Supporting Students with Executive Function Challenges for Paraprofessionals

In today’s classrooms, paraprofessionals play a crucial role in supporting students with diverse needs. However, the challenge lies in striking the right balance—how do we provide essential assistance without inadvertently hindering a student’s growth toward independence?

The Dilemma: Helping vs. Enabling

The Intentions: Well-intentioned paraprofessionals genuinely want to empower students. They aim to equip them with the executive function skills essential for  classroom engagement and task completion.

The Reality: Sometimes, despite the best intentions, paraprofessionals inadvertently slip into a pattern of over-helping. They prompt, guide, and even complete tasks for the child, unintentionally creating dependency.

The Critical Questions:

Where is the Line? How do we differentiate between helpful support and enabling behavior?

When to Step Back? When should we gradually transfer responsibility to the student, allowing them to become independent?

In this practical strategies seminar we will Unpack the Executive Function Skills:

What Are They? Explore the critical executive function skills students need for success.

How Do They Apply? Understand how these skills manifest in the classroom.

Then give you dozens of easy to implement tools to improve:

Self-Regulation: Learn techniques for managing emotions and staying focused.

Task Completion: Strategies for breaking down complex tasks and maintaining momentum.

Materials Organization: Efficient ways to organize materials for smoother transitions.

Time Management: Mastering the art of sensing time passage.

Task Breakdown: Techniques for breaking down assignments into manageable steps, completing and closing out tasks.

To gradually increase student responsibility and independence, you will learn how to implement these strategies and kickstart a student's learning by beginning with focused instruction ("I teacher do it"), progressing to guided instruction ("We do it together"), collaborating with students as they gain confidence, and finally transitioning to independent learning (“You do it alone”).

Don’t miss this thought-provoking session! Whether you’re an educator, paraprofessional, or advocate for student independence, you need to attend to foster independent executive function skills!