De Facto Leaders

We tend to think about math, literacy, language, and executive functioning as separate areas of development.
But the research shows they’re much more connected than we might think.
Early math skills are associated with later academic outcomes, and developing those skills draws heavily on language, vocabulary, and executive functioning.
And supporting early math doesn’t have to mean formal instruction.
A lot of it happens through play, conversation, books, games, and everyday routines.
That’s why in episode 269 of De Facto Leaders, I talk with Clarence Ames, an early childhood development researcher and curriculum designer specializing in early math and executive function, about what the research tells us about how young children develop math skills, and what adults can do to support them.
Clarence Ames has worked in Education Research, Implementation, and Policy for 15 years. He has a Master of Science in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences from Utah State University, and a bachelor’s degree in Public Relations from Central Washington University. He is passionate about helping people develop the skills they need to become independent and self-sufficient, and his life goal is to empower students and teachers to create a system of education in which the only limitations on breadth or depth of learning are one’s own desire, passion, and motivation. 
In this episode, we discuss:
✅ What research shows about the relationship between early math, literacy, vocabulary, and executive functioning.
✅ Why early math skills are associated with later academic and life outcomes.
✅ How play, books, games, and everyday routines can build math concepts without formal instruction.
✅What the research says about educational apps and screen-based learning, and why adult interaction makes a difference.
✅How parents can support early math development even if they have their own math anxiety.
In this episode, I mention the Task Execution and Planning Protocol, which gives school clinicians an intervention strategy that takes students from “demand avoidance” and prompt dependence to independence during daily academic and functional tasks. 
You can learn more about the Task Execution and Planning Protocol here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/taskexecution
 
In this episode, I mentioned School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers design scalable executive functioning interventions to ensure students get the scaffolding they need across the school day. 
You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/clinicalleadership

Learn more about today's sponsors, Playworks and IXL:
We’re proud to be sponsored by Playworks, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with evidence-based practices that help schools improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play.

If you’re a school or district leader struggling with the challenge of chronic absenteeism, as so many are across the U.S., you may not realize that structured recess is a research-backed approach to keep kids in school. In fact, a UC Berkeley study of Title I schools found that those partnering with Playworks had significantly lower chronic absenteeism rates. Further, Mathematica research demonstrated that Playworks schools spent 27% less time transitioning from recess back to learning, saving teachers valuable instructional time. 

These results are possible for your students, too. Learn how Playworks can help you improve student-educator relationships, belonging, and attendance by signing up for a quick no-obligation conversation. 
We’re also 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.

People often say to me, “I get why executive functioning is important, but when are you going to tell me how to work on it”?
I wish I could jump right to the lesson plans and “here’s what you do in a perfect hierarchy to work on these skills”. But brains don’t work that way.
That’s why I start with the framework before the lesson plan. The macro before the micro. 
When you Google executive functioning, you often get a list of 8 or 9 skills, and a broad definition. This is important information, but it doesn’t tell you “the how”. 
It also doesn’t explain how you’d scaffold. That’s why when I help clinicians design executive functioning interventions, I start with five broad areas that start to make those abstract cognitive skills more tangible. 
In episode 268 of De Facto Leaders, I explain what those five skill areas are. I also explain why we can’t teach them in isolation, and why they have to be embedded into tasks students are already doing in their daily lives in order for intervention to be meaningful.
In this episode, I mention the Task Execution and Planning Protocol, which gives school clinicians an intervention strategy that takes students from “demand avoidance” and prompt dependence to independence during daily academic and functional tasks. 
You can learn more about the Task Execution and Planning Protocol here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/taskexecution
In this episode, I mentioned School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers design scalable executive functioning interventions to ensure students get the scaffolding they need across the school day. 
You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/clinicalleadership

Learn more about today's sponsors, Playworks and IXL:
We’re proud to be sponsored by Playworks, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with evidence-based practices that help schools improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play.

