Smart But Scattered: Building Executive Skills with Children and Adolescents

EXPERT: Peg Dawson, Ed.D., NCSP

Dear Colleague,

Many students struggle in school, not because they have problems acquiring academic skills but because they struggle with a key set of skills that underlie academic performance in a fundamental way. I’m referring to executive skills. Executive skills are critical to the acquisition of academic skills, but, more importantly, they are the skills students need to get things done. They are brain-based skills such as task initiation, sustained attention, working memory, planning, organization, and goal-directed persistence that are absolutely critical to school success. Some students seem to acquire them naturally, but many students don’t. This workshop, which offers intensive training in how to help these students, will provide a model for understanding what these skills are and how they develop. The primary focus of the workshop, though, will be to give participants the opportunity to practice an array of practical interventions that can be incorporated into the classroom or into clinical practice.

In over 40 years of clinical practice, Dr. Peg Dawson has worked with thousands of children who struggle at home and in school. At the center of their struggles are often weak executive skills. Along with her colleague, Dr. Richard Guare, she has written numerous books on this topic among them Smart but Scattered, Smart but Scattered Teens, Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents, and Coaching Students with Executive Skills Deficits. Peg is also a past president of the National Association of School Psychologists, and the International School Psychology Association, and is a recipient of NASP’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Click on Go To Website below to register and learn more.