Causes & Cures in the Classroom

Getting to the Root of Academic and Behavior Problems

Margaret Searle

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781416617983
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Whether students leave the classroom confident and goal-directed or frustrated and aimless depends on our ability to do two things: diagnose their needs and deliver support. This challenge can be daunting when students come to school with weak vocabulary, poor planning and organization skills, and problems with memory, impulse control, and attention span.

Causes & Cures reveals new neurological research about the root causes of these obstacles and lays out a comprehensive five-step protocol designed to help all educators identify and address common student academic and behavior issues.

This essential guide provides

* Illuminating case studies that walk you through the protocol in a variety of content areas and grade levels.
* Strategies and tools to help you diagnose root causes and develop targeted, effective interventions for your students.
* Guidance for extending individualized interventions to large groups.

Most of us went into teaching with the dream of helping all our students succeed. We can't let students who struggle wear us down or wait us out. No matter which subject or grade level you teach, this indispensable resource will show how you can help students overcome difficulties and experience real success in the classroom.

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Chapter 1

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What is Executive Function and How Does It Affect School Performance?

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Barry is getting an F in social studies and science mostly because he doesn't hand his assignments in on time, if at all. His note-taking skills during lectures are a disaster. His mind wanders, and when he does manage to be attentive, he tries to write down everything. He often has trouble separating important from unimportant information. He also has a hard time remembering directions or steps in a process.

Jolene can't seem to stop doing things that disrupt the classroom. Keeping her body in the same vicinity as her desk takes all the willpower she can muster. She shouts out answers and pushes peers who annoy her. When it's time to work, her attention is everywhere except on the assignment. She makes the same mistakes in math over and over, even though her teacher has reviewed the processes with her multiple times.

Amy seldom arrives to class on time, and it is the rare day when she manages to remember to bring all of the books, supplies, and assignments she needs. She sits and stares instead of getting started on her work. The quality of the written work Amy does produce is marginal, even though she can answer questions orally as well as anyone. Her tendency is to give up when the work gets challenging, and she rarely checks her assignments before handing them in.

Each of these students may sound like a candidate for special education testing, and it is possible that they have learning disabilities, but there is also another possibility. Many typical students who have delays in executive function exhibit exactly these same symptoms.

What Is Executive Function?

Executive function is the term used by neurologists to describe the brain processes that drive our ability to focus, solve problems, organize ourselves, remember information, learn from mistakes, and manage impulses, all of which help us learn efficiently and develop important social skills (Blair, 2002).

Dr. Russell Barkley and Dr. Thomas Brown, noted researchers in the area of attention deficit disorder (ADD), use the analogy of an orchestra conductor to describe the brain's executive function. A conductor's job is to direct each member of the orchestra in order to create the most beautiful sound possible. No matter how talented the musicians, if the conductor doesn't keep the pace and intensity of the playing coordinated, the result can be ugly. If our brain's conductor is under active, we will have the same outcome: the lack of focus and integration will cause us to perform poorly (Barkley, Murphy, & Fischer, 2008).

During the last 20 years, neuroscientists have made remarkable progress in understanding how the brain works, but we are just beginning to realize how crucial this information can be for parents and educators. Understanding how executive skills develop can help adults figure out the best responses to academic and behavioral problems that are often mistaken for laziness, carelessness, or lack of motivation.

We know there is wide disparity in people's capacity to manage executive skills. This disparity is especially noticeable in children because the prefrontal cortex is in a constant and uneven state of development.

The Maturation Process

Compare your ability to plan, manage time, maintain focus, and control impulses with that of a 5-year-old. Although 5-year-olds are beginning to handle these tasks, natural maturation of the brain and experience make adults quicker and more efficient. Executive functioning skills, such as predicting what is likely to happen next, solving complex problems, and judging when and how long to work on a project, become easier for us as the brain matures.

Studies show that even though the executive processes start developing in infancy, these cognitive skills develop at different rates and over a long period. The skills of inhibition (overriding automatic responses) and working memory (holding information long enough to work with it) are the first to show significant growth in preschool children. Planning, attention span, and organization show a spike in development around age 5 but don't peak until our mid- to late 20s. During the adolescent years, all of these brain systems become faster and more sophisticated, and the skills of self-monitoring, mental flexibility, and persistence become noticeably stronger (Diamond, 2002).

The level of a child's executive function skills is not highly predictable by age because the developmental rate of the prefrontal cortex, which governs the function, can vary by a large degree from person to person. Some students may have skills that seem behind or ahead of the rest of the class, and as we have seen in the examples at the opening of this chapter, the problems that manifest can easily be interpreted as signs of a possible disability or lack of effort. Before jumping to testing, labeling, or punishing, it is important to try supporting students with interventions for various executive skills like organization, self-monitoring, multitasking, and memory. Many students get mislabeled as students with disabilities when what they really need is ongoing support while their brains go through the normal maturation process.

