One of the first questions I ask my students at Emerging Educational Consulting is deceptively simple: “Do you love school?”
About 85 percent of the time, the answer comes without hesitation: “I don’t like school—but I love learning.”
That distinction is everything. It suggests that students aren’t rejecting curiosity or growth; they are responding to an environment where “learning” has become secondary to “performance.” When school becomes a game of managing requirements and avoiding mistakes, the actual act of learning starts to feel like a byproduct rather than the goal.
The Disconnect Between Schooling and Learning
I’ve been reflecting on this disconnect as our team completes our certification with Gretchen Wegner, founder of the Anti-Boring Learning Lab.
Educators often say this lab is the most transformative professional development they’ve ever experienced, noting, “You’ve completely changed how I work with students.” It’s an honor to hear that, because the Lab isn’t just about tips; it’s about a fundamental shift in Learning Design. It combines science, strategy, and “playful rigor” to help students thrive, not just survive.
The Science of Make It Stick: Debunking the “Illusion of Knowing”
As highlighted in the seminal work Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, durable learning is not a result of passive exposure. The research shows that the most common study habits—like rereading, highlighting, and cramming—are actually the least effective.
The book, authored by scientists Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, identifies a critical gap in how we study:
- The Illusion of Knowing: Passive methods create a sense of “fluency.” A student feels they know the material because they recognize it, but that knowledge hasn’t been encoded for the long term.
- Desirable Difficulties: Durable understanding requires effortful processing. Making learning “harder” through specific strategies builds deeper, more durable understanding and promotes long-term retention.
- Key Strategies for Encoding: To move beyond familiarity, students need:
- Retrieval Practice: Self-testing to pull information out of the brain.
- Spaced Repetition: Reaching back for information over increasing intervals of time.
- Interleaving: Mixing up different types of problems to help the brain distinguish between concepts.
The Anti-Boring Toolkit: A Model for Success
At Emerging Educational Consulting, we’ve integrated the Anti-Boring Toolkit based on five core principles that bridge the gap between “hard” learning and student success:
- Practical EF Strategies: Equip students with study skills they’ll actually use.
- Brain Science Literacy: Ensure students understand the brain science behind why these strategies work.
- The “Least” Principle: Focus on teaching the least students need to know to take effective action.
- Micro-Actions: Break tasks into the tiniest actions students can easily start now.
- Lifelong Growth: Model growth in our coaching and our lives.
Why We Fail the “Desirable Difficulty” Test
Research from the Learning Agency Lab proves that making learning more effortful builds the ability to apply knowledge in new situations. However, there is a systemic failure: We tell students that learning requires effort, but we rarely give them the tools to tackle that effort.
Without the right tools, “desirable difficulty” just feels like “impossible friction.” At Emerging Educational Consulting, we don’t just tell students to work harder; we give them the cognitive and executive tools to navigate the effortful strategies—like interleaving and retrieval—that lead to true mastery.
What Parents Can Do Now: Building the Scaffolding
If your student is struggling, start by building the structures that support their Executive Function:
1. Build Visual Structures
Most students with EF challenges struggle with Time Blindness.
- Calendar Blocking: Use a digital or physical calendar to block out specific times for work and rest.
- Organizing for Flow: Ensure physical and digital files are accessible so they don’t waste “focus fuel” searching for materials.
2. Move From Familiarity to Encoding
Help your student understand that looking at notes isn’t the same as learning.
- The Test: Ask them, “Can you explain this to me without the book open?” If they can’t, they are only familiar with it; they haven’t encoded it for lifelong learning. The solution is self-quizzing and assessment.
- Support Retrieval: Encourage Active Recall instead of just reading over highlights.
The Emerging Educational Consulting Approach
Our Executive Function (EF) coaching practice treats EF as something to be woven directly into the learning experience. We don’t just teach organization; we use the Anti-Boring Learning Lab approach to make students feel more competent and engaged.
When we return our attention to the student—not just the outcome—learning becomes more durable, more humane, and infinitely more worth loving. Let’s get started by telling us your story.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is executive function coaching?
Executive function coaching helps students develop the skills that support learning across all subjects: planning, organization, task initiation, follow-through, working memory, and self-monitoring. It’s not tutoring and it’s not therapy. It focuses on how students manage learning, not just what they’re learning.
How is executive function coaching different from tutoring?
Tutoring focuses on content. Executive function coaching focuses on the systems that allow students to access content effectively.
Many students understand the material but struggle to start, plan, prioritize, or sustain effort. Executive function coaching addresses those underlying skills so learning becomes more manageable and more transferable across classes.
Who benefits most from executive function or academic coaching?
Students who benefit often include:
- Bright students whose grades don’t reflect their ability
- Students with ADHD, learning differences, or anxiety
- Students who are overwhelmed, inconsistent, or burnt out
- High school students preparing for increasing academic and college demands
Coaching is especially effective when students care about learning but feel stuck in how to manage it.
Is executive function coaching only for students with ADHD?
No. While students with ADHD often benefit greatly, executive function skills develop at different rates for all students.
Any student navigating increased academic complexity—especially in middle school, high school, or the transition to college—can benefit from explicit support in planning, studying, and self-management.
How does this connect to academic success and college readiness?
Executive function skills are foundational for academic success and college readiness. As external structure decreases, students are expected to:
- Manage long-term assignments
- Balance competing priorities
- Study independently
- Advocate for themselves
- Adapt when plans change
Coaching helps students build these skills before the stakes get higher.
How does your approach differ from traditional academic coaching?
Our work is grounded in learning science, executive function research, and instructional design.
We teach students:
- How learning actually works
- Why certain strategies stick and others don’t
- How to assess their own understanding
- How to design systems that match how their brains function
This approach aligns closely with the principles of Gretchen Wegner’s Anti-Boring Learning Lab and research from Make It Stick—focusing on durable learning rather than short-term performance.
How does this fit with college consulting?
College readiness isn’t just about applications. It’s about whether a student can manage learning independently once they arrive.
Executive function coaching complements college consulting by helping students:
- Handle academic rigor
- Manage time and workload
- Transition successfully to college expectations
When students understand how they learn and how to manage themselves, they’re better positioned to thrive—wherever they enroll.
When is the right time to start executive function coaching?
Earlier than most families think.
Coaching can be helpful as soon as patterns of overwhelm, avoidance, or inconsistency appear. Waiting until senior year or college often means students are trying to build skills under significant pressure.
That said, it’s never “too late” to start.
What does progress look like?
Progress isn’t just higher grades (though those often follow). It looks like:
- Greater clarity about tasks
- More consistent follow-through
- Improved self-awareness
- Reduced stress around school
- Increased confidence in learning
The goal is not perfection—it’s sustainability.
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