sense, they've got it where they've practiced enough to know what the expectations are.
And if they're, if I do see that there's things that are not going well in the classroom, then I know okay.
There's ambiguity there.
I need to create some kind of routine because then you have behavior issues, you have problems with independent work.
So I think, you know, to answer your question I think throughout the years you can expect students to demonstrate more ability to, you know, self-regulate, which is really what executive functions come down to.
They come down to your ability to exhibit self-control in, in, in service of finishing a goal.
Whether that be a test or that be getting dressed or, you know, whatever that looks like for you in the moment.
So what I think is good about, you know, our two books is just the spectrum that you see of change, but I don't know, you're not gonna see that in the span of, of.
One school year, if that's what you mean.
Like my, I'm not expecting them to be reasoning and problem solving.
I have to, I have to really appreciate the fact that they're developing on their own.
I mean, they're growing, they're, they're getting taller.
They're developing in all aspects.
So I can't expect to rush that, and I'm not trying to
Gene Tavernetti: No.
I've heard you say before Sarah, talking about expectations and that how students with less developed executive functions can look like a, like a student who's
just struggling with the content and, and which the way we are, I don't know how you are in Delaware, but in California, Mitch, I see you shake your head.
Is that the, the teacher sends a referral, you know, the teacher sends a referral for special ed and.
If they don't know what, you know, Sarah, we're getting a whole bunch of special ed referrals.
So that's period.
the other thing that I wanted to mention with respect to interventions or any of the other tiers, wouldn't we expect them to be doing the same thing that you're doing in the tier one classrooms with respect to executive, with respect to executive functions?
Sarah: You wanna take that, Mitch?
Mitch: Yeah, you would hope so.
I would say Jean, but oftentimes you get into the space of or I, I think we'll back up a little bit there.
You would hope you would wanna see that if there's in a tier two, tier three, or on special ed, if there's a space that is where, where content is happening, where learning is happening and it's, it's maybe not a whole out or a support class situation, right?
So there's some teaching there.
In the tier two and tier three, ideally, like Sarah just mentioned it too, like, well, if I, if I see something going on, right?
Like I'd always refer to those with my students, like, you know, almost like this, what's going on there?
Like, you, we have this very clear routine.
We're all doing it collectively.
We're doing it together.
And, and part of that is you get to see modeled for you and you practice getting organized every day just in little bits, you know?
And if you can't or a few of you can't, like is it with my routine, this is kind of like the EF lens as an educator, but more often than not, it's
usually that red flag for me that I want to see so that I can possibly intervene, could be handled in that tier one general ed core classroom space.
Or it could be like, Hey, there's something going on here and let's, let's address it in a tier two, maybe in a small group or tier three, like kind of more targeted intervention where that wouldn't so much be.
Shaping the learning environment.
'cause now I'm in almost a, a support or a coaching role supporting that area of concern that's happening in the, the gen ed core classroom.
And, and the, the truth of it is we can't tier two ourselves out of a tier one problem.
And I have the privilege of working with a lot of districts and interacting with a lot of educators.
And a and a really interesting conversation is always to start with like, tell me about your tier one initiatives in this district or at this school.
Or even in my classroom.
Like, what's going on here, you know, that I could share with all kids.
And it's not easy to point to those because if you back up and kind of look at it from a, like a 10,000 foot view where the design of the whole thing is very siloed.
Sarah has taught first grade for 20 years.
I taught ninth grade for 20 years and someone next to me was teaching 10th grade ELA.
And you over other side of campus are 11th grade history and your pe and we have these spaces that are siloed and what we're doing can be siloed.
So to get collective about it and share those for all kids in the core space.
It's gotta be grade level and subject area agnostic.
And that's where executive functions come in and play a really interesting and important role because this isn't, these aren't even academic in nature Gene.
These are like you've been, we do, we do this all the time and we all struggle with executive dysfunction and we're in that progression.
So there's something about the tier one space that's really important.
'cause I personally, the way I frame it, and we talk about it in the book, is it allows for collective teacher efficacy.
And if you follow the research, it has a significant impact and a very large effect size.
So there's, there's some interesting things to, to explore with executive functions in that sense.
Sarah: And Jean, I wanna make sure that your listeners are clear or that we're being clear with the fact that we are not saying you are teaching executive functions because like we said, you're, we're not teaching you to get taller.
