Executive Functions for Each Student: Mitch Weathers

Mitch Weathers, the founder of Organized Binder, discusses his work and the importance of teaching executive functioning skills in schools. He explains that his program, Organized Binder, helps students develop organization and executive functioning skills, which are crucial for academic success. Weathers emphasizes the need for explicit instruction and modeling of these skills, as well as the importance of creating safe and predictable learning environments. He also discusses his new book, "Executive Functions for Every Classroom," which provides practical strategies for teachers to implement in their classrooms. Weathers believes that by prioritizing the teaching of executive functioning skills, schools can better support students and help them succeed academically.

To learn more, order Jon's book, Just Teaching: Feedback, Engagement, and Well-Being for Each Student.

 

The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Each week, we'll talk to catalytic educators who are doing amazing work.

 

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Connect with us:

Baylor MA in School Leadership

Jon Eckert: @eckertjon

Center for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl

 

Mentioned:

Organized Binder
Executive Functions for Every Classroom by Mitch Weathers
The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Effortless by Greg McKeown
Hungry Authors Podcast 

 

 

Jon Eckert:

Welcome back to the Just Schools podcast. Today, we're here with Mitch Weathers, who started a really fascinating intervention for kids called Organized Binder. That is the dream of every parent, and as a foreign middle school teacher, as a middle school teacher, that was a dream for me. I did my best, but I think I would've loved this tool. So, we're going to welcome Mitch in and then let him introduce himself... Mitch, if you'd just give us a little bit of a sense of what brought you to this work of Organized Binder and what makes you hopeful about it.

Mitch Weathers:

Thank you, Jon. Super honored, thrilled, humbled to be here and chatting with you. This work came to me early on in my teaching career. I started in the nonprofit space. I was actually a director in a program called Young Life, which you might be familiar with, and I only bring that up to say, developing relationships with kids, young people, I had just really learned to do that and saw the value in leveraging relationships and education and learning.

So, when I got into the classroom and I found myself in a big comprehensive Title I public high school teaching for the first time, and I remember clearly my first year or two having more than 40 kids in the class, and these were tough kids, they had struggled academically, most of them multi-language learners. And I just liked being there, the management, the relationships. I just kind of had that in my toolkit. This is all in hindsight, looking back.

But I realize now after being in education for over 20 years, those first few years for most teachers, even if they're fresh out of college, it's kind of like learning to interact and communicate with a different species. It's like, "How do I do this part of it and yet I'm hired to do this?"

I think there was something there for me that allowed me to focus on, "Why aren't you achieving?" And I had spent a lot of time in graduate school and reading Paul Freire's work and critical pedagogy and equity, and I was just like, "Why aren't you achieving? You're incredibly capable. You've been viewed through a deficit lens, most of your academic experience, I get that. How do we change that narrative?" And then it kind of just dawned on me like, "Oh, you don't know how to do school in the sense that I think maybe you should and certainly you can."

And I just started trying to answer the question, what has the greatest impact on student learning and student success. Not that I was an expert. And maybe because I was so new, that being naive to just try stuff and not really know any better. But if I couldn't really have that through line and make that connection with... And I've learned as well, oftentimes in education, we do what was done to us. I get into the class, this is how I experienced it, and now I'm a teacher and I'm going to do some of those things. And it became clear to me, homework, for example, "How am I using homework? Why am I using homework? How is it guiding my instruction? How is it helping students be successful?" And I just tried to answer that question, and from that lace, over the next two years this program now called Organized Binder evolved.

Jon Eckert:

So, I think any teacher that has spent any time, especially with 40 kids in a classroom, we'll recognize that there is a wide range of executive functioning. And one of the most important things we can do, even more so than what we're doing with our content, I'm a huge proponent of teaching engaging content, because then what's the point of executive functioning? We don't want this to be a compliance exercise, but we do want them to be able to be functioning human beings.

And one of the frustrations, and you brought up some philosophers, and you talked about critical theory and Freire, I always got frustrated with the philosophers because it was, "What's the practical benefit of this?" You can write the pedagogy of the oppressed, but ultimately, what I want to know is how do I make that kid's life a little better because of the skills and tools that I've given. And I feel like Organized Binder is a very practical outcome of that. So now, it's a tool that you can sell, that you can go on, you can find it online for sure.

