LEADERSHIP AWARD

Nomination for Leadership Award

Who is eligible?

• Curriculum directors

• Principals

• Special Education Directors

• Superintendents

• Program Specialists

 

Click here for award form and instructions

 

 

Beyond “Lazy and Unmotivated”
Why Parents and Teachers Need to Know about Executive Skills

Peg Dawson

When the conversation turns to executive skills, teachers and parents often say, “We didn’t know anything about these when we were growing up—and we turned out just fine.” In this keynote, Dr. Dawson confronts that sentiment head on. The co-author of Smart but Scattered and other books on executive skills explains the executive skills framework she’s been working with for over 20 years—why it’s a better way to describe struggling students than calling them lazy or unmotivated, and why the more parents and teachers understand about these skills, the better they’ll be able to help students strengthen these important habits of mind. She will paint a picture of the strategies she sees as holding the most promise for helping students of all ages develop, tune up, and master these critical life skills.

 

Learning Objectives: As a result of this keynote, participants will:

Be able to describe the brain processes involved in executive skill development both in typically developing children and those with executive dysfunction (such as ADHD).

Be able to identify how executive skills impact school performance and daily living.

 

BIOGRAPHY

 

 

Peg Dawson, Ed.D., received her doctorate in school/child clinical psychology from the University of Virginia. She worked as a school psychologist for 16 years in Maine and New Hampshire, and, for the past 25 years has worked at the Center for Learning and Attention Disorders in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she specializes in the assessment of children and adults with learning and attention disorders. Along with her colleague, Dr. Richard Guare, she has authored several books, including two books for professionals, Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents: A Practical Guide to Assessment and Intervention and Coaching Students with Executive Skills Deficits, as well as two books for parents, Smart but Scattered and Smart but Scattered Teens. Their most recent book is a self-help book written for adults, The Smart but Scattered Guide to Success. Dr. Dawson is a past president of both the National Association of School Psychologists and the International School Psychology Association. She is also the 2006 recipient of NASP’s Lifetime Achievement Award and a 2010 recipient of the International School Psychology Association Distinguished Services Award.

 

Smart but Scattered:
Helping Children Improve Executive Skills to Achieve School Success

 

Session Description: Youngsters with poor executive skills are disorganized or forgetful, have trouble getting started on tasks, get distracted easily, lose papers or assignments, forget to bring home the materials to complete homework or forget to hand homework in. They may rush through work or dawdle, they make careless mistakes that they fail to catch. They don’t know where to begin on long-term assignments, and they put the assignment off until the last minute, in part because they have trouble judging the magnitude of the task and how long it will take to complete it. Their workspaces are disorganized, and teachers may refer to their desks, backpacks, and notebooks as “black holes.” Students with executive skill deficits present tremendous challenges to both parents and teachers who often find themselves frustrated by children whose problems in school seem to have little to do with how smart they are or how easily they learn.

This workshop will present a variety of intervention strategies to promote executive skill development. These will include individual, classroom and whole school strategies designed to improve executive skills in all students.

 

Learning Objectives: As a result of this workshop, participants will learn:

Key strategies for improving executive skills in individual students, including

1) how to make environmental modifications to support weak executive skills,

2) how to design protocols for teaching executive skills, and

3) how to use incentives effectively to encourage students to engage in the practice necessary for improving executive skills.

How to create a student-centered intervention tailored to individual executive skill challenges.

 

 

BIOGRAPHY

 

 

Peg Dawson, Ed.D., received her doctorate in school/child clinical psychology from the University of Virginia. She worked as a school psychologist for 16 years in Maine and New Hampshire, and, for the past 25 years has worked at the Center for Learning and Attention Disorders in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she specializes in the assessment of children and adults with learning and attention disorders. Along with her colleague, Dr. Richard Guare, she has authored several books, including two books for professionals, Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents: A Practical Guide to Assessment and Intervention and Coaching Students with Executive Skills Deficits, as well as two books for parents, Smart but Scattered and Smart but Scattered Teens. Their most recent book is a self-help book written for adults, The Smart but Scattered Guide to Success. Dr. Dawson is a past president of both the National Association of School Psychologists and the International School Psychology Association. She is also the 2006 recipient of NASP’s Lifetime Achievement Award and a 2010 recipient of the International School Psychology Association Distinguished Services Award.

 

 

Keynote address: Dyslexia: Myth Busting and Soul Saving

 

Virginia Taylor

 

New medical research about dyslexia and toxic stress should be a game changer in education. It is time to unite evidence-based medicine with best-practice education to help schools with the problems of achievement gaps, test scores, literacy, bullying, school dropout rates, suicides, mental health, classroom management, drug use, and criminality. Children who are English language learners, or who come from a lower socioeconomic status have even more to gain if schools embrace the new medical information. Many children with ADHD, executive functioning delay or behavior problems are misdiagnosed. With simple screening, adoption of an internationally accepted teaching approach, use of technology that already exists in most classrooms, and a new perspective of learning differences, these children thrive. The research is exciting as hard science puts a whole new spin on understanding why children struggle in school. The answers are not hard, nor expensive. Using precious school resources in an efficient manner that addresses the heart of the problem early translates into immeasurable cost savings for schools and society. Everybody wins.

 

Educational objectives:

 

At the end of the presentation, participants will be able to:
1) Describe the biologic basis of dyslexia, including genetic patterns and brain differences that explain dyslexic gifts and challenges;

2) Explain the emotional fragility of children with learning disabilities, accounting for behavior problems and inattention;

3) Outline solutions that parents and schools can adopt to allow dyslexic children to thrive

 

 

 

Breakout groups: Making Schools Safe: Creating Climate Change for Dyslexics

 

Virginia Taylor

For children who learn differently, most schools aren’t safe places where they are celebrated. In fact, they are quite the opposite. Medicine is now pushing the envelope in learning theory, and technology is providing solutions, such that schools have more than just an opportunity to embrace change, they now have an obligation to do so. Finally understanding a problem that has always existed doesn’t precipitate a crisis, but instead allows for directed change, with cost savings.
Using a multicultural model of education to accept difference, we will examine real school solutions that have arisen from grass roots efforts in communities. While schools differ in needs and resources, there are common goals.
1) Promote awareness: This is the generation where we should be changing from a deficit-driven diagnosis of dyslexia to a strength-based learning difference. Asking “How do you learn?” changes the paradigm, and sets the stage to build self-advocacy in every student.
2) True structural change in the schools must occur to include early screening (kindergarten), identification and intervention at the school. It must be universal, and it must be provided by schools. (i.e. Why Response To Intervention (RTI) doesn’t work.)
3) Teacher/staff support and education is critical for adopting change.

 

Educational Objectives:

 

At the end of the session, participants with be able to:

1) Outline critical steps in changing schools to support dyslexics;

2) Provide examples of school solutions to support dyslexics;

3) Recognize the importance of a new paradigm for schools in supporting learning