Continuing Education Webinars
Dr. Dawson has produced a number of webinars that are available for continuing education credits. Descriptions of the webinars with links to the training are:
Ten Steps for Embedding Executive Skills into Daily Classroom Routines and Instruction: 3-hour webinar
Executive skills are task-oriented skills that underlie students’ ability to learn. Although seldom taught explicitly, many educators now see that students who are strong in these skills are more successful than those who aren’t. This workshop will provide step-by-step instructions for incorporating executive skills into everyday classroom lessons and activities. After an introduction to executive skills that includes definitions and an overview of how brain development impacts executive skills, participants will learn how to: 1) connect classroom behavior to specific executive skills; 2) introduce executive skill concepts and terminology to students; 3) create classroom routines to help students with weak executive skills and to foster executive skill development in all students; 4) embed executive skills into lessons for whatever subject matter they are teaching; and 5) engage students in a problem-solving process to address both class-wide and individual issues associated with executive skill challenges. Both general education and regular education teachers of K-12 students will benefit from this workshop, but school administrators and support staff will also find these strategies helpful. The presentation will incorporate numerous case examples and group activities to support learning.
Smart but Scattered: Executive Dysfunction at Home and at School
sponsored by PESI
Children who have deficient executive skills often have trouble getting started on tasks, get distracted easily, lose papers or assignments and forget to hand in homework. They make careless mistakes, put off work until the last minute and have no sense of time urgency. Workspaces are disorganized and teachers often refer to their backpacks or lockers as “black holes.” Often considered chronic underachievers, these children are at risk for academic failure as well as emotional and behavioral difficulties.
Dr. Dawson, co-author of the best-selling books Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents, 3rd Ed. (2018), Smart but Scattered (Guilford, 2009) and Smart but Scattered Teens (2013, Guilford) uses case examples along with interactive discussion to demonstrate how the executive skills manifest in daily home and school activities. Learn how to assess these skills and take home evidence-based strategies to help children and adolescents overcome executive skills weaknesses.
Leave this seminar with a set of tools that includes strategies for task/environmental modifications, skill development through cognitive/behavioral techniques and creation of incentive systems. You will be able to give teachers and parents a means for developing and improving the following:
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- Organization
- Time management
- Impulse control
- Goal-directed persistence
- Executive skills critical for independent functioning
Smart but Scattered Adults: Manage ADHD by Targeting Executive Skills
sponsored by PESI
Strategies to improve the ability of adults with ADHD to:
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- Get organized
- Manage time
- Control emotions
- Avoid procrastination
- Stay focused
- Control impulses
- Shift gears/roll with the punches
- Keep track of it all
Many adults with ADHD fail to finish college, hold down a job, progress in their career, or maintain satisfactory relationships with friends and family. Failure and the recognition that they are working well below their potential erode self-confidence, and eat away at self-esteem.
Even highly motivated clients with ADHD struggle to follow through on the changes they need to make to improve their physical or emotional well-being. They know they need to change, they know what they need to do to change, they may even be able to take a step or two toward making those changes—and then they plateau or give up. What’s getting in the way is not their unwillingness or resistance to change, but weak executive skills.
Executive skills are underlying brain processes that help people manage their everyday lives, get things done, control their emotions, and help them manage obstacles that interfere with productivity and behavior change. Watch this seminar and learn cutting-edge neuroscience on executive functioning and practical strategies for your ADHD clients to help them overcome the obstacles presented by weak executive skills. At the end you will be able to best help your clients assess their executive skill strengths and weaknesses and create an action plan that is realistic and leads to true and lasting change.
Assessing Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents:
3-hour webinar
In this 3-hour webinar Dr. Dawson discusses the purposes for assessing executive skills and describes how executive skills may be evaluated within the context of a comprehensive psycho-educational or neuropsychological evaluation. She outlines five sources of information she relies on in this assessment process and illustrates how she uses informal assessment and behavior observations to augment standardized testing and norm-referenced rating scales. She also discusses how assessing executive skills can inform special education decision-making, how to use assessment to identify targets for executive skills interventions, and strategies for progress-monitoring.