Mirsky & Associates Executive Function Coaching provides coaching and support services for students, families and school-based personnel who are working to understand and overcome EF and attentional issues in the classroom and beyond.
One coach’s origin story
Walk a day in their shoes…
I spent 20 years of classroom instruction specifically identifying and advocating for students who struggle. I myself struggled with these issues as a learner - in a time before there was a widespread understanding of EF or even ADD and ADHD. I struggled as a student in my earlier years in large part because my "potential" never matched my output (sound familiar?) and without the lens of EF to understand my struggles, my parents and teachers reverted to expressing frustration and blame, which in turn eroded my performance as a student and my general sense of self-confidence.
As a middle-school aged kid, I carried with me that sense of self-blame and the confusing predicament of being told that I “must not want to succeed.” Luckily for me, sports and other extracurricular activities felt like more accessible outlets, and presented me with platforms where I could maximize my strengths and innate abilities and not ‘waste time’ trying to be what others expected me to be. While I was routinely characterized as an underachieving student, by the time I reached high school I did taste success, whether captaining my lacrosse team or editing the school newspaper. These moments of success - though hard-won and seen by many as ‘add-ons’ or ‘distractions’ - nonetheless sustained me through my high school years and helped me feel like I was a valuable contributor to my world.
It was in college that I effectively learned to create my own strategies to get the work done, to supplement and augment and innovate for myself. Much of this self-coaching (or as I sometimes call it “self-coping”) started only after I gained some necessary self-awareness through a chance encounter with Dr. Ned Hallowell’s newly published book Driven to Distraction, considered to be a foundational text on ADD. As a confused, frustrated, somewhat resigned yet also stubborn young adult I read each chapter of the book and each case study therein with a complex mix of feelings that included shock, elation, outrage and relief. I knew it was just a book, and yet the picture it painted of attentional dysfunction - much of what we now associate with Executive Function issues - so acutely described my experience growing up that I felt in many ways “seen” for the first time. I was vindicated in feeling that I was neither alone nor “broken,” but I also did feel a profound sense of “what-if?!?” What if my parents, teachers and mentors had been able to see me through this lens, to understand and embrace some of my learning struggles and strategically reach out to me rather than passively criticizing my lack of performance? How would I have felt about myself as a student and person if I had just had some coaching?
It took a lot of trial and error, but I eventually achieved hard-won success in the college classroom, graduating with Honors in History from Wesleyan University in CT after completing a year-long senior research thesis that put to the test every one of my self-taught coping skills. Adults in my life were plenty proud of my accomplishments, but I couldn’t help feeling that I achieved all this in many ways IN SPITE of those folks who couldn't/ wouldn't see me. None of them had managed to see that all I needed as a younger learner was a little support and targeted coaching to understand and navigate my own unique challenges. I didn’t blame them or hold a grudge - in fact, I believe my complicated path helped to forge a core of resilience within me - but I did come away feeling like it did not need to be that difficult for a student with EF issues to succeed. This fundamental assertion became the foundation of a career in teaching.
For the next two decades, I worked directly with diverse learners in independent schools, alternative schools and in lower-income, underserved urban schools. I forged connections and built relationships as a tireless advocate for students in settings that included one-to-one coaching, classroom teaching, academic and personal advising, athletic coaching, and extracurricular and other school-based activities. Consistent across all those spaces, I have strived to be that voice of adult advocacy and guidance for students that I believe is essential to a kid’s personal empowerment and ability to succeed. Academic and EF Coaching is the latest step in my journey, and in my role as Coach I build on all the experience I have had as a student, coach and teacher.