If you’re a school or district leader struggling with the challenge of chronic absenteeism, as so many are across the U.S., you may not realize that structured recess is a research-backed approach to keep kids in school. In fact, a UC Berkeley study of Title I schools found that those partnering with Playworks had significantly lower chronic absenteeism rates. Further, Mathematica research demonstrated that Playworks schools spent 27% less time transitioning from recess back to learning, saving teachers valuable instructional time. 

These results are possible for your students, too. Learn how Playworks can help you improve student-educator relationships, belonging, and attendance by signing up for a quick no-obligation conversation. 
We’re also 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.

Many people think they’re working on executive functioning, but aren’t ACTUALLY working on executive functioning.
If you have students who have access to planners, visuals, lists, and other organizing tools, but still seem unorganized, this may be the case 
for your students.

Especially if you have students who flat out refuse to use organizers, or just forget to use them. 

Even though people with strong executive functioning skills present on the outside as people who are “organized”, this is just the external \
presentation that happens as a result of the internal cognitive skills that enable them to appear like they have their act together. 

That’s why when we jump right to the obvious tools for students, we’re often leaving a huge gap, which is why students often don’t know how to utilize tools they have at their disposal.

In episode 267 of De Facto Leaders, I elaborate on the definition of executive functioning, because this is the first step in determining how to help our students get to the point of “being organized” (plus many other things, which you’ll realize when you listen). 
In this episode, I mention the Task Execution and Planning Protocol, which gives school clinicians an intervention strategy that takes students from “demand avoidance” and prompt dependence to independence during daily academic and functional tasks. 

You can learn more about the Task Execution and Planning Protocol here:  https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/taskexecution

In this episode, I mentioned School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers design scalable executive functioning interventions to ensure students get the scaffolding they need across the school day. 
You can learn more about the program here:  https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/clinicalleadership

Learn more about today's sponsors, Playworks and IXL:
We’re proud to be sponsored by Playworks, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with evidence-based practices that help schools improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play.

If you’re a school or district leader struggling with the challenge of chronic absenteeism, as so many are across the U.S., you may not realize that structured recess is a research-backed approach to keep kids in school. In fact, a UC Berkeley study of Title I schools found that those partnering with Playworks had significantly lower chronic absenteeism rates. Further, Mathematica research demonstrated that Playworks schools spent 27% less time transitioning from recess back to learning, saving teachers valuable instructional time. 

These results are possible for your students, too. Learn how Playworks can help you improve student-educator relationships, belonging, and attendance by signing up for a quick no-obligation conversation. 
We’re also 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.

“Demand avoidance”, poor generalization, prompt-dependence, and social skills challenges seem like isolated issues. 
But often they’re not. Many times they’re tied to executive functioning challenges. 
That’s why when I describe “executive dysfunction”, I cluster it into five broad areas:
Attention, Learning Challenges, Behavioral Issues, Organization, and Social Skills
Usually, this is the point that the lightbulb goes on for a lot of clinicians and educators in the room as they realize executive functioning is the common sticking point behind many of their students’ challenges.
When I support clinicians in designing executive functioning intervention frameworks, I start with explaining the external signs. 
Things like:
✅ Refusing to do even the simplest of tasks, and putting more effort into avoiding the work than it would take to actually do it
✅Behaviors that seem disproportionate to the situation, melt downs over things that barely phase their peers
✅ Always appearing to be several steps behind
✅ Not “reading the room” during functional tasks, and requiring tons of prompts
✅ Lack of awareness of how they’re coming across to others
In episode 266 of De Facto Leaders, I do a deep dive into these five external signs that tie back to executive functioning challenges. 
In this episode, I mention the Task Execution and Planning Protocol, which gives school clinicians an intervention strategy that takes students from “demand avoidance” and prompt dependence to independence during daily academic and functional tasks. 
You can learn more about the Task Execution and Planning Protocol here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/taskexecution
In this episode, I mentioned School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers design scalable executive functioning interventions to ensure students get the scaffolding they need across the school day. 
You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/clinicalleadership

Learn more about today's sponsors, Playworks and IXL:
We’re proud to be sponsored by Playworks, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with evidence-based practices that help schools improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play.

