Alison is an executive function coach, teacher, and mom who has a Ph.D. in Educational Administration and Policy. Her research centered on social media and teacher learning. She spent 15 years teaching in public schools. She now spends her time blogging and working with students, parents, and teachers to use technology responsibly and develop kids' executive function skills.
Annual Review Rituals
Happy Friday, Reader!
It’s hard to believe that this is the last newsletter of 2023. As we wrap up one year and prepare to welcome the next, I’d like to thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. I certainly enjoy nerding out about executive function topics, and I hope to spend more time in 2024 focused on writing. If there are topics you’d like to see featured in future newsletters, please let me know. I want to make sure this content is relevant and helpful to you.
Tip of the Week: Build in Time to Reflect, Review, and Reprioritize
At the end of the semester or before the start of the next, I often encourage students to reflect on their past semester. We consider each class and discuss a few questions.
What worked well in the past semester that you want to continue doing?
Students need to recognize and name successes. Even if they’re disappointed with their grades, it’s not likely to be all bad. Carefully analyzing the strategies that seemed to work is an important first step.
What wasn’t working as well in the past semester that you would like to change? Do you have specific changes in mind?
This is an opportunity for us to think about the stresses of the semester and whether they were linked to procrastination, weaker study skills, underestimating the time needed to complete tasks, etc. This helps us identify where to focus our attention for the upcoming semester.
What would you be willing to give up or do less of to make these changes happen?
Students often set goals around spending more time studying or reviewing notes, but they don’t always remember that increasing time on one item will mean decreased time on another. When we see time as a finite resource requiring allocation toward our goals, we can start to identify the challenges that could get in the way and proactively problem-solve.
Final Thoughts
When having these discussions, I recommend documenting key talking points and ideas from each prompt. The documentation can serve as a visual reminder of new goals and intentions heading into the new semester. You can also revisit these reflections intermittently throughout the semester to see how things are going with new practices.
From the Blog...
Since many people set goals for the new year, I’m re-sharing an older blog post about how to set effective goals for students with executive functioning challenges. Often, it’s easy to set goals, but the goal can go off the rails if there aren’t mini-milestones, progress monitoring opportunities, and troubleshooting strategies when things don’t go as planned.
Executive Function Elsewhere in the World
Here are a few of my favorite articles and resources from this week:
- I generally enjoy productivity guru Ali Abdaal’s YouTube videos, so I’ve been looking forward to the release of his book, Feel-Good Productivity. I’m only about a third of the way through it so far, but I appreciate his insights and research synthesis into our mindset's role in our ability to get things done.
- Emotions can often run high during the holidays – especially when family is involved. Caroline Maguire shared 6 Tips to Manage Emotions and Communicate Better This Holiday Season.
- Time blindness is often one of the biggest challenges for people with ADHD. This article from Well + Good does a great job of explaining what time blindness is and offers 8 strategies to counteract it.
Only a Couple of EF Coaching Spaces Left...
A very limited number of openings are still available for individual coaching in the Spring semester. We work with elementary, middle, high school, and college students on age-appropriate executive function skills. To learn more about these services and to book a free, zero-obligation discovery call with me, check out our coaching services page on Building Savvy Learners.
Have a great weekend and a happy new year!
Alison Eber, Ph.D.
Alison is an executive function coach, teacher, and mom who has a Ph.D. in Educational Administration and Policy. Her research centered on social media and teacher learning. She spent 15 years teaching in public schools. She now spends her time blogging and working with students, parents, and teachers to use technology responsibly and develop kids' executive function skills.
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