That's happening at, you know, at your own pace.
What we are doing in the classroom is we are saying understanding what we know about executive functions, here's what I can do to be mindful of the fact that you do have working memory limits.
And if I exhaust them, I'm gonna.
Challenge you.
If there's gonna be behavioral problems, there's gonna be academic problems, there's gonna be stress.
I understand that your inhibition is not fully developed and you are highly distractible.
So knowing that, what am I gonna do in my classroom to mitigate some of that?
You know, the third core cognitive flexibility.
I, I, if I understand that you are mid development in your ability to understand other people's perspectives, your ability to shift from different tasks quickly.
What am I gonna do in my classroom knowing that?
So it's really, it's knowledge to increase your professional judgment, but it is not a list of things that you're doing or teaching that's very context dependent.
The other thing I wanted to say separately, if you don't mind, and I'd be remiss if I didn't share this, is, you know, in terms of kids that we might be referring, like, like if we're talking about, well.
You know, we're, we're concerned about maybe this should be tier two, or is this, I think somebody mentioned special education referral earlier.
I just wanna say that the primary teachers do a lot of sifting through these issues early on, so that by the time they get up to you, a lot of them have already got their tiered intervention or their 5 0 4 or their IEP.
So, you know, we we always say second grade's the magic year because after, after the kids have been struggling in kindergarten and first grade, the parents kind of don't believe us.
And then by second grade, they've heard it three years in a row and now they're like, okay, yeah, we think there's, there's, we're on board with, with some further investigation, which is, you know, adjacent to what we're talking about.
But it's relevant because.
Primary teachers have to sort of discriminate between their six.
So they're gonna hit people sometimes and not be able to control that.
But they're hitting people all the time.
Is that because their inhibitory process is not fully developed?
Or is that because there's, you know, something deeper going on?
So we have a lot of thinking, understanding to do, and patience required there.
And our students can't articulate to us well, I have a really hard time paying attention.
So that's why this knowledge is even more relevant for us.
And you know, what you would see.
In my classroom would be in terms of what might be problematic.
And in the book we talk about executive dysfunction and, and some of the common things that, that might look like in the classroom.
Maybe you're, you inadvertently have a situation where you're really challenging your students working memory and you don't realize it.
You think you're being super helpful but you're having the opposite effect.
So what might that look like?
And this goes again to why we needed the two books, the examples that niche would give for what that could look like in high school and middle school and
upper elementary is gonna be extremely different than what you're gonna see for a kindergarten, first and second grader, even sometimes a third grader.
For my kids, you're gonna see you know, issues with sequencing stories or you're gonna see issues with getting along with peers in terms of not.
Putting hands on somebody, you're gonna see a lot more blurting out.
You're gonna see kids who have trouble learning to read.
And so how do you make the distinction between, and this is for everybody, how do you make the distinction between is there a content problem or is there, is the infrastructure of the learning breaking down in some way?
Is it, should we be looking at restructuring some things in our environment to support executive functions versus I'm gonna put you in a, you know, tier two reading group.
Well, if reading's not the problem, then that's not going to help.
So that was a lot of different things in one, but I felt like it was all worth pointing out.
Gene Tavernetti: Well, no, it, it was, and I think that, The students, you walk into a classroom and they're exhibiting some behaviors and, and you know that every year that's gonna happen just because they're six years old.
So what sort of things have you done to mitigate you?
You talked about to, to mitigate this executive functioning immaturity, I can't think of another word.
So what are some things that you've done?
You, you have mentioned about not giving all the directions at once.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: Are there other, other things that you could do that teachers could kind of tomorrow start doing?
Sarah: Yeah.
I mean, look around your classroom.
What are your eyes drawn to or have better yet have someone else look around your classroom because you've already habituated to your, your physical environment.
But look around.
And if there are.
Visual spots in your room that someone's eyes are drawn to?
Are they competing for places where you want your students to be paying attention?
For example, I just bought whatever, I just bought some cool new reference posters.
They're gonna be great in six months when I teach that science unit, but I'm gonna put 'em up now.
Well guess what the kids wanna look at.
And if that is in a place where they're gonna see it during instruction, and I don't want them to be looking at it, I'm just making it harder for them.
I'm saying, I just hung these up, but don't look at them.
So I think in that sense, looking around your environment and saying, okay, what do I have in here that's potentially distracting?