But what I love about what you've done is you've broadened that out and now you've got a book that's coming out from Corwin, and it's a new book, Executive Functions for Every Classroom, Creating Safe and Predictable Learning Environments, Grades 3-12. And so, I think when you hear, when a kid hears safe and predictable, or an adult hears that, like, "Oh, that's not very exciting," but in fact, that's the place where learning can really flourish. So, talk a little bit about those principles from Organized Binder that you're now writing about through this book. What would be two or three key takeaways that everyone could apply this week to their teaching?

Mitch Weathers:

Right. And you touched on it there, there was a bunch of things you said I wanted to respond to.

Jon Eckert:

Oh, and jump into anything. You know how these go. If you haven't listened to these podcasts before, it's kind of wherever we want them to go. So, Mitch, you feel free to answer whatever you want to answer.

Mitch Weathers:

Right. Yeah. And I think we're kindreds in the sense of... Here's the way I actually explain it, the idea of developing these skills and habits versus the content, and there's a tension there because teachers are hired to teach content. That's our job. There's no teacher I'm aware of that was hired to teach executive functioning skills and-

Jon Eckert:

Well, I think some kindergarten teachers, that's the main thing they do. The first grade teachers want those executive functions.

Mitch Weathers:

Those are the folks that just get it, right? When I'm in conversations with a kinder teacher, they're just like, "Yes." The older, we move up the grades, so you get it. And I like to say it this way, that it's not one's more important than the other. Of course, engaging content and curriculum, all of that. But there is an order of operations that we've missed historically and we've not explicitly taught these skills.

And so, yeah, the book was a fun exercise for me because my language and my speaking and teaching and et cetera, et cetera has been kind of through that Organized Binder lens. And I tried to back up from that and say, "Okay, what could we create and provide for teachers, a resource, or educators in general, and I even think parents, that may not be working with an Organized Binder program and they haven't brought it to their school in all of this work we do?"

And I will say that both of these, you hit the nail on the head. One thing that I did over and over and over, I went through this summer of, this Freirean summer, I'll call it, in graduate school. I just finished graduate school, and where I'd encountered all this, and I think in my first or second year teaching, and I literally read every book translated into English from him. I couldn't get enough of it.

Jon Eckert:

You're a better man than I am.

Mitch Weathers:

But the whole time I was asking myself the question, "So, what's this mean in the modern classroom?" It's amazing. I mean, it's great work. But like you said, how do I translate this? And that's part of that Organized Binder journey. And then, now the next kind of iteration of that is trying to write this book.

And I think there's three keys to teaching executive functions. And I'll stop there and say the irony is I don't actually believe that executive functions are taught in the traditional sense of the word. I think they're best learned when students see them modeled for them, hence an organized binder, something I can see. And I get routine practice using them or employing them by virtue of engaging in this predictable learning routine. So, the three keys for teaching executive functions, even though they're not taught, is clarity, routine and modeling.

And what I've done is translated... For those that don't know Organized Binder, or let me say it a different way, if you've ever been to an Organized Binder training, you know that we model for you and unpack and explain this daily learning routine, and it's very simple. It's got a very small-time footprint in the classroom. And the reason for that is, I mentioned before, teachers are hired to teach something and they never have enough time to get through that in the first place. So, if I come along with a curriculum on teaching executive functions, where are you going to fit it in? So, there's a time crunch for teachers.

So, if we can adopt, and there's a shared component to this, that remind me to come back to that, as sharing the routine, if you will, but if I can implement this really predictable learning routine, which is really just trying to exploit historically underutilized class time, which is the first few minutes and the last few moments of class, can be hard to really extract all we can out of those. But if by virtue, if I create this predictable learning routine... And that's where that safe piece comes in, Jon. I believe the more predictable the learning environment, the safer it is for students. And when students routinely or consistently feel safer, then they're more likely to take risks that are inherent to learning. And that's even truer for students who are navigating chaos outside of school. This profound impact of, "I feel safer here," and it might be one of the moments in my day that I get that experience because I might not at other times.

Jon Eckert:

And I want to pause right there for a minute because this is one of the things I've been wrestling with. So, I completely agree that that predictability and the safety of knowing this is what the routine is, especially when they're in a world that dis-regulates them all the time, where nothing seems stable, that is safety. It is not boring routine. It's not something to be taken for granted.

I feel like though, in some cases, especially for kids that have been marginalized, we have oversold the idea of safety, especially when you get to middle school and high school, where if you're a marginalized kid that's been through a lot of trauma, school's rarely going to feel safe for you. And if you wait until it feels safe to take a risk, you're going to be waiting a long time, because it's really not going to be there for you.

