Academic coaching delves deeper into the “how” of being an effective student and lifelong learner. It fuses conventional components of tutoring with a heavy focus on developing students’ executive function (often called the “management system of the brain”). Executive function is a set of mental skills that include working memory, cognitive flexibility (flexible thinking), and inhibitory control (which includes self-control). Students use these skills daily to set goals, plans, and accomplish tasks. Difficulty with executive function can cause a student to struggle with focusing, following directions, and regulating emotions. A lack of growth in these skills often impacts them both academically and personally. Executive function skills include:

• Paying attention
• Organizing, planning, and prioritizing
• Beginning tasks and following through to completion
• Understanding different points of view
• Regulating emotions
• Self-monitoring (keeping track of what you’re doing)

Those struggling with executive skills may have trouble:

• Starting or completing a task
• Prioritizing tasks
• Remembering what they just heard or read
• Following directions or a sequence of steps
• Adapting well to a change in rules or routines 
• Switching from one task to another
• Regulating emotions
• Organizing their thoughts
• Keeping track of their belongings
• Managing their time

Experiencing difficulty with executive function isn’t a learning disability or diagnosis, but it’s common in people who think and learn differently. The good news is that academic coaching uses strategy instruction that teaches students how to learn. These strategies involve acquiring, remembering, and expressing information that translate into the rest of their lives. Students typically learn the what (content) but not the how (strategies) which is equally important. Strategy instruction is how students learn, use, and remember information. Academic coaching is largely organizational coaching — equipping students with tools to organize their thoughts, plans, homework, etc., and this all leads to higher levels of cognitive and metacognitive development. Ultimately, students can recognize patterns of behavior that are no longer serving them well and focus on what really matters. Academic coaching offers a retraining of the mind with various cognitive strategies including note-taking, creating mnemonics, developing and organizing an outline, and using the active listening strategy called SLANT. Evidence-based behavior strategies offer much needed guidance and ownership of reclaiming any areas of difficulty with executive function. Overall, academic coaching provides students with the opportunity to be held accountable by their academic coach, to learn time management, organizational skills, goal setting, and effective strategy implementation in a highly personalized plan of action.