Tamar Bauman, a School-Clinical Psychologist, is a senior coach and mentor for Hidden Sparks and has been with the organization since its inception. She has 20 years of experience helping children with mental health, behavioral, and academic challenges. Dr. Bauman has provided ongoing education and coaching to Jewish Day School teachers as well as mentoring and supervision to coaches in training. Prior to her involvement with Hidden Sparks, Dr. Bauman worked for the School Mental Health Program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. There she treated children with a range of emotional and behavioral struggles through individual, group, and family therapy. Dr. Bauman has also organized social skills and bully-prevention programming for schools and has provided learning, social skills, and anti-bullying workshops for students, teachers, and parents.
This session will be a facilitated discussion to construct and deepen our understanding of executive function collaboratively. After the facilitated discussion, you can stay on to discuss students you have been observing, especially if they seem to have strengths or struggles having to do with executive function (time permitting).
PREPARATION MATERIAL & OPTIONS
For each Webchat, there are 3 levels of preparation: 1) Short prep (up to 45 min.), 2) Medium prep (up to 3 hours), 3) Long prep (over 3 hours). Choose the preparation level that corresponds to the amount of time you can spend on learning before the WebChat.
“Executive Function 101” (PDF)
Strengthening the Brain’s Executive Functions: The Real Higher Order Processing (Web Course, April 13, 2011)
The last part of the human brain to “mature” through pruning and myelination is the prefrontal cortex, the seat of executive functions such as judgment, critical analysis, prioritizing, deduction, induction, imagination, and more. Discover strategies that promote executive functions and goal-directed behaviors, especially critical during the school years when this highest cognitive system undergoes its most profound changes.
Executive Function : Foundations for Learning and Teaching. Patricia Newhall. (Book, 144 pages; e-book $10; new and used from $22)
Researchers generally agree that the term executive function describes the brain s ability to manage goal-oriented behavior: setting goals, developing and following plans to achieve them, evaluating progress toward them, and adjusting attitudes and behaviors to meet the goal. When the cognitive and psychological processes coordinated by executive function are disrupted, or the coordination itself is weakened, the result is typically learning difficulties and poor academic performance.