So, I've been pushing on this a little bit, saying, "Hey, I think we really want these to be respectful spaces that have space for psychological safety, because it has to be, but we need to be celebrating the risks kids take that don't feel safe." So, how do we highlight that kid that when they're in that predictable, safe space, some of the routines that you're saying, "Hey, this creates this, I think that's right," but then, how do we as educators and with their peers celebrate the courage it takes to speak out when it doesn't feel safe? Because I feel like in some ways we've oversold terms like safe and wellbeing and these other things. If they start to believe that being safe and that their is attended to means that they're not going to be stretched, that's actually counter to what actual learning is.

Learning in itself is uncomfortable. It's going a little beyond what you thought you could do. It's a little beyond what you could do the day before. You don't become a better runner by running the same amount every day. You've got to stretch, you've got to speed up, you've got to... And so, we have to keep that in mind, where I think sometimes now we've oversold the wellbeing and the safety. Obviously, those are important. I'm not saying they're not important.

Mitch Weathers:

I hear you, 100%.

Jon Eckert:

You know what I mean?

Mitch Weathers:

Yep.

Jon Eckert:

So, how do you stretch? And I feel like some of the stuff you're saying is about stretching. Do you agree or disagree? I mean, do you feel like I'm just parsing words here. What are your thoughts?

Mitch Weathers:

I couldn't agree more. I think there's two words you said there. Well, one, there's the number runner. So, I get that discomfort if you're going to either learn to run longer or learn to run faster, there is that parallel. But celebrating not so much the discomfort, but the willingness to take the risk-

Jon Eckert:

The courage.

Mitch Weathers:

Yeah. And celebrate it even if you didn't get the grade. I mean, whatever that context is. I think that celebration part is right. But I love the word you said, respectful spaces. I hit on this in the book, about just cultural competency and who's sitting in the room, what do you know about them as individuals, as cultures. Who's in this learning community, because you can't have respect... I mean, you can respect someone you don't know, I guess. But to really honor and respect them and create those spaces, which yes, have to be safe, but also celebrate that, I think I couldn't agree more. What safety's not, it's like fluffy posters on the wall of two bears hugging each other and some dumb slogan that... It just doesn't even register, especially for the kids you're talking about and the kids that I was working with.

Jon Eckert:

And so, you mentioned you wanted me to remind you to get back to the shared component of routine. To me, this is part of the shared component of routine because it's not about my individual routine, it's about our routine together. Because there's this social dynamic in a classroom where a teacher can be really efficient, an individual kid can be really efficient, but how do you function as a learning organization in a way that is respectful and celebrates the things that really matter. So, I want to make sure you get back to that shared routine part. But do you see an overlap with this idea of creating a respectful space with this shared routine? Or am I taking you down a tangent that's not helpful?

Mitch Weathers:

No, I like that because I think anytime a [inaudible 00:14:53], and I've personally experienced this, but the school I was working at, where I spent most of my career as a classroom teacher, the year after Organized Binder was fully baked, the ninth grade adopted it school-wide. And lots of things we can talk about happened there and collective teacher efficacy and all in this together. But what that means, a shared routine could talk about how that reduces cognitive load for kids, especially multi-language kids. But by virtue of something being shared or collective, we have to dialogue about it. What is the common language, what are the common expectations. If our goal as a teaching community or a school is to have respectful learning environments, well, we're all in that, what's that mean together. I think the conversations that come about inherent to that trajectory or that aim are where the real work is done. Where I was mentioning with the routine, that's just one of those shared components.

Jon Eckert:

Yeah, no, that's good. I mean, when you just described that, it made me think of this book that I had read a year or two ago. It's called The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul. And it's the idea that we offload functions to people that we trust. So, it's that when somebody's been married to someone for 50 years and one of the partners passes away and they say it feels like a part of them died, and in fact, that is true. So, if you have had a partner, so my wife manages all our finances, so in my mind, I've offloaded that part of my brain to her. And so, she passes away, I have lost that part of my mind.

And so, in a classroom, I feel like we offload a lot of those things. And so, it doesn't make it so we don't have a high cognitive demand, but it makes it so that the classroom functions at a higher level for everyone because you have different people that are responsible for different components of it. And it's not that you don't learn what you're responsible for, but you function as more than the sum of your parts.