Knowing that my kids have to inhibit their desire, their reflex to look at novel things.
And so inhibition is really preventing yourself from acting on impulse.
So I really wanna look at.
You know, there's donuts that look delicious, but I'm, I'm gonna try not to.
Well then don't have the donuts there.
Put them somewhere else where you know, you're not testing yourself, you're not testing your students.
So I think just environmentally looking around now, it doesn't mean don't have those things.
It means put those things in a place where, you know, the, the kids see them when they're lined up.
The kids, they're in the back of the room or they're in a place that doesn't compete for attention when you're teaching activity wise, you know, primarily you have a lot of stuff.
If you're gonna put a lot of stuff in front of your kids, you should be prepared that they wanna touch it and play with it.
And so you can either really be super strict and tell them don't touch it.
And a lot of them are gonna get in trouble probably 'cause they're trying not to, but they can't help it.
Or you can say, I'm gonna take this out this second.
We need it.
That's it.
So those are some really simple things that don't require any kind of planning, any kind of preparation, just little tweaks to tighten up places in your practice where you might be siphoning
off some of that learning power, some of your cognitive bandwidth that your kids are wasting on, you know, administrative stuff, minutia in the classroom that doesn't affect learning.
Gene Tavernetti: How about the upper grades, Mitch?
How does the, how do these things manifest if they're not developed?
Well,
Mitch: I mean, we talk about this in the second book too.
There's like the miss the mis, the misconception of why that it's behaviors, right?
Okay.
That we're spotting, but the, like thinking it's willful defiance or I just don't care.
I'm apathetic, I'm disengaged.
Now there could be a bunch of other.
Factors there with bigger kids and younger kids for that matter that they're navigating, right?
The, we don't know the chaos that a lot of kids navigate outside of school.
So the more safe and and predictable the environment can be, it can be a real haven.
But yeah, that's what you're seeing in, in the, the inability to demonstrate goal oriented behavior, the inability to get and stay organized.
Like some of these things that you would just assume kids would know how to do.
Bigger kids, and as soon as we use that word, assume we're kind of dead in the water.
We need to know and put, put routines in place at the, certainly the, at the it, it all through K 12, but shaping an envi, shaping the environment through
our instruction and our routines that lead to better executive functioning and not making the assumption that you're gonna either figure this out on your own.
Or that it, it's just going to, if you can't develop it, it's just your, it's a deficit lens, right?
Walking in.
And then kids are used to that by the time they get to ninth grade, especially if they struggle academically.
And, and I've seen it time and time again where students who get the opportunity to start to develop as learners, this sense of agency, like, I know how to do school.
I might be struggling with the content still, but I'm not also struggling with the content.
And like, I don't know how to do this.
Like this is happening all around me and other kids in the room seem to know how to do it, and I just don't.
And when students start to develop that, you start to see success, you know, academically as well, but that those behaviors and engagements start to shift in a really powerful way.
And it's important that, Sarah's kind of alluded to it a few times that the beauty of this work in, in both books, but certainly in this second book that Sarah and I have just finished.
It's not something else for teachers to do.
It's, it's almost like putting a pair of executive functioning glasses on and just analyzing your practice in particular through the lens of, can I, can I decrease interference, increase automaticity?
So that working memory, that that cognitive bandwidth is, is there and the lens is really through and you hear Sarah talking about it again and again, even in our conversation, the environment, the
physical, the visual, the auditory environment, like thinking about that there's, they're not saying you're leading, you're doing things that are leading to off task behavior or even executive dysfunction.
But it's just a really interesting analysis.
Same thing with my instruction.
Is it too much?
Is it too little?
Same thing with my routine.
So you're, you're, you're not gonna find a teacher at any grade level.
That's looking for something else to do, right?
I mean, we just, it's tyranny of the urgent half the time and we just, it's just not a luxury that any educator has.
So one thing that's really important to understand about this is that this book's not giving you something else to do.
It's gonna have a very small time footprint, but it's gonna have a significant impact on you and your students as they start to develop or we protect that executive functioning capacity.
Sarah: Very true.
And I'm sorry, go ahead.
Gene Tavernetti: Go ahead.
No, no, no.
You
Sarah: said no.
I think it's, it's knowledge that once you become aware of it, once you read about it, understand it a little bit, you start to see it in yourself too.
