Dear Parents and Guardians,
I hope this message finds you well. I would like to begin by reminding everyone
that thanks to the generosity of the McCall Parent Association (MPA) and
Winchester’s Parent to Parent organization, we will have the opportunity to
have Sarah Ward come to McCall to present to both the parent community and the
middle school staff this Tuesday about executive function. Sarah is a renowned expert on this topic, and
I am including her bio below for your reference.
When we talk about students’ executive functioning skills,
we often think about their abilities to keep binders and backpack organized and
to keep track of their assignments. However,
executive function is broader than that.
Executive function includes (but not limit to) one’s ability to plan
ahead, to prioritize, to shift from one activity to another, and to monitor
one’s behavior. Teaching executive
function mirrors our school and district’s work to promote social emotional
learning. Both are about teaching
students how to be self-aware and how to self-regulate.
I have attended many of Sarah’s training sessions before, and the
main reason I am a big fan of her work is because her approach to teaching
executive function aligns with the backward design model to teaching and lesson
planning (of which I am a big proponent).
If you speak to Sarah about teaching executive function skills, you will
hear her talk about how to help students visualize desired outcomes by helping
them ask themselves questions such as, “What does a completed science project
look like?” and “What does a person who is ready for the hockey practice look
like?” When students are able to answer
these questions, we can then help them work backwards and determine what are
the steps they need to take in order to get to those desired outcomes. This way of thinking about executive function
matches the work many of our teachers are doing with RULER anchor tools such as
the class charter. Many of our teachers
established classroom rules, expectations, and norms by asking students how
they want to feel when they come to your classes and then worked backwards with
them to determine how they should behave in order to achieve those pleasant
feelings.
I hope you will join us Tuesday evening from 7:00-9:00 pm in the McCall auditorium to
hear what Sarah has to say about executive function. I am confident you will find the session to
be informative and practical. Please
remember that the target audience for this event is parents and guardians not
students, so I encourage you to leave your students at home that night. Lastly, I would like to recognize the timing
of this event puts some of you in the difficult position of having to choose
between coming and Yom Kippur observation.
I regret that it turned out this way, but we had little flexibility due
to Sarah’s schedule and our goal of aligning the teacher training to the parent
information session. I will do my best
to get the handout materials of the parent session to those of you who want
them.
Thank you and I wish you a wonderful week.
James Lin
Principal
McCall Middle School
Sarah
Ward bio:
Sarah
Ward, M.S., CCC/SLP has over 25 years of experience in diagnostic evaluations
and treatment of executive dysfunction. Ms. Ward holds a faculty
appointment at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health
Professions. Sarah is an internationally recognized expert on executive
function and presents seminars and workshops on the programs and strategies she
has developed with her Co-Director Kristen Jacobsen. Their 360 Thinking
Executive Function Program received the Innovative Promising Practices Award
from the National Organization CHADD. She has presented to and consulted with
over 750 public and private schools in Massachusetts, across the United States
and internationally.
Sarah
Ward, M.S., CCC/SLP has over 25 years of experience in diagnostic evaluations
and treatment of executive dysfunction. Ms. Ward holds a faculty
appointment at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health
Professions where she provides instruction to graduate level students in the
assessment and treatment of individuals with traumatic brain injury and other
cognitive communication disorders. Sarah is an internationally recognized
expert on executive function and presents seminars and workshops on the
programs and strategies she has developed with her Co-Director Kristen
Jacobsen. Their 360 Thinking Executive Function Program received the Innovative
Promising Practices Award from the National Organization CHADD. She has
presented to and consulted with over 500 public and private schools in Massachusetts
and across the United States. Other awards received include: MGH Expertise in
Clinical Practice Award, the Distinguished Alumni Award and the Faculty in
Excellence Award from the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health
Professions (2002, 2011) and ACE award from ASHA 2013 and 2016.