Do you see that playing out? Again, I don't know if you've even heard of the extended mind, but when you started sharing that shared routine part, it is this kind of, "How do we collectively do more than we thought we were capable of?" And I think that expands to the school. We're talking classroom, but you mentioned the teachers that you worked with and what happened when you did it at ninth grade. What does that free up for you? Have you seen any aspects where executive functioning is enhanced when you have others leaning into that?

Mitch Weathers:

Yeah, I think so. And I think it's also worth saying, when it's collective or shared, whether that be grade level, department, school-wide, it's a lot of the work we do, we're talking a lot about students, but there's a number of teachers that struggle with executive dysfunction as well. And just saying-

Jon Eckert:

I'm one of them at times.

Mitch Weathers:

I think we all are, right? But I'm just thinking of, and let me know if this answers what you're saying, if that is the teacher, I mean, we've walked into those classrooms where the teacher clearly struggles organizationally, you can just see it when you walk in. And when those teachers are coming together collectively as a community, and I love how you say sum of all the parts, I mention this in the book, that a learning community is the sum of all of its parts. And if someone's not there, then it's changed. It's not the same. It's all about belonging and having kids be a part of the class.

But when we come together and we commit and say, "Hey, we're going to implement this routine," let's say, whatever that is shared, if that's an Organized Binder school, and then the training and support that we provide coming in, those teachers, in some ways, I like the analogy, they've kind of offloaded that cognitive load because it's not in their wheelhouse. And all of a sudden, I'm telling you, I've seen this in real time, and I don't like to use the word better, but they're a better teacher. It's just that they haven't gotten around to getting organized or they're-

Jon Eckert:

Why do you not like using the word better? I mean, isn't that the whole goal? How do we keep-

Mitch Weathers:

Yeah, I know. I just-

Jon Eckert:

... getting better. I mean, that's what I think your products and tools do. It helps us be better teachers, better learners. I mean, to me, we have an innate desire to be better. None of us want to be evaluated or judged, but we all want to get better, right?

Mitch Weathers:

Absolutely.

Jon Eckert:

So, I love the word better, but yes, own it.

Mitch Weathers:

Yeah. I like that analogy, when you say, "Can I offload that?" Well, let's say it this way, I can't tell you how many teachers, veteran teachers that have come to me over the last 10 to 20 years and said, "One, this is all the things I always knew I need to be doing, and I either just don't know how to make it a reality or I don't have the time to get to it, and I'm focusing on my content." This is some of the most humbling experiences in this, it's saying, "This work literally saved my career. I was going to retire this year and I went to a presentation and I'm so invigorated again."

But here's the deal. This is maybe that offloading piece, is I don't ever want to be responsible for conducting a talk or a keynote or a presentation or a professional development training that inspires educators, but requires so much work on the backside to make it a reality. This is that Freirian thing you're saying, even if it's great, it's going to end up on the shelf and less likely to be implemented. So, it's back to that practical... If a teacher or a school leader reads this book tomorrow in class, there's things that can be started, there's conversations that can be had with the staff around those strategies. It's very practical and relevant in that sense.

Jon Eckert:

So, I'm kind of bummed Corwin didn't ask me to endorse the book, because then I would've already been able to read it. So, I'll have to pick it up on my own. But this will be a good read. I think there's a lot of overlap between what I write about and what you're doing, and so, love that. So, thank you for that.

I want to go to our lightning round here. So, one of the things that, I want to start with this one, so it's a word, sentence or phrase that a teacher could do tomorrow to help with executive functioning of their students that wouldn't take any extra work on their part, would just be a streamlining of something they already do or something... Is there something, because again, I'm all with you, I do not want teachers who already have overflowing plates to feel like whatever I share with them is adding another thing to the plate, so, can you think of something in the book that's like, "Hey, you can do this. It wouldn't actually take any more time, but it would be life-giving for you and your students." Anything that pops to mind?

Mitch Weathers:

What pops to mind is organization. Of the six skills, the six executive functions outlined in this book, the inherent Organized Binder, not one is more important than the other, but I do think the starting place is a simple table of contents and organizing the curriculum and content that's already there. It would take almost, I'm not going to say no extra time, but if you read that chapter, we're talking, especially once it's in place, if it's just a step in the routine, we do this and then we update our table of contents, what happens, and there's some stories that we don't have time for right now that I tell in the book. Students and teachers feel better when they're organized, and maybe it should just be humans feel better when we're organized.

And once I can get organized, then I kind of feel like I have the capacity to learn and practice some of these other skills. It's hard to engage with the learning community when I don't even know where my stuff is. I can't tell you as a parent, you've probably been there, every parent has, trying to help their kid with homework and it's like, "Do you have anything from school today from math?" But if you do, it's a starting place. So, I hope that answers your question.

