ADAC’s Executive Functioning Skills Workshops help teachers strengthen the thinking skills students need to plan, focus, remember information, and manage their behavior for learning. Drawing on current research in cognitive science and child development, these offerings translate executive function (EF) theory into concrete classroom practices, routines, and supports that can be embedded across content areas and grade levels.
Why This Matters for Your School
Executive functioning skills sit at the center of students’ ability to access rigorous content, participate fully in classroom life, and live out their school’s mission in concrete daily habits. When teachers intentionally support working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control, students are better able to follow directions, stay organized, shift between tasks, and manage emotions and behavior, allowing learning to take priority. This reduces time lost to re‑teaching, confusion, and conflict, and increases time spent in productive, engaged learning.
For leaders, a schoolwide focus on executive functions offers a practical way to strengthen Tier 1 instruction and support diverse learners without relying solely on pull‑out services or individual plans. A shared EF framework provides teachers, specialists, and families with a common language and tools for addressing concerns about attention, organization, or behavior. Over time, it becomes a foundation that supports academic rigor, social-emotional learning, and student independence across grade levels.
The Case for Executive Functioning Skills Professional Learning
Executive function, including working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control, are essential for academic success and social-emotional development. When schools intentionally teach and support these skills, students are better able to follow multi-step directions, shift between tasks, manage frustration, and persist with challenging work. For leaders, a focus on executive function strengthens core instruction, supports diverse learners, and provides a common language for collaboration among teachers, specialists, and families.
ADAC’s Executive Function offerings provide educators with time and structure to explore the research, reflect on current practice, and design practical supports tailored to their classrooms. Over time, a shared focus on executive function becomes a lever for improving behavior, increasing engagement, and helping students become more independent and self-directed learners.
Workshop focus and structure
Strengthen student academic success and social-emotional development
Executive Functioning Workshops are customized to each school’s context, but typically:
- A series of standalone workshops customized to your current initiatives and needs.
- A 3-hour or full-day in-person professional learning experience
- A condensed virtual format, with sessions designed in 2-hour blocks.
- A six-session Executive Function pathway that sequences content across time for schools that want a deeper, ongoing arc of learning.
If you don’t see the service you had in mind, please reach out. We are happy to develop and customize professional learning workshops to meet your needs.
Services and Delivery Methods
1
Executive Functioning Workshop
In-Person
In-person workshop offered as either a focused 3-hour session or a full-day session. Introduces core executive function skills, connects them to everyday classroom challenges, and supports teachers in designing concrete routines and supports for their students, with the full day providing added time for modeling, practice, and school-specific action planning.
2
Virtual Executive Functioning Workshop
Virtual
A focused 2-hour virtual session that can serve as an introduction to executive functions, a refresher, or a deep dive into one EF domain, such as working memory, cognitive flexibility, or inhibitory control.
3
Yearlong Executive Functioning Professional Learning Plan
Hybrid
A sequence of shorter sessions across the school year that revisits key EF concepts, incorporates school data and classroom artifacts, and supports ongoing implementation and reflection.
4
Executive Functioning Leadership and Coaching Support
In-person
Targeted support for school leaders and instructional coaches to integrate EF into existing initiatives, use the Quality Indicator Guided Visit Tool, and lead school-based EF conversations.
5
Optional Executive Functioning Faculty Meeting Agendas
In-Person
Leadership facilitated faculty meetings, developed by ADAC, agendas and resources that reinforce workshop learning and build internal leadership capacity for EF.
6
Executive Functioning Learning Pathway
6-week Pathway
Faculty learning is guided through a series of ADAC-developed online modules designed for both independent engagement and collaborative use, including explicit focus on quality classroom indicators for executive functions. Faculty apply this learning in teams, while the school leadership team engages in monthly virtual coaching to learn these indicators in depth, plan and conduct aligned walkthroughs, and provide targeted feedback to teachers. With support from an ADAC coach, schools receive structure and guidance to work through the modules together and use walkthrough data, enabling job-embedded, sustained coaching that connects directly to classroom practice and supports consistent implementation schoolwide.
Interested in learning how our Executive Functioning Skills Workshops can support your school(s)? Submit the form below and Dr. Julie Cantillon, Senior Vice President for Professional Learning, will be in touch shortly.
