Students with executive functioning challenges often intend to complete tasks or meet expectations—but struggle to execute consistently. 

The reason? They aren’t mentally envisioning future scenarios, predicting the steps needed to reach a goal, and thinking about what they need to be doing NOW in order to meet that goal. 

This cognitive skill, called future pacing, allows students to visualize the process and outcome of their actions, building a critical link between planning and follow-through.

In the third episode in my “Five Skills to Create Your Executive Functioning Intervention Framework”, I break it down in detail. 

What I’ll uncover in this episode:

✅ What future pacing is—and why it's essential for supporting goal-directed behavior and flexible thinking.

✅ How future pacing interacts with skills like time perception, self-talk, and episodic memory.

✅ Why students with executive functioning deficits often struggle to anticipate obstacles, sequence steps, or understand how present actions impact future outcomes.

✅ Practical ways to teach students how to mentally rehearse tasks—bridging the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it.

✅ How building future pacing into interventions improves self-regulation, motivation, and task persistence.

In this episode, I mentioned my upcoming free live virtual training hosted by Parallel Learning that’s coming up on August 14, 2025 from 6:30-8:00 PM EST. It’s called “Executive Functioning: Beyond Checklists and Planners”. 

You’ll earn a free CEU, get to learn about a company that offers remote work opportunities, and get to learn some of the concepts I teach in my paid programs. You can sign up for the training here: https://parallellearning-20474008.hs-sites.com/ashakickoffwebinar25?utm_source=partnership&utm_medium=partner_karen_dudek&utm_campaign=webinar_ashadrkaren_8.14.2025&utm_content=blank

I also mentioned my free training for school leaders who want to create a research-based executive functioning implementation plan for their school teams. You can sign up for the training here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/efleadership

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

I’m often asked if I can create an “executive functioning lesson plan” that a clinician could do within a 20-minute therapy session with a student or group of students. 

I understand why people ask me for things like this. This traditional “pull-out” model of therapy is what many clinicians have been taught in our preservice training, and it’s often what’s focused on in professional development for clinicians. 

This model works well for many skills. It also plays a part in executive functioning intervention. But it’s not enough. 

Doing “executive functioning” lesson plans without some type of support plan in place for other settings would be like a soccer player doing drills and conditioning without ever playing soccer. 

Does the right isolated work provide support and a foundation? Yes. 

Is it necessary? Also yes.

But is it enough on its own, without direct application in the situation when those skills will be needed? Absolutely not. 

I know school teams are overwhelmed, and embedding support across a students’ day requires systems and collaboration that aren’t often in place in many schools (yet). 

It’s a lot to ask, but it’s what needs to happen. And with the right plan, it’s possible-which is what I show school leaders how to do in the School of Clinical Leadership. 

That’s why in this second episode in my series on “Five Skills to Create Your Executive Functioning Implementation Framework”, I cover the second skill: Self Talk

What I cover in this episode:

✅ The two distinct types of self-talk: Strategy self-talk and Self-belief self-talk

✅ How self-talk integrates with other executive functions like time perception, future pacing, and episodic memory

✅ The connection between self-talk and principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)—and how to embed those principles into daily routines, not just therapy rooms

✅ Why explicit instruction and modeling of self-talk helps students shift from reactive to proactive problem-solving

✅ How deficits in self-talk can derail time management, task initiation, and flexible thinking—despite external supports

✅ How to start working on self-talk with your students right away-even if you haven’t built strong team collaboration systems yet.

In this episode, I mentioned my upcoming free live virtual training hosted by Parallel Learning that’s coming up on August 14, 2025 from 6:30-8:00 PM EST. It’s called “Executive Functioning: Beyond Checklists and Planners”. 

You’ll earn a free CEU, get to learn about a company that offers remote work opportunities, and get to learn some of the concepts I teach in my paid programs. You can sign up for the training here.

I also mentioned my free training for school leaders who want to create a research-based executive functioning implementation plan for their school teams. You can sign up for the training here. 

