Jessica Watson

During our recent webinar “Elevating executive function: Skills for life and learning” we had an overwhelming number of questions about how to support executive function in middle and high school students. We’ve pulled together some of our top executive function experts to answer this question. Dr. Sheila Murphy and Jennifer Onoyeyan offered up some great ideas for improving executive function in middle and high school students so bookmark this page! You’re going to want to come back to it.
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Searching for a summer camp for your neurodiverse learner takes a lot of time, research and patience. Signing up for typical summer camps where there may not be the supports your child needs can be a recipe for disaster. To avoid frustrations and tears (sometimes from parents moreso than the kids!) there are important factors to consider to make sure a camp is a good fit.
Here are some key aspects to look for when choosing a camp for your neurodiverse learner:
Inclusive Environment:
If the ca...

In honor of Black History Month, the Learnfully team pulled together a list of our favorite black influencers who are neurodiverse or produce content for the neurodivergent community. These black influencers consistently create content that enlightens, informs and educates everyone who scrolls through their feeds. They make social media a better place to be and remind our learners that they’ve got this.
We couldn’t be more grateful for their presence and can’t wait for you to check out what t...

My daughter received many diagnoses before the official diagnosis of autism. She was born before the rise in autism cases we’ve seen over the past decade or so. Being a girl, autism was rarely at the top of a physician’s list of considerations but dyspraxia was.
What is dyspraxia and how does it relate to autism?
Doctors thought she might have a hearing impairment, a speech disorder, poor vision, hypotonia, the list goes on and on. But the one diagnosis that stuck-–the one that made the most ...

Executive function is like the control panel of the brain. Our ability to prepare, plan for and execute day-to-day tasks is dependent on our executive functioning skills. A student with poor executive functioning skills can have difficulty with everything from beginning a task to understanding how much time they will need to complete it. With all of this in mind, the toll executive function difficulties take on reading and writing skills cannot be overlooked.
A learner’s executive function su...

I am the mother to five children, four of whom I parent every day. My fifth child, Hadley Jane, died in my arms on her third day of life. She was one of triplets, just as perfect as her siblings and just as loved. I miss her every single day. When someone says her name or lets me know that something about her short life touched their own my grieving heart smiles a bit.
I’m not alone. So many parents out there have lost a child, whether by miscarriage, or still birth, or from complications sho...

What I've learned about men through raising boys.

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When my kids hit the age of three or so, I felt the clock ticking. I needed to figure out what to sign them up to do in order to keep them busy, help them make friends, and follow the unspoken rules of parenthood looming over my head. Most of my family had played soccer, so that seemed the obvious place to start.
My husband volunteered to coach (okay, maybe I volunteered him), and I set out on my search for extra-extra small shin guards and a number three (or was i...

Gifted and Talented Programs have become an institution of our educational system. Where there’s a school system with a select group of highly-achieving kids, there is usually a special program designed to challenge them. Often started after a push from parents of gifted children, these programs are said to offer a place for quick-studies to thrive.

But are they really necessary? Do children with high achievement scores actually benefit from being set apart from their peers and being offered ...

There are collective cheers going up all over the world from parents and educators of girls. The all-female space walk, originally scheduled for late March, is back on. Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir completed this monumental walk in space early this morning.
Koch and Meir’s space walk was postponed in March because of the lack of medium-sized space suits to fit both women. The STEM-loving women of the world were disappointed to say the least, but NASA assured the public that they...

Sesame Street has done an excellent job of tackling tough subjects over the years. From creating their first homeless character to the first muppet with autism, they’ve aimed to teach our children understanding through exposure to situations they might not be familiar with. At the same time, these characters offer support and representation to kids who are facing some of these tough issues themselves. Last year, Sesame Street introduced us to Karli, a character in the foster care system.

They...

Congenital Heart Defects (CHD) are the most common form of birth defect in infants. In a recent study, researchers found the amount of alcohol parents consume to be a contributing factor to these heart defects in infants, giving way to new guidelines for prospective parents.
According to the CDC, “CHDs affect nearly 1% of―or about 40,000―births per year in the United States.” This new study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, reviewed a compilation of 55 previous stud...

This week is the National Week of Action to End School Pushout. Unlike the term “dropout,” which is generally due to a decision or behavior on the part of the student, “school pushout” refers to the way zero-tolerance school discipline can push students out of school through suspensions, expulsions, and even arrests for minor misbehaviors.
The campaign to end school pushouts began out of a need to retain at-risk students in schools rather than have them end up in detention facilities. Statist...

When a principal in Iowa saw the number of students spending their lunch hours with their faces in their phones, she knew she needed to do something about it. Janet Behrens, principal of Iowa Valley Junior-Senior High School, was disheartened by how many of the students in her school spent their lunch hour on social media rather than on socialization — so she decided to make a change.
Principal Behrens created a lunchroom policy requiring all students to leave their phones behind during Frida...