Building Your Own Executive Functioning Toolkit: A Session for ECEs

Let’s be honest: we spend our days helping toddlers manage big feelings, remember the steps to wash hands, and resis grabbing that one toy… but who’s helping us build those same skills? Executive functioning isn’t just for kids! It’s the behind-the-scenes system educators rely on every single day to plan lessons, juggle transitions, manage a room full of tiny humans, and stay calm when chaos hits at 10:47 a.m. In this interactive, practical session, we’ll explore what executive functioning actually is (spoiler: you’re already using it constantly), identify your own strengths and stretch areas, and walk away with simple, sustainable strategies to strengthen skills like working memory, flexible thinking, and self-regulation.

Facilitator Bio:

Terri is an assistant professor at the University of Prince Edward Island. As an educator with over twenty years' experience across diverse educational roles, including classroom teaching, resource support, post-secondary instruction, and academic research, her personal and professional experiences shape her work. Her career has been shaped by a deep commitment to inclusive, equity-oriented education, and this commitment informs the lens through which she engages in scholarly inquiry. Much of her work in K-12 education focused on creating responsive, inclusive classroom spaces for learners with diverse needs. As a new scholar in the field of inclusion, her work endeavors to build teacher capacity with the aim to improve outcomes for all learners. As a neurodiverse person, she recognizes that her positionalities influence the questions she asks, the data she interprets, and the conclusions she draws and is cognizant of the privileges she enjoys as a white woman.