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Executive function is often defined as “having good time management skills”. While this isn’t completely off-base, it’s a vast oversimplification.

The REASON people are good at time management is because they have the ability to estimate and sense the passage of time. 

Most “textbook” definitions of executive functioning don’t fully call this out, and as a result many educators and clinicians have a difficult time figuring out how to design instruction and intervention that supports executive functioning. 

Instead of embedding support across the day, interventions get siloed in special education, or lumped into long lists of cookie cutter classroom accommodations that overwhelm general education teachers. 

Kids don’t generalize skills from one setting to another, even though people think they’re working on “time management”, and well-meaning adults find themselves giving constant “five minute warnings” as they try to help their students keep up with the pace of classroom activities or even basic functional tasks (e.g., getting things together, making transitions). 

Let’s be honest: If “five minute warnings” were an effective method of teaching executive functioning and “time management”, we wouldn’t have to be doing them constantly. 

What if there was a way to help kids develop these skills, so we could fade all the prompting? 

The good news is, there is. 

The first step is recognizing that the core skill we’re teaching is TIME PERCEPTION. 

When you google a definition of executive functioning, you’ll likely get a list of 8 or 9 skills. Things like attention, working memory, shifting, ideational fluency, and self-regulation. 

It’s important for educators, clinicians, and school leaders to understand these terms and what they are, but then they need to organize these abstract cognitive skills into concrete skills that can be both taught explicitly and layered across a students’ day. 

That’s why the framework I teach organizes executive functioning into 5 areas: 

1. Time perception
2. Self-talk
3. Future pacing
4. Episodic memory
5. Encoding. 

In this first episode of a 5-part podcast series, I discuss the first one: Time perception.

In this episode, I’ll reveal:

✅ What “time perception” means in the context of executive functioning (beyond simply knowing how to tell time).

✅ How time perception deficits interfere with task initiation, sustained attention, and task completion.

✅ Why students may appear "defiant" or "unmotivated" when the real issue is inaccurate time estimation/perception.

✅ How poor time perception creates barriers for following schedules, meeting deadlines, or pacing tasks appropriately.

✅ Intervention principles to help build a student’s internal sense of time as part of a larger EF support plan.

In this episode, I mentioned my upcoming free live virtual training hosted by Parallel Learning that’s coming up on August 14, 2025 from 6:30-8:00 PM EST. It’s called “Executive Functioning: Beyond Checklists and Planners”. 

You’ll earn a free CEU, get to learn about a company that offers remote work opportunities, and get to learn some of the concepts I teach in my paid programs. You can sign up for the training here.

I also mentioned my free training for school leaders who want to create a research-based executive functioning implementation plan for their school teams. You can sign up for the training here. 

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In this episode, I sit down with Jessica Lane, founder of Data-Informed Impact, to unpack the critical role of data in K-12 education—and how to use it responsibly, effectively, and equitably. Jessica shares her expertise on building a strong data culture in schools, improving data literacy, and creating clear, ethical data visualizations that empower—not overwhelm—educators and leaders.

We explore the often-overlooked human side of data: how to build trust around data use, avoid duplicative processes that drain educators’ time, and leverage data to evaluate systems. Jessica also offers insights into how different stakeholders—teachers, administrators, district leaders—use data from both micro and macro lenses, and how EdTech plays a role in the broader data landscape.
Whether you're a classroom teacher, building leader, or part of a district team, this conversation will help you think critically about using data as a tool for improvement—not just compliance.

Key Topics Covered:
✔️ Building a positive and ethical data culture in schools
✔️ Improving data literacy for educators and leaders
✔️ How to design accessible, meaningful data visualizations
✔️ Strategies to streamline administrative processes and reduce redundancy
✔️ Student data use and privacy
✔️ Understanding the micro vs. macro data needs across K-12 stakeholders

About Our Guest:
As the founder of Data-Informed Impact, Jessica Lane is known for turning webs of data into easy-to-leverage visual dashboards, systems, and training for K-12 schools – fully equipping leaders and teachers to close the student success gap together. 

