CASE Conf 2025

Empower and Equip: Cultivating Self-Directed Learning Through Executive Function (Room 206 A second floor)

07 Nov 25
10:15 AM - 11:15 AM

Tracks: Instructional Excellence: Achieving Success

Speaker(s): Shelly Levy, Director of Professional Development and Training, Research Institute for Learning and Development; Laurel Black, Director of Educational Therapy and Executive Function Coaching, Research Institute for Learning and Development

How do we foster self-directed, motivated learners? Educators strive to empower students, yet traditional approaches to "help" create dependency rather than autonomy. By shifting questioning techniques from "helping" to "coaching," administrators can model and build a culture where autonomy, mastery, and purpose create a motivated culture. Students will develop self-understanding, clarify their aspirations, envision the steps to achieve them, plan ahead for obstacles, and build a toolkit of executive function strategies that work for them. Special Education leaders will leave the presentation with ready-to-use scripts, practical tools for planning, and data collection templates to immediately implement in their work with teachers. Applying these same coaching techniques, teachers seamlessly build self-understanding among their students. By focusing on purposeful inquiry and self-directed goal-setting, these questioning techniques and executive function strategies build agency, ownership, and clear direction for students to become successful learners, thinkers, and doers in accordance with their values.