Jon Eckert:

It does. And I have to tell you, and it just hit as you were sharing that, when I first started teaching, I started teaching fifth grade, and I had a veteran teacher who taught fifth grade right next to me, Priscilla Lane, who was one of the best teachers I ever worked with. And she walked in about two or three weeks before every unit, and she would hand me a binder that she had copied and made and had a cover for each of the major units we were going to do. And she told me, "The best gift I can give you as a new teacher is organization." And it totally made my beginning year-

Mitch Weathers:

You were lucky.

Jon Eckert:

I was so lucky because it was good stuff. And she shared it freely and she gave it to me in this organized way, where all of a sudden everything made sense. So then when I moved to Tennessee, I went to Vanderbilt for my doctoral work, and when I was there, I was going through a doctoral program and I started teaching middle school science, which I'd never taught before.

And what I did was I came in and I made a binder of, I took all of the standards for seventh grade science and I distilled them down into 25 essential questions, five main units. So, I had five binders for each of the units, and it made it so... By then, I'd been teaching for eight years and I could apply what she had done for me at the beginning. And it allowed me to not be overwhelmed in the middle of a doctoral program while I was coaching and teaching and doing all these things, because it was manageable and it was in a binder. So, there you go. So, the theme runs through.

All right, so we did a terrible job on that first lightning round question. And I'm always terrible at the lightning round, but it's an aspiration.

Mitch Weathers:

Is the lightning round meant to be a lightning response too, quick?

Jon Eckert:

Yes.

Mitch Weathers:

Okay. I'll try it this time.

Jon Eckert:

I'm terrible. This one's easier. Favorite book you've read in the last year?

Mitch Weathers:

Okay. I can only pick one?

Jon Eckert:

One of your top five. Just pick one.

Mitch Weathers:

Okay. I'm just going to go random on this because I really enjoyed it. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, and I'm going to butcher the author's last name, he's a Japanese novelist who wrote this non-fiction kind of memoir book about running, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. And it's just a great read, and keep in mind, Jon, and anyone listening, in the last year, I read more books in the last year, including I think your latest, Just Teaching, which I absolutely loved. And then left it at a house this summer, where I had holed up to finish off my manuscript, and I brought all these books that I had been reading over the last year and left them all at this house on the coast. And I've been working at the rental place. I don't know, they might be gone. Anyway, this book, I'm long distance trail runner and I'm always kind of pushing myself, again, through line. And this was just a great read.

Jon Eckert:

Okay. No, I just pulled it up, and I will not attempt to say the author's name either, but it looks fascinating. It's a memoir, so I love the course. That's great.

No, and when you're writing a book, you read so many things. I mean, I always read a lot, but when I'm in the middle of a book, I'm always trying to pull in like, "Okay, oh, there's that."

Mitch Weathers:

Constant.

Jon Eckert:

And then, your brain is just on overload, then you have to organize it, you have to dump. I have files where I've dumped all kinds of things, so I'm with you. All right.

Mitch Weathers:

Can I just say one thing about that because you said, "Then you have to organize it," it actually just released sometime, I'll say it released in mid-January, I was on a podcast with, it's called the Hungry Authors podcast, and we talked about book mapping. Basically, if I didn't have a map, there is no way I would've completed the task. And you probably know that better than me.

Jon Eckert:

Well, I've written a lot of stuff. I could have completed a task, no one would've wanted to read it.

Mitch Weathers:

Maybe that's the way.

Jon Eckert:

So, I could have written something, it just wouldn't have been intelligible. So, yeah, I'm with you. All right, so best advice you've ever received?

Mitch Weathers:

Oh, gosh, good one. You can't go wrong treating people right.

Jon Eckert:

Oh, I've not gotten that one before. I like that.

Mitch Weathers:

A friend of mine said that. I was listening to one of his webinars or a talk he was giving and he said it and didn't even remember saying it. And I wrote it down in my journal like, "Wow, let's just lean into that."

Jon Eckert:

Similar. I had a friend who's a pre-K teacher, and he shared once, he's like, "No profession can compete with the spark between souls that occurs between teachers and students." And it was just this offhanded comment. But ever since, I've just been like, "Oh, that's it."

Mitch Weathers:

If you've experienced that, that is true.

