From Prompt-Dependent to Self-Directed: Supporting Teachers in Embedding EF Into the Learning They're Already Doing

Ask teachers and administrators what they're seeing right now and the answer is remarkably consistent: students who struggle to transition, who can't get started, who lose steam partway through, and who don't follow through to close out and finish the work. Persistence and tenacity come up in nearly every conversation.

Meanwhile, your teachers are absorbing the gap. They prompt, re-direct, re-explain, and hold the plan for students who can't yet hold it themselves. It works — which is precisely why it goes unnoticed on a walkthrough. The cost surfaces later: in students who perform well with an adult beside them and stall without one, and in teachers doing the executive work of the task — the planning, sequencing, and monitoring — instead of developing those skills in students.

It isn't a motivation problem or a behavior problem. Transition, initiation, persistence, and follow-through are executive function skills — the most common reason capable students underperform, and the most commonly misread. Because these show up in every classroom rather than on a single caseload, this is a tier-one instructional issue, which makes it a leadership problem before it's a teaching problem.
This session equips leaders to recognize, name, and reinforce executive function instruction inside teaching that is already happening — no new curriculum, no added minutes, no competing initiative. You'll leave with a walkthrough look-for tool and shared language your teams can use immediately, whatever framework your district already runs.

School leaders will learn how to:

• Distinguish a compliant classroom from a self-directed one, using observable indicators you can name in a walkthrough or post-observation conference.
• Give specific, actionable feedback on executive function instruction — what to reinforce, what to coach, and what to ask for next.
• Position EF as a tier-one practice inside your existing MTSS, instructional, or graduate-profile framework rather than as a separate initiative.
• Establish a common vocabulary across general education, special education, and related services so students hear one consistent set of expectations.
• Recognize the instructional moves that build transition, initiation, persistence, and follow-through — and why they transfer across grade levels and content areas.
• Identify where prompt-dependence is concentrated in your building and plan the first two moves to reduce it.