Pre-Conference Workshops

Executive skills are the engine of successful learning, yet they are rarely taught directly. This workshop moves beyond knowing that these skills matter and shows you how to build them. Receive a step-by-step blueprint for embedding executive skills into your everyday classroom routines and lessons. You will learn to connect student behaviors to specific EF skills; introduce these critical concepts to students; create supportive classroom routines that incorporate executive skills; embed skills into your lessons; and engage students in practical, real-world problem-solving. 

How does developing executive function intersect with emotional reactivity across childhood and adolescence? This workshop will bridge cutting-edge neuroscience with practical classroom strategies. You will examine how bottom-up “hot” brain circuits (such as the limbic and amygdala networks for emotional and motivational processing) generate rapid, reactive responses to emotionally charged events, while top-down “cold” executive circuits (such as prefrontal and parietal networks for regulation, working memory, and planning) allow students to regulate, reframe, and redirect those feelings. Learn how to differentiate between “hot” and “cold” executive functions. Discover early childhood practices that foster healthy expression and co-regulation of emotion and CBT/DBT-informed classroom strategies for older students, including cognitive reappraisal, opposite action, behavioral activation, and brief mindfulness practices.

Experience how the brain learns from a radically new perspective! This immersive, physical simulation offers you a once in-a-lifetime chance to experience first-hand how the brain learns and processes information. By stepping into this unique interactive experience, you will gain deeper insights into student learning differences, such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADHD, autism, the impact of trauma, and more. This workshop and discussions will focus on immediately applying these profound insights from the simulation to your classroom to improve instructional design and learning outcomes. 

Are your students habitually zoning out during lessons? Are you sometimes frustrated by how easily they give up or disengage when faced with academic challenges? This workshop will make it all better! Through hands-on activities, real-world examples, and guided modeling, you will experience innovative ways to make lessons more memorable and enjoyable. From breaking up direct instruction, to applying brain-friendly instructional strategies, to differentiating learning for all types of learners, you will leave with a plateful of easy-to-apply techniques that will improve student engagement immediately. Sound too good to be true? Come find out! Satisfaction guaranteed.

It’s time to rethink our approach to executive function. We should shift our focus from just a select group of students to a more inclusive perspective that recognizes that schools and classrooms need to challenge the executive functioning of ALL students. Such a broader viewpoint enables teachers, school leaders, and support staff to strategize more wisely and effectively about managing all students’ EF. This lively, practical workshop will focus on the two core EFs—working memory and attention—using six (and a half) essential questions designed to sharpen thinking and dramatically enhance student learning. Join us to transform how you think about attention and working memory and discover why supporting executive function for every student is simpler and more powerful than you ever imagined.