Like, oh, or, or, or you're driving and you realize, I just looked at that sign, that sign's new.
Like, how do, how does my attention know?
To make me look over there.
It's instinctual.
It's reflexive and you, you start to realize that there are bottom up reflexive behaviors that we just have as humans because of the way that our minds work.
And you know, if you can't prevent yourself from turning towards something when you're driving, imagine, you know, the 7-year-old that you're telling to pay attention to a word problem and you know, you just put up a cool sign that blinks over in the corner.
It's like they can't help but want to look at it.
So it is, it is not complicated.
And I think that's really important to emphasize that the way that we describe this in the book is not in a very.
It, it's all empirically sound and the research is sound, but it's, we weren't interested in a bunch of research jargon for teachers.
Teachers don't need that.
But it is presented in a way that is accurate, but it's relevant to what we do every day.
And so I think once you become aware of some of these things, you'll start to be like, oh, I see what's happening there.
You know, and then you start to have conversations like, well, we're gonna put her in MTSS reading intervention.
But I don't think that's the problem.
I don't think decoding is the problem.
I think she's having problems managing the individual sounds and then recoding when it comes time to recode her working memory's overwhelmed.
So you start to, you start to uncover what else might be going on.
And then in turn you can think about, okay, well what can I change?
What can I tweak now that I have this in mind?
Gene Tavernetti: The last thing you said, I think is, is real important for teachers is that you have a framework for the executive functions.
You have the you have examples, lots of examples in the book.
And but many teachers, without knowing this, let's just give up, you know, okay, let's get a, let's get a special ed referral.
So what you bring into, into this tier one instruction and your knowledge of the EFS is you are preventing a misdiagnosis.
So, so do you ever have folks come to you that, I mean, when I, when I say that I know every school has a student study type team, they have some sort of leadership thing to talk about issues, just like we're talking about outta control.
You didn't say outta control kids, but I'm, I'm gonna say it that until they have that we are gonna be burdening other systems, other support systems within the school because of the, you know, the way we've labeled the kid.
I say,
Sarah: I mean, everybody's got attention deficit, not the diagnosis, but, but you know, we all have less attentional bandwidth and we don't need to talk about why
that might be, but I don't think, and I say this as a teacher, I'm in the, I was in the classroom today and I lose my patients all the time, but we have to remember.
There in this huge surge of development and executive function is what drives attention, what controls it what tells it, what to focus on and all at the same time what to ignore.
And so if we see that our kids are struggling with that, we can, number one say, what do I have in my environment?
Or am I overloading working memory?
What am I doing that I could maybe change to support that?
Or you know, we, we understand that this is developmental and we're gonna, you know, I feel like I just said a bad word.
It's developmental.
'cause we hear that too much as teachers, but.
But these cognitive processes, they really are developmental.
And so we can't diagnose everybody or tell everybody or say, you know very discreetly to the parents.
Like, you might wanna take 'em to the doctor.
I think that's where we get into trouble and we have to remember they're active.
They have to, a lot of them have to purposefully tell themselves not to be, 'cause they want to be active.
So we have to toe the line of being mindful of where they are developmentally and not insinuating that they all have, you know, a 10 visit disorder or hyperactivity
or now some of them do like, some of them do, and some of them, you know, some of them will need special services or a referral to your problem solving team.
But I don't think we should jump to conclusions too quickly.
Gene Tavernetti: Think I'm gonna say this a little bit differently than you did, but, but to me it's just isolating variables.
Is it this, is it, this is it?
Is it one of these three core functions?
Is it these other ones?
But unless you control that, I could just see going to, what did you call a student assisting, what did you call it?
A referral to, if you refer to kids
Sarah: your problem solving team.
Yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: Problem, problem, problem solving team.
That there, it seems to me, on that team, we always strive to have representation, you know, of the teacher special services, interventionists, et et cetera.
But if you don't take care of what we're talking about right now, we're always gonna be confounded by, by the data that says a kid's not performing.
Sarah: Okay.
And
Gene Tavernetti: yeah,
Sarah: you know, your listeners will know who are in the classroom the first thing that you're gonna get when if you do bring up a concern to the team.
Or whoever you, you bring those concerns to, they're gonna say, well, have you tried this, this, and this?
And what?
And, you know, have you documented and, and you know, we're gonna try six more weeks of this or that.
