Cognitive Connections

Strong executive functioning is vital for student success amid a fast-paced, ever-changing hybrid learning environment. However, teachers are increasingly reporting a noticeable deficiency in the skills of planning, prioritizing, organizing, and cognitive flexibility, a problem that has grown significantly since the pandemic.

Cognitive Connections is determined to address this key educational challenge. It focuses its efforts at the intersection of teaching and learning to empower every student to competently navigate their daily schedule, their classroom time, and their homework and other assignments.

What sets the company apart is its emphasis on the professional development of teachers. True change happens when educators are equipped with the skills and knowledge to support students’ executive functioning within classrooms. Keeping that in mind, the team provides coaching programs that give teachers hands-on methods to facilitate better student outcomes.

Teachers are trained in various research-supported, practical teaching strategies and interventions that can be seamlessly integrated into their existing lesson plans. By directly communicating with the teachers, understanding their concerns, and gaining insight into the student issues they feel to be the most challenging, Cognitive Connections is able to continuously tailor and adjust its programs to meet the diverse needs of different student populations.

The Cognitive Connections team also utilizes its programs to generate more awareness among teachers about the executive functions and their connection to many different types of student learning challenges. Adopting a 90:10 approach, the program dedicates much of the session time to arming teachers with practical strategies for immediate applicability. The remaining 10 percent is invested in articulating the theoretical understanding of executive functions.

“Teachers who attend our professional development sessions leave with easily manageable plans that can be added to their current classroom practices,” says Sarah Ward, co-director of Cognitive Connections.

For students who need additional support, Cognitive Connections also offers independent attention and scaffolding through 1:1 coaching that targets prevalent issues like a child’s struggle with initiating and completing tasks, a middle-school student’s challenge with time management and self-regulation, and a high-school student’s occasional lapse in working memory—the ‘forgetful moments’ such as not remembering the purpose of entering a room.

The team introduces creative, user-friendly ideas to help students develop, organize, and break down plans metacognitively so that they can easily handle extracurriculars and other activities. One of its most effective strategies for students is motivating them to construct mental images of their tasks, like picturing themselves going to their rooms, reaching out for their backpacks, retrieving a specific folder, and creating a study-time schedule. When they complete these tasks in real life, a student can go back to their mental checklist and evaluate the progress they have made against their envisioned plan.

Teachers who attend our professional development sessions leave with easily manageable plans that can be added to their current classroom practices

“These approaches prove beneficial for all students. We extend our program to every academic level, ranging from pre-K to middle school to high school, and even post-secondary education. The program also supports students diagnosed with ADHD and various learning disabilities, accommodating their needs with customized, comprehensive ways to navigate the more challenging aspects of their tasks,” says Kristen Jacobsen, co-director of Cognitive Connections.

The team also works with parents to support children’s executive skill development. Their strategies help parents to better understand and address their learners’ challenges and improve their relationships with them.

Having presented its impactful program to 2,000 schools across 49 states, Cognitive Connections has a well-established track record of success. To ensure the program’s efficacy, the team frequently liaises with educational teams and individual students, seeking feedback on the program’s effectiveness.

Driven by this successful collaboration, Cognitive Connections remains committed to providing robust, research-based solutions to not just improve classroom performance but equip learners with skills that last a lifetime.