Students Work Toward Applied Success with Executive Function Coaching Services
The demands of daily routines and studies sometimes bear weight on students, creating cycles of frustration, stress, procrastination and withdrawal of effort.
With new in-office and remote coaching sessions offered in Los Angeles, New Agenda Coaching has created a workaround for students experiencing this weight that helps them strengthen executive function skills such as working memory, cognitive flexibility, inhibition, organization and task initiation.
Executive functioning refers to a set of cognitive skills and processes that help individuals manage and regulate their thoughts, behaviors and emotions to achieve specific goals or tasks.
Founded by Maria Del Corso and Amie Davies, New Agenda believes strong executive function skills lead to higher performance in addition to life-long benefits for children, teens and college students.
Since offering services in Los Angeles for ages nine and over, New Agenda said many school-aged clients who finished school in May have a changed perspective and shifted their trajectories to find success through coaching services.
“From a standpoint of our upper elementary, middle and high school students who have been in a struggle zone, or experiencing some sort of multifaceted failure, they have finished out the school year in a completely different place, in terms of their positive perspective and outlook toward school and academic performance. They are really finding applicable success,” Del Corso said.
This summer, New Agenda recommends school-aged students start New Agenda’s coaching services ahead of the school year.
“Once school starts, you’re in that routine: work is piling up and you have to triage academics a little bit. Over the summer is a great time to strictly focus on executive function skills and figure out what areas we need to build and focus while you don’t have the pressure of academics,” Del Corso said.
New Agenda Coaching works with new clients at minimum once per week in one hour sessions, for no specific term length. Working one-on-one with coaches, clients learn skill building and strategies to achieve goals and combat concerns related to executive dysfunction.
Using a team approach, New Agenda works collaboratively with the client’s psychiatrists, therapists or counselors, to make sure everyone is on the same page.
“If a student is already working with a psychiatrist, we’re on board with them to help better the trajectory, and help the client reach goals,” Davies said.
Looking ahead, how does a parent know if their school-aged child has executive function issues, or any sort of processing disorder that impacts their studies? Del Corso said it’s often seen in the way the student responds to requests that are meant to hold them accountable.
“We see a lot of students who deflect and say, school doesn’t matter. Homework doesn’t matter, or they don’t care, that school is boring, grades are declining. When we hear those things, it’s because they are struggling and they are not in their optimal state. Our coaches have strong knowledge in relationship building pieces that engage students to be more proactive in both academic and social settings,” Del Corso said.
New Agenda uses a relationship-based approach to support learning and practicing organizational strategies in academics, career and lifestyle management, offering support for students, adults, seniors and the exceptional — people with intellectual disabilities, autism or down syndrome, people who are developmentally delayed or suffer the effects of a traumatic brain injury or other health impairment.
Coaching helps guide the development of life skills, coordinated with the use of customized strategies to aid focus, memory, accountability, motivation and planning, leading to greater independence.
To learn more about New Agenda and get started, visit NewAgendaCoaching.com.