If you can go and say, you know, I've tried reducing the working memory load.
Like basically you have more tools to, at your disposal to try.
So if you can go and say, look, I understand a bit about executive functions.
I've noticed that, you know, he has trouble inhibiting his impulses when he wants to say something.
I think just showing that you've gone beyond what you know, your colleague down the hall may have done because you've taken it upon yourself to learn a little bit more about, you know, how your kids learn.
Gene Tavernetti: How widespread is this information in your school, Sarah, about executive function?
Sarah: It is only in the context of special education does it ever come up?
Gene Tavernetti: Okay.
How about, how about you, Mitch?
What the things, variables that you try to isolate or get teachers to try that might be different than, than the usual order of business?
Mitch: Interestingly, the older, the grades, the older we get, the older the students get, the more the conversation just seems to naturally shift to content.
You know, and you've probably heard the saying, you can ask a first grade teacher what they teach, and you can ask a, let's say a high school teacher.
And if you ask a high school teacher, they're gonna say, well, I teach English.
And if you ask the first grade teacher, they teach students like it's just this different space.
And there's the problem.
And it comes back to those like assumptions or expectations, is what you start to see is a lack of.
Routine, a lack of, it just becomes content driven.
And that's not just to say, and that's not to say that's wrong.
The things we learn are important, hopefully, like that's not just willy-nilly and that doesn't matter, but it's, it's more of a, a lack of any of this and just kind of assuming, Hey, you're in high school now or you're in college now.
The, the same, the same conversations, any, the same behaviors that even Sarah's talking about in first grade were, I was just met, I met with a dean in college yesterday and, and they're like, we, we don't know what to do.
These are the behaviors we're seeing in the classroom.
He's kind of underdeveloped, if you will, executive function.
So the work that I like to encourage in, in the, the, with the big kids is basically working of a gene.
Like, okay, let's consider the environment.
How do we establish routines and instructional strategies?
That of course, allow you to teach your content, but embed prac with an exposure to these executive functions.
So starting to shape the environment in ways that leads to better executive functioning.
And, and that's one part, these lens, these EF lens, like that kid may be acting that way, that big kid maybe away because, and you think it's this, and just like Sarah's saying, well,
maybe it's this maybe and maybe some small adjustments and you start to see things change, behaviors change progress happening, and it can't, you know, the importance of this work.
And I think, I hope every primary and kinder and even pre-K teacher reads this book because it, you know, I, I was recently the privilege of
being the keynote for a state level MTSS conference, and the person who introduced me said, Mitch is gonna talk all about tier one in his keynote.
And, you know, we're here at an MTSS conference, so most, the mine automatically goes to tier two and tier three, which it shouldn't.
We gotta keep tier one in there.
And he said, I, I kind of fell outta my chair before I walked up there.
That we have districts in our state, state will remain unnamed, of course, but that have upwards of 60 to 70% referral rates to tier two, tier three in special ed.
And the system just can't, it's not built for that.
That's no longer intervention.
Right.
That's like complete desperation.
And the fact is if it goes unaddressed, usually just because of a, a lack of maybe understanding around this work, you are going to have colleges saying, I had a college professor 'cause ago.
Like, like they don't know how to manage a classroom.
Management's not a thing where like ninth grade, that's part of the part of the deal, right?
And she's like, I had a student stand up on his desk yesterday.
Like, I don't know what to do with that.
Like, I don't have any training in any of this.
And I'm not saying that's one isolated event.
And it have, you can tie that to executive dysfunction.
It's just a way to put an exclamation point on the importance of these conversations in this work, starting all the way back with the three and four year olds.
Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.
And I, and I think that's a message.
There's, there's a through line, even beginning with parents.
I think with the parents' benefit from this book.
Mitch: Yes.
Gene Tavernetti: You know because I think it's important when you have a parent meeting, be able to come to some understanding.
And if you don't have a, this as part of the context, the the efs, then it's all about preference.
Well, I don't like to teach that way.
Well, you know, you've got your kids in groups you got your kids in groups.
I don't know if you've ever noticed how many of them are not, you know, it may just be too distracted for them to be sitting next to somebody, you know?
And I know that, that that happens because if I'm ever with Sarah, I do not sit next to Sarah because between the two of us, we're just going to be distracted.
Doesn't matter how good, doesn't matter how good the session is, doesn't matter how good the session is.