Contrary to popular belief, it is the level of executive function skills, especially in the area of working memory, rather than IQ that is the best predictor of success in reading, spelling, and math (Alloway & Alloway, 2010). Classroom teachers often describe struggling children as being inattentive or as having low IQ, but rarely do they put their finger on working memory and related executive subskills as the key reasons for poor performance. The good news is that these skills, unlike IQ, are easily addressed in school with early interventions in the classroom.

Although executive control has little to do with a person's IQ, the likelihood is high that students with cognitive disabilities will have difficulties in several areas of executive functioning (Brown, 2005). Dr. Barkley's research (Barkley et al., 2008) reported that 89–98 percent of children diagnosed as having ADD have deficits in multiple areas of executive function. This means that students with disabilities can be as much as three years behind their peers in some aspects of executive maturity. Ask a room full of special education teachers if their students experience problems with organization, memory, and attention span, and every hand in the room will go up. But ask a room of middle school general education teachers the same question, and you will find that students with disabilities aren't the only ones who struggle in these areas.

Genetics, disabilities, stage of life, gender, quality of family life, self-concept, and stress levels affect the natural timeline for the development of executive functioning. Life experiences, good nutrition, and sensitive adult guidance also contribute to how well and how fast these problem-solving and self-regulation abilities mature. The good news is there are many things parents and educators can do to nurture the executive skills of students with disabilities and general education students alike.

We can help students feel more capable by adjusting expectations to offer enough challenge to keep growth and interest high without crossing the line into frustration. Providing the right amount of modeling and support, based on what we know about a student's stage of brain development, establishes a safe and welcoming environment for growth. When punishment instead of support is our response, we can actually stall the developmental process.

The Six Major Subskills of Executive Function

Although executive control or executive function may not be well-known terms to many teachers, the traits and frustrations caused by delays in these processing skills are very familiar. There is disagreement among neurologists about what to call the subskills that make up executive function, but in this book, I concentrate on six categories: planning and problem solving, memory, organization, focusing attention, impulse control, and self-monitoring.

These functions are so closely related that it is often hard to separate one from the other. For example, if you miss your doctor's appointment, is it because your planning is faulty, or could it be your memory that let you down? If you say something that hurts someone's feelings, is it because you aren't paying attention to the social cues the person is sending, is it due to a lack of impulse control, or could it be poor problem solving? It's hard to tell. A deficit in a particular skill can be difficult to pinpoint because usually the problem is due to a combination of skill factors. However, for the purposes of clarity, in this book, I treat each of the executive skills as if it operated in isolation. Let's take a closer look at each of these six functions and the problems you are likely to see if students' development in a particular one is delayed.

Planning and Problem Solving

Tyler has known about the math project for a week, and it's due tomorrow. Mom will hit the ceiling again when she checks his notebook tonight. He wants to do well in school, but whenever he gets long, complicated assignments, his brain goes into a stall. He cannot imagine where to begin, so he doesn't. It never occurs to him to ask for help.

To help you better identify with Tyler's problems, let's transfer his executive dysfunction to an adult scenario and pretend that you too have delayed development of your planning and problem-solving skills. What happens to you now? Well, like Tyler, you will frequently get lost in the goal setting and visualization of steps required for good work completion. A complex task like balancing your checkbook freaks you out. Your inability to break this big task into manageable parts makes the job look overwhelming and distasteful, so you tend to put it off. Now you find yourself sitting with three months' worth of receipts and bank statements in front of you, and you just can't bring yourself to get started because you cannot imagine where to begin. If you do get under way and something doesn't work out, you can't think of a plan B. It's easier to just say, “I simply can't do this,” and so you stop.

Many students with faulty problem-solving skills are repeatedly unsuccessful in getting started or meeting goals and accessing resources, which can lead them to become more and more reluctant to set and stick with goals that challenge them. They begin to think they are not as smart or capable as other people. To avoid this downward spiral, adults need to consider the possibility that the lack of initiative may be due to executive dysfunction. If this is true, the problem is an “I can't” rather than an “I won't” issue, and support, not punishment, is what is needed.

The experience of feeling overwhelmed by complex problems is understandable, but it's risky to allow the pattern of not getting started or not following through to become a habit. Without direct support, this problem is likely to happen repeatedly, even when there are severe consequences. You will find a variety of specific suggestions for supporting the skills of problem solving and planning in Chapter 2.

When planning and problem solving is causing trouble, there is generally a related issue in the memory system.

