While many of you know that we do a great deal of work to help our students develop social pragmatic skills, emphasizing social communication and emotion regulation, you may not know that our efforts also include helping our students to develop the executive functioning skills that compliment them.
Executive Functioning Skills (EFS) encompass a number of interrelated sub-skills that are necessary for purposeful, goal-directed activity. These include planning, being organized, mentally playing with various ideas, giving a considered rather than an impulsive response, and staying focused.
The interplay between Social Pragmatic Skills and Executive Functioning Skills (EFS) can be seen in areas such as stress and anxiety. Stress and anxiety can inhibit the ability of students to develop and maintain EFS. There are concurrent associations between underdeveloped pragmatic social skills and executive deficits.
Although you cannot always draw a straight line between them, improving pragmatic social skills helps to relieve stress and anxiety. Reducing stress and anxiety improves learning EFS. Improving EFS, in turn, improves student performance. They also include strategies to de-escalate anxiety, promote health and physical activity, yoga, and our specialized curriculum.