Having created custom solutions for 160 schools across the United States and Canada since 2020, she’s an educational data expert. With 10+ years of experience from all angles of the classroom, Jessica’s a former data coach, instructional coach, certified math teacher, and holds a Master of Education in learning and technology. Proudly data-informed and people-driven, she believes that data can tell great student success stories, if we let it guide, not decide, how to lead education forward.

Jessica currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she can often be found excitedly exploring spreadsheets, brain studies, Brené Brown books, and puzzles. And when she’s not partnering with schools, she’s caring for her darling daughter, Emmy, or one of her 50 houseplants.

You can connect with Jessican on her website at: https://www.data-informedimpact.com/

Learn about her Data Culture Framework here: https://www.data-informedimpact.com/3-domains-of-dii

Learn about her Re-Teaching Cycle Template and other Templates here: https://www.data-informedimpact.com/templates

Connect with Jessica on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/informedimpact/

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In this episode, we’re joined by literacy expert Dr. Molly Ness, author of Making Words Stick, to unpack the science behind orthographic mapping and what truly effective spelling instruction looks like. If you've ever found yourself wondering whether “irregular” words really exist—or how to teach spelling in a way that actually transfers to reading and writing—this episode is for you.

Dr. Molly Ness is a former classroom teacher, a reading researcher, and a teacher educator. She earned a doctorate in reading education at the University of Virginia, and spent 16 years as an associate professor at Fordham University in New York City. The author of five books, Molly served on the Board of Directors for the International Literacy Association and is a New York state chapter founder of the Reading League. Dr. Ness has extensive experience in reading clinics, consulting with school districts, leading professional development, and advising school systems on research-based reading instruction. She is also the host of the End Book Deserts podcast. In 2024, she founded Dirigo Literacy, a literacy consulting firm supporting schools, districts, and states align with and implement the science of reading.

🔑 Key Topics We Cover:

✅ Why Overusing the Term “Irregular” Leads to Ineffective Practices
 Labeling too many words as irregular encourages rote memorization and bypasses opportunities to build deep, transferable decoding skills.

✅ The Least to Most Reliable Ways to Decode Words
 Dr. Ness explains the hierarchy of decoding approaches, from unreliable guessing strategies to the most effective use of grapheme–phoneme correspondences and morphemic analysis.

✅ Phonological Representations & Print: Why We Need Both
 Orthographic mapping depends on students having clear, accurate phonological representations of words. Dr. Ness emphasizes why instruction should always integrate print with sound-based practice.

✅ Embedding Vocabulary Without Derailing Encoding Work
 Learn how to layer vocabulary instruction into decoding and spelling lessons without losing focus—or getting lost in semantic tangents.

✅ Dr. Ness’s 4-Step Process for Teaching Spelling (from Making Words Stick).

Get Dr. Ness’s book “Making Words Stick” here.

Connect with Dr. Ness on Instagram @a_reading_mother

Learn more about Dr. Ness’ other books and advocacy work on her website here. 

In this episode, I mention Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my program for SLPs that helps clinicians create a research-based framework for language therapy that supports phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, and orthographic knowledge. You can learn more about the program here. 

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Ever feel like your school is trying all the “right” strategies—social skills groups, planners, behavior charts—but students still struggle with time management, motivation, and peer relationships?

You’re not alone—and there’s a reason why.

This episode is a clip from my free training, “Create a Research-Based Implementation Plan for your School Team.”

It’s designed for school leaders who want to guide their teams in embedding executive functioning support across both general and special education settings—without burning out staff.

This episode is for you if you’re ready to:
✔️ Help students truly benefit from academic instruction
✔️ Support social-emotional growth alongside learning
✔️ Avoid overwhelming your team with another “initiative”

In the training, I'll reveal:

✅Why social skills groups fall flat—and how to really boost students’ emotional regulation and peer connections.

✅The truth about planners, lists, and behavior charts—and why they’re not improving student’s time management or motivation.