Jon Eckert:

That's what gets you coming back. So, I love those offhanded quotes of people who aren't famous and never will be famous, but just to have an insight that's like, "Oh," it's kind of a breakthrough moment.

So, all right, worst piece of advice you've ever received?

Mitch Weathers:

That's a tough one, Jon. I try to obviously not remember those.

Does anyone ever get stumped by these questions?

Jon Eckert:

I like the pauses because it feels authentic. I will say the one we get 80% of the time on that one is when they first started teaching, they were told not to smile until Thanksgiving. And that whole idea that you communicate that you're in charge by basically not communicating any immediacy or appreciation of another is horrific advice. So, our job is, teaching is one of the most human things we do. And to just take out any facial connection would be-

Mitch Weathers:

Oh, gosh.

Jon Eckert:

It was what was challenging during COVID, when we had masks covering half our faces, we could not read people. I mean, you can tell some from the eyes, but you're missing half of your visual cues on a face. And so, to tell people to not smile, I mean, what a horrific way to live and teach. So, I get that one a lot.

I'm glad you have a hard time remembering worst advice.

Mitch Weathers:

Well, yeah, I was thinking more like big life bad advice.

Jon Eckert:

Well, that's good too.

Mitch Weathers:

But I can tell you, if you want to stay in the teacher vein, I had a different experience with the veteran teacher down the hall, who was very caring and stopped by, and was there... I'm a pretty early riser. She would be there before me and she would be leaving with the custodial staff at night. And she had children at home and married. And I remember asking her about it, because even me as a new teacher, and again, I didn't get into the classroom until late twenties, early thirties, so I had these other experiences, but I was like, "I feel like you're," I didn't say this to her, "But you're working too much. This isn't a sustainable model." Yet she's this veteran teacher and she told me... I asked her about her family and whatnot and she said, "Well, the way I structure it, and I encourage you to think about this, is family time is summer and work time is the school year." And I was like, "Wow." And she just worked and worked and worked.

Here's what I gleaned from that, is just working hard and long hours is not necessarily being effective. We can be efficient and be effective, and that's that... What exactly is going to have an impact on students? And if it doesn't, why am I doing it and how can I shift and be more efficient, more effective, that kind of thing.

So, I guess, I'd lump that into some advice. I didn't take her advice. I mean, I definitely, of course, like any new teacher, was there with her quite a bit, which is why we had these conversations after dark and no one else on campus. But I love to become more efficient.

Jon Eckert:

Yeah, I think so many teachers do follow that burnout as a badge of honor and that everything requires the extra mile and they get into this exhausting framing. Greg McKeown talks about it in his book, Effortless, how do we make the work we do life giving. And a quick way to have more time for work is to continue that kind of principle because you all of a sudden aren't going to have a family. If nine months out of the year this is for school and you get the three months here, that obviously doesn't work in a sustainable way for many, many people. I lump that into bad advice.

The last question, we'll end on a positive note. What's your best hope for education as you look ahead right now?

Mitch Weathers:

I absolutely know what I want to say about that as opposed to the last question. I think we're just now beginning to see the impacts and effects and learn from what happened over the last four years, the first year of the pandemic on students in particular. If there's one silver lining for the work that I'm really passionate about is I've spent a lot of years, Jon, trying to, I wouldn't say convince, but a lot of years talking about, "Hey, all these skills and habits that we kind of formally hoped students developed on their own, we have to explicitly teach and model these. This is what lays the foundation for learning. This is what builds capacity and agency and all that."

It seems now, and especially in the last 12 months, there's a collective shift to like, "We need to be doing that." The number of inquiries that are coming in through the Organized Binder site or people interested about the book, and here's the crazy thing, on every continent, I'm fortunate enough to have these wonderful conversations and work with people literally on every continent and every school is saying almost the exact same thing, that there's these gaps or there's an impact from that time on students and, "What are we going to do?" And if they've fallen behind in math, just giving them two math classes to accelerate them, we all know that's not going to work. So, I see a very hope future if we'll all take the teaching of executive functioning skills as serious as we do our content, curriculum, testing and technology, all these things that have their place in education, don't get me wrong, but that's what I'm hopeful for.

Jon Eckert:

Love that. So, looking forward to reading your book, Executive Functions for Every Classroom, Creating Safe and Predictable Learning Environments, Grades 3-12. This is from Corwin. So, really appreciate you taking the time, Mitch. It's great to have you and look forward to seeing the work that you continue to do.

Mitch Weathers:

Appreciate it, Jon. Thanks for having me.