Memory

Amber's teacher repeatedly reminds her to put her name and date at the top of her paper, but Amber forgets to do this at least once a day. If there are several steps involved in solving the math problem, she is likely to remember the first and the last step but skip the steps in between. Even though Amber demonstrates that she understands basic grammar, spelling, and punctuation when doing practice exercises, she has difficulty remembering how to apply these rules when she is actually writing.

Now, let's put you in Amber's shoes for a moment. If, like Amber's, your memory processes don't function effectively, holding information in your mind long enough to do something with it is difficult. You cannot remember the rules of a game as you play it. People refer to you as absentminded or careless because you frequently forget to do things like go to appointments or pay bills on time. You come home from the grocery store without some of the things you need. You have trouble following multistep directions or instructions. You can't tell a story with enough detail or in proper sequence for people to follow your thoughts easily. Remembering a phone number or a person's name is frustrating. In short, life is much more exasperating for you than it is for other people.

Students who have weak executive memory systems experience these frustrations regularly. Memory dysfunction affects not only their ability to learn, communicate, and problem-solve but also their social and emotional well-being. For example, students with weak memory are less likely to feel comfortable responding in class and are more likely to “zone out” when the tasks or conversations are demanding. They are frequently in trouble for not following directions. Often teachers also identify these students as having oppositional and hyperactive tendencies.

The memory function is highly complex, and is actually not one function but many. Scientists break memory processes down into three types: encoding (intake system), working memory (processing), and long-term memory (storage and retrieval).

Encoding is the process by which the brain takes in new sensory stimuli and compares and associates them with prior memories in order to create new memories. The more we focus our attention on the stimuli, the stronger the encoding. The more personally meaningful the sensory information or the more emotion we feel when processing it, the stronger the memory. That is why you probably cannot remember what you had for lunch on Wednesday three weeks ago, unless it was a special occasion on which you either had the best meal ever or became deathly ill afterward. The more difficult it is for you to understand the incoming information, the weaker and more distorted the encoding.

Students who have difficulty with encoding often can't

• Sort out what information to focus on.
• Keep up with the pace of the information, so they zone in and out.
• Focus on information they don't find engaging or challenging.
• Link new information to what they already know.
• Easily use an intake system (auditory, visual, kinesthetic) other than their strongest.
• Follow directions, because they gloss over details and sequences.
• Learn easily from previous mistakes.

Notice that the word can't is the operative word here. These problems are not just the result of carelessness. Even when these students give their best effort, it simply is not enough. The same is true for students with delays in processing information in working memory.

Working memory is what we use to link information together into meaningful chunks so that we can carry out important mental tasks, like comparing, sequencing, summarizing, filtering out irrelevant information, reading, and solving problems. When the working memory process misfires, it causes those “Oops, what did I come in here to get?” moments. Working memory's short-term storage must hold our purpose in mind long enough to perform more complex processes.

Students with working memory issues often take longer to make sense of things and may be unable to

• Follow through on directions, even when they understand them.
• Remember where they are in a process when doing multistep procedures or tasks.
• Remember what they just read long enough to make connections to other information.
• Detect patterns, relationships, and the logic of situations.
• Apply previous knowledge to new events, or predict or imagine future events.

Long-term memory relies on a person's ability to make connections and categorize information by linking it to prior knowledge. We file information according to its similarity to something we already know, and we retrieve information according to its difference from the information we filed it with. Students with storage and retrieval weaknesses may have a hard time in one or both processes. Typically, even though these students might understand the information perfectly as they hear it, they may not be able to get it out of long-term storage when they need it.

Students with delays in storage and retrieval skills may be unable to

• Match sounds with letters, or symbols with numbers.
• Transfer or apply a skill to an unfamiliar situation or problem.
• Follow through on directions and commitments.
• Evaluate new information for relevance or effectiveness.
• Remain calm in a testing situation.
• Comprehend while reading or listening.

All of these memory skills typically improve with maturity, but quality instruction and support increase the success rate while executive functions are developing. One way to support memory is to build multiple pathways for taking in and practicing new information. For example, when learning to play a game, if you can see a person model the process as you listen to the directions, the learning is stronger, especially if you can then try a practice round before you actually start playing. This sets up auditory, visual, and kinesthetic pathways for memory storage and retrieval. Chapter 3 covers specific examples of useful student interventions for developing stronger memory systems.

A stronger memory will increase students' chances of being able to improve their organizational skills, because they can remember patterns for sorting and categorizing.

Organization

“Unreliable and sloppy” is how Jake's teachers often describe him, and he is beginning to believe these labels are true. He wants to do well, but he always runs out of time. Every morning starts out as a game of hide-and-s...