✅The 3 key elements school teams need to support executive functioning across gen ed and special ed—without burning out your staff (in this episode, I share element #1).

This episode is the first half of the training in audio format, but to view the whole training with the video, you can go to drkarendudekbrannan.com/efteams.

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In this eye-opening episode, I sit down with Dr. A. Jordan Wright, psychologist who brings both professional insight and lived experience to the conversation—having been diagnosed with ADHD in college. Together, we explore the often-overlooked stories of kids who manage to compensate for ADHD symptoms well into adolescence or adulthood, only to receive a diagnosis later in life.

We also dive into why early educational settings are crucial for embedding executive functioning supports and how these skills can be proactively taught rather than reactively addressed. Our guest offers a compelling argument for why executive functioning should be considered the new social-emotional learning—essential, foundational, and deeply tied to lifelong success.

We also spend a good portion of the episode discussing best practices for assessing executive functioning in a way that is robust and sensitive to diverse learning needs—moving to deeper understanding.

Topics Covered:

✅ Being diagnosed with ADHD in college and why high-performing kids with ADHD are often missed

✅ The case for embedding executive functioning support into early education

✅ Executive functioning as the new SEL: What educators need to know

✅ Best practices for executive functioning assessment, including surveys, non-standardized methods, and optimal functioning measures. 

Dr. A. Jordan Wright is the Chief Clinical Officer at Parallel Learning and leading clinical psychologist who specializes in psychological assessment (including learning disabilities and ADHD) and therapy. Dr. Jordan received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is on faculty at New York University, where he leads the Clinical/Counseling Psychology PhD program, training doctoral students in psychological assessment and counseling, and he founded and runs the Center for Counseling and Community Wellbeing, the low-fee community mental health training clinic at NYU.

Dr. Jordan has authored multiple widely-used books on psychological assessment, including Conducting Psychological Assessment: A Guide for Practitioners (2nd ed.; Wiley, 2020); Essentials of Psychological Tele-Assessment (with Susie Raiford; Wiley, 2021); Essentials of Psychological Assessment Supervision (Wiley, 2019); and, with Gary Groth-Marnat, the sixth edition of the Handbook of Psychological Assessment (Wiley, 2016), the most widely used text in graduate training on assessment. His most recent book is Essentials of Culture in Psychological Assessment (Wiley, 2024), which focuses on areas of diversity, culture, privilege, and oppression in how we evaluate and understand individuals.

You can learn more about Parallel Learning’s comprehensive services for providers on their website here: https://www.parallellearning.com/

You can find Dr. Jordan’s free White Papers from Parallel Learning on executive functioning assessment, self-care for clinicians, telehealth best practices, plus much more here: https://www.parallellearning.com/white-papers

If you’re a clinician looking for new career opportunities, you can take a look at Parallel Learning’s “Careers” page here: https://www.parallellearning.com/careers

In this episode, I mentioned “The School Leader’s Guide to Executive Functioning Support”, a 7-day course to help school leaders launch their executive functioning implementation plan. You can learn more about the course here : https://drkarenspeech.lpages.co/school-leaders-guide-to-executive-functioning-support/

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In this episode, I  interview Connie, a student from the Language Therapy Advance Foundations program. She shares her practical experiences and results achieved with her students.

Key highlights include:

✅ Engaging a Disengaged Student: Connie discusses her strategies for working with a high school student who was bored with therapy, emphasizing the use of engaging books to enhance vocabulary learning.

✅ Time Efficiency: Learn how Connie cut her preparation time in half by implementing the frameworks taught in our program, allowing for more focused and effective sessions.

✅ Achieving Generalization: Connie reports significant progress in several of her students who had previously plateaued, particularly in their ability to generalize syntax skills.

This episode offers actionable insights for language therapists looking to improve engagement and outcomes in their practice.

Ready to elevate your language therapy skills? Join Language Therapy Advance Foundations and start transforming your therapy approach today.  Learn more about Language Therapy Advance Foundations here: https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapy/

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.