Executive Skills

It is exciting to read professional literature! Although the literature review process has been a little tough going because there is so much to learn, the discoveries I am making are inspiring. The September issue of Educational Leadership is filled with connections to this dissertation. In an article titled, Solving Problems that Count, author Dana Maloney writes about Pink and Senge within two paragraphs of each other! In the Responsibility Breakthrough ReLeah Cossett Lent writes about how a system that puts more responsibility for learning in the student's hands has given dramatic improvements in motivation and achievement! And there was another piece by Peg Dawson on Executive Skills for children. This work ties directly into the literature review section where I am writing about a child's capacity to plan, organize, and act influences their level of personal mastery. Here are some quotations that I like from the first chapter:

"Executive skills are what your child needs to make any of your hopes and dreams for his future- or his own hopes and dreams- come true." p, 13.

"you can't talk children into using skills they don't have... these are the fundamental brain-based skills required to execute tasks: getting organized, planning, initiating work, staying on task, controlling impulses, regulating emotions, being adaptable and resilient..."

"Thinking and doing go hand in hand. Very often we are teaching kids how to use their thoughts to control their behaviors."

"The thinking skills help children create a picture of a goal (vision) and a path to that goal (drive), and they give them the resources they'll need to access along the way to achieve that goal."

"When all goes as planned, we come up with ideas for things we need or want to do, plan or organize the task, squelch thoughts or feelings that interfere with our plans, cheer ourselves on, keep the goal in mind even when obstaclesm distractions, or temptations arise, change course as the situation requires, and persist with our efforts until the goal is achieved." p, 18.

"The frontal brain systems play a key role in the development of executive skills... kids who practice executive skills are not only learning self-management- independence- but in the process developing brain structures that will support their exectutive skills into later adolescence."

"[to teachers and parents] The work you do will always have two components: structuring the environment and directly supervising your child."

"As is the case with almost any set of skills, children have strengths and weaknesses that fall along a continuum."

I tie this into my contruct because I am arguing that peronal mastery depends on skills- and that these skills are at varying levels in our students. Schools can nurture and strenthen these skills.

Finally- the road from vision to reality includes a students capacity to plan, organize and act...