So, so I, I think that's the other thing that is, that's important for folks to know that you wanna take a look at both your due K three book and the three 12 book to kinda get an idea of what those behaviors are that.
Maybe a teacher can't even explain because they don't know what they are.
And then many times parents don't believe what the school is saying.
Sarah: Yeah.
And on that note, I've had, you know, we had a, a couple people well, several people read the manuscript.
And I will say that every single reader that was a parent of a school-aged child said, I had so many ahas as a parent.
Yeah.
So this wasn't written for parents.
But just the few that have read it have already said like, oh, wow, this was so eye-opening.
I, I need to read this.
Not as, you know, school administrator or an educator, but as a parent, you know, I'm seeing my own kids in this book basically.
I think, you know, to Mitch's point about the upper grades being so content focused, the benefit we have in primary is we have our kids all day long.
So I'm with the same 21 kids from the moment they walk in, you know, barring lunch, and, and they're special, you know what music or library or whatever.
I'm with them all day so I can be consistent all day long.
They're not going to another class and getting a different message and different routines and different exp expect expectations, but along those lines, they're also getting their feet wet in their formal schooling.
So they're learning to read, they're learning to do basic computations.
All the foundations that's gonna take them through the rest of their school career, which makes it all the more important that they have successful experiences early on.
So that when they get to Mitch, when they get to, you know, middle school, high school, they, number one, don't have a terrible attitude about themselves as a student because they're just never organized.
Or, you know, they already have that aversion because things are just hard or difficult or they're forgetful.
And number two, because we're seeing kids that are in high school and kids still can't read.
And so we lay the foundation academically and we can also support the foundation for our students as they see themselves as learners as well as just, you know, benefiting them academically.
Their learning will, their learning time will be maximized if you are considering what you know about executive functions in the classroom.
Gene Tavernetti: And they're gonna know a lot more after they read your book and Mitch's Mitch's book.
You know, one of the things that that I saw God, this is years ago now.
We were working with all the incarcerated youth in LA County and we are going to all the camps.
Working with the teachers, we've observed lessons and, and the kids well, you don't have to worry about some things when they're locked up 'cause they don't get to keep a pencil.
They don't get to, you know, they, they're all counted, you know, back and forth.
But I'll never forget a kid who, the lesson was a good lesson and the kid was really excited about the lesson, but the teacher wouldn't answer a question.
And so all of a sudden it escalated.
You know, it escalated to the point where they're sent out.
'cause they're disrupting the class.
They gotta go to probation and talk about what's, what's going on.
But it was you know, real clear.
They just didn't know how to do that.
There are constraints in being a statement.
You can't just yell out and, and you know, like adults, we have a little bit more agency or.
That the right thing.
Sarah: Control self,
Gene Tavernetti: hopefully Self control.
Hopefully.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hopefully.
Alright, well God obviously could talk forever, but before we go, do you have any questions for me?
Mitch: I, I do.
I want, well, it's, I guess that's a que Yeah, I guess a que I want to hear the story.
I know you, you like Genesis, the founding of your work, Jean is predicated on the experience you had with the teacher and then you guys came back together years later if I read this correctly.
Gene Tavernetti: Well, what did the things inspired?
Okay.
Mitch: A lot of the work you do.
Gene Tavernetti: Well, I'll tell you I always wanted to be a football coach.
I didn't wanna teach.
I didn't wanna have any, I just wanted to be a football coach.
And I played football in college and I, I came back in summer and I talked to my old high school football coach.
I said, I'd love to, to help you, you know, in the two days when we come back.
And, and he said, sure, sure, that'd be great.
You know, we'll need to talk about that.
So here I am.
I was a hot shot quarterback.
I played quarterback in college, and I'm thinking, I'm gonna work with the quarterbacks, right?
He says, my coach says to me you're gonna take the outside linebackers.
And I said, I don't know anything about how, you know.
And so he brought me through the footwork step.
And you know what?
Every day that's where I practice with the, you know, the defensive ends and, and the tight ends, how to, how to handle that.
But we couldn't do it until we had the basics, you know, here's your footwork, here's what you're gonna do, hands.
So to me, that was the first time that I realized that, I could teach these things if I broke 'em down into a matter that was, was digestible for my clients, which at that time were, were these football players.
And so that's kind of how I got into it.