If you’re a school or district leader struggling with the challenge of chronic absenteeism, as so many are across the U.S., you may not realize that structured recess is a research-backed approach to keep kids in school. In fact, a UC Berkeley study of Title I schools found that those partnering with Playworks had significantly lower chronic absenteeism rates. Further, Mathematica research demonstrated that Playworks schools spent 27% less time transitioning from recess back to learning, saving teachers valuable instructional time. 

These results are possible for your students, too. Learn how Playworks can help you improve student-educator relationships, belonging, and attendance by signing up for a quick no-obligation conversation. 
We’re also 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.

Many school clinicians know executive functioning is important. 
They also know that their entire team should be supporting it across general and special education settings. 
But they don’t always know what exactly that looks like in practice…
And if they do, they don’t know HOW they can change the practices of classroom teachers. 
There are a lot of unanswered questions. 
…How can I find time to think about changing teacher’s practices when I barely have time to manage my own workload? 
…What is my role if students don’t “qualify” for services on an IEP? 
…Doesn’t adding executive functioning to my plate open up a whole can of worms I’ll never be able to manage as a related service provider? 
…Even if I should be involved, how do I get teachers and administrators to “buy in?”
In this episode, I share how I help school clinicians not just answer these questions, but actually get executive functioning support in place…
Even if they’re not administrators…
Without taking them away from their existing responsibilities or causing role confusion…
And, even if they don’t have “buy in” from everyone on their team that they SHOULD be involved with executive functioning. 
As you listen, I invite you to consider that you MIGHT NOT need to get buy-in to start. 
The buy in comes with the process because it helps to “stack” the evidence you need to gain traction along the way. 
And…the reason that no one can give you a clear answer on how or what your role is because a clear framework doesn’t exist. 
People don’t give you an answer because most people don’t know HOW executive functioning support should look in schools. 
That’s an opportunity for YOU to define how that looks. Which you are one of the most qualified people in your building to do if you’re an SLP, social worker, psychologist, counselor, or other related service provider. 
And if you do it the right way, it can save you time and get better support for students in place at the same time. 
I share why that’s the case in episode 265 of De Facto Leaders.  
In this episode, I mentioned my free training where I share three mistakes professionals make when supporting executive functioning (that result in prompt-dependence and dysregulation). 
In this training, I cover the following:
✅ Already working on executive functioning, and not seeing results? It could be because you're NOT truly working on executive functioning, even though you think you are. Learn how to make the subtle shifts that make all the difference.
✅ Are severe behaviors preventing ANY true skill development? Learn the common mistakes school teams make (related to executive functioning) that create prompt-dependence and dysregulation, and what to do instead.
✅ Are students struggling with peers, even though you're working on social skills? I'll share why "social skills groups" rarely result in good skill-transfer, and how to shift your service-deliver model to help students self-advocate and form relationships.
✅ Not sure your team will buy-in to supporting executive functioning in classrooms? Learn the 3-part framework I teach SLPs, social workers, psychologists, counselors, and other interventionists that helps them implement building-wide executive functioning intervention, even with a huge caseload.
You can sign up for this training here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/efleadership
In this episode, I mentioned School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers design scalable executive functioning interventions to ensure students get the scaffolding they need across the school day. 
You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/clinicalleadership

Learn more about today's sponsors, Playworks and IXL:
We’re proud to be sponsored by Playworks, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with evidence-based practices that help schools improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play.

If you’re a school or district leader struggling with the challenge of chronic absenteeism, as so many are across the U.S., you may not realize that structured recess is a research-backed approach to keep kids in school. In fact, a UC Berkeley study of Title I schools found that those partnering with Playworks had significantly lower chronic absenteeism rates. Further, Mathematica research demonstrated that Playworks schools spent 27% less time transitioning from recess back to learning, saving teachers valuable instructional time. 

These results are possible for your students, too. Learn how Playworks can help you improve student-educator relationships, belonging, and attendance by signing up for a quick no-obligation conversation. 
We’re also 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.