And that's why I always ask folks if they, if they have a, an athletic or performance background.
How about you, Mitch?
Do you have a
Mitch: soccer?
Gene Tavernetti: Soccer?
Mitch: Okay.
Yeah.
I went to my 35th reunion and my soccer coach from high school was there, who was one of two adults in my life outside of the, in double hole mark.
Yeah.
And he could, and the funny thing is he never grew up playing soccer, but he grew up coaching and he grew up teaching and so he approached the whole sport in a way that made him really, really successful.
So, yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: How about you, Sarah?
What performance do you have in your accurate.
If you don't wanna say it, you don't have to
Sarah: say performance.
Well, I perform every day in front of my six and seven year olds formerly cheerleading.
Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.
Which you gotta break it all down.
And, and so, so that's, that's what I found.
I found the effective teachers have something in their background to say, just like when I learned how to play guitar, this is just like I learned how to do.
That's my guy who helped me to shout out to him, Larry Welsh.
He was one of the he might still be the winningest coach in California, percentage wise high school.
Wow.
And so so anyway, that's what, that's where I, that's where I learned that.
Mitch: Okay.
I'm glad you shared that.
I read that and I was like, I, that's what I wanna know about.
It's interesting.
Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.
I, I think, I think we all have those experiences you know, of being to, to do something.
And many of us have the experience of being so frustrated because it, it wasn't good enough, the instruction wasn't good enough.
And then, you know what happens?
My inhibitions and my EF are all screwed up as a
Sarah: crap.
That's exactly right.
To a quick anecdote on that note that I confront it.
So my dad tried to teach me how to drive stick shift, backing up out of his incline driveway.
And needless to say, I never learned ended in, into years.
I never learned how to drive.
So, wow.
Talk about scaffold.
S you know, knowing your audience, content,
Mitch: content,
Sarah: audience,
Mitch: little too much content, right?
Sarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mitch: I
Sarah: talked dad in the
Mitch: parking lot with no one else around, and she nailed it.
She,
Sarah: yeah.
And he was so mad at me.
He's like, you're gonna crash through the house.
I said, forget this.
Gene Tavernetti: Dress you a stick.
Sarah: No, I,
Gene Tavernetti: oh, okay.
No, but how about you?
How about you?
Yeah.
Mitch: It's, there's a truth there.
And that's what happens with kids in school.
Sarah: Yeah.
Mitch: You like, I can't do it.
Especially by the time they reach me.
And I had to change that narrative.
Like, oh, you can, you are capable.
It's that how we develop this capacity to do these things has to be, we have to be thoughtful about developing executive functions.
So
Sarah: yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: I, I
Sarah: shout out to my dad.
He is amazing in plenty of other ways.
Sorry, dad.
Mitch: Shout out Dad.
Gene Tavernetti: That's, that's funny.
Andy, here we go.
So the name of the book Sarah K three,
Sarah: Executive Functions for Every K three Classroom.
Gene Tavernetti: Alright.
And, and the first, first book, keep
Mitch: going.
There's a subtitle.
Sarah,
Sarah: go ahead.
You take the subtitle.
Mitch: Promoting Self-Regulation for a Strong Start, book number two, or book number one.
What we refer to them as the blue book.
But same, same name Gene executive functions for every three through 12 classroom, creating safe and predictable learning environments.
Gene Tavernetti: That's terrific.
Sounds terrific, guys.
I wish we had more time, but we'll run into each other again soon and we'll have a chance.
Good luck on your, good luck on your book.
I know that it's available for pre-order also on Amazon now.
Mitch: Yep.
Gene Tavernetti: Amazon and
Mitch: Corwin.
You can pick it up.
Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.
So, so all good.
Any last words folks?
Mitch: No, just thanks Jean.
Gene Tavernetti: Gosh, thank you guys.
Thank you guys.
We will talk to you soon.
Sarah: All right.
My favorite person named Jean, talk to you later.
Gene Tavernetti: If you're enjoying these podcasts, tell a friend.
Also, please leave a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
You can follow me on BlueSky at gTabernetti, on Twitter, x at gTabernetti, and you can learn more about me and the work I do at my website, BlueSky.
Tesscg.
com, that's T E S S C G dot com, where you will also find information about ordering my books, Teach Fast, Focus Adaptable Structure Teaching, and Maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles.