Executive function coaching for the skills required by life.
Direct coaching in planning, time management, organization, and focus, so students take ownership of their work and their goals.
- Planning, prioritizing, and time management
- Systems for focus and follow-through
- Independence and self-advocacy
Sound familiar?
Capable but disorganized
Understands the material, loses the assignment. The content was never the problem, so more content tutoring won't fix it.
Always out of time
Everything happens the night before. Coaching builds planning and prioritizing that work in advance of the deadline, not against it.
Needs to run their own show
Parents are currently the calendar, the reminder, and the enforcer. The goal is a student who does that themselves.
Executive function is eleven skills, not one trait.
“Disorganized” and “unmotivated” are descriptions, not diagnoses. Underneath them are specific, separable skills, and a student is rarely weak in all of them. Naming which ones are actually slipping is where coaching starts.
Thinking skills
The cognitive side. What it takes to hold a plan in mind and steer it.
Working memory
Holding instructions and steps in mind while using them.
Planning and prioritizing
Deciding what to do, in what order, to reach a goal.
Organization
Keeping track of materials, files, and information.
Time management
Estimating how long work takes and budgeting for it.
Metacognition
Standing back and evaluating how an approach is going.
Doing skills
The behavioral side. What it takes to start, stay with it, and finish.
Response inhibition
Pausing before acting on the first impulse.
Emotional control
Managing feelings so they do not derail the work.
Sustained attention
Staying with a task through boredom or fatigue.
Task initiation
Beginning without procrastinating or waiting to be told.
Goal-directed persistence
Following a goal through without being pulled away.
Flexibility
Adapting when plans, conditions, or expectations change.
What a session actually looks like
A coach who hands a student a system has built nothing that survives them leaving. So sessions run the other way around: ask what actually happened this week, listen to where it broke down, and design the next attempt together. The student owns the plan, which is the only version they keep using once nobody is checking.
Ask
Open questions about the real week, not a checklist of what should have happened.
Reflect
Name the pattern back, so the student sees it rather than being told it.
Design together
Build the next system with them, not for them.
Review
Come back to what worked and what did not, and adjust from evidence.
Why middle and high school
Executive function develops fastest between roughly ages 10 and 15, and continues maturing into the mid-twenties. That timing is the problem: workload, independence, and consequences all rise through middle and high school faster than the skills for handling them arrive. Students are asked to run systems they have not built yet.
Coaching in these years is not remedial. It is scaffolding put in place while the underlying capacity is still forming.
What the research shows
Executive function coaching has been studied, and the findings are worth knowing before you spend money on it. None of the below is Telos data. It is what the published research on coaching of this kind has found.
A study of reasoning-focused executive function training in middle schoolers found gains that transferred beyond the training itself, showing up in standardized Reading, Math, Science, and Social Studies scores.
A review of 19 studies of ADHD coaching, including three randomized controlled trials, found improvements in ADHD symptoms and executive functioning, with most quantitative studies reaching statistical significance and several showing gains maintained after coaching ended.
A randomized controlled trial of cognitive behavioral therapy for college students with ADHD found medium to large effects on both ADHD symptoms and executive functioning.
Much of this literature studies students with ADHD, since that is where the research funding goes. The skills are the same ones every student needs, and a diagnosis is not required to work on them. To be clear about what we are and are not: we coach executive and study skills. We do not diagnose ADHD, and we do not provide counseling or therapy. If you are looking for either, a licensed clinician is the right place to start, and coaching can run alongside that work rather than in place of it.
Built on published work, not house theory.
Harvard Center on the Developing Child
Groups executive function into three core capacities: working memory, mental flexibility, and self-control. Describes them together as the brain's air traffic control system, managing multiple streams of information at once.
It also notes these skills keep developing through the teen years and into early adulthood, which is exactly the window in which school stops scaffolding them.
Diamond, A. (2013), Annual Review of Psychology
The most-cited review of executive function. Identifies inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility as the core executive functions from which higher-order skills like planning and reasoning are built.
Dawson and Guare, Smart but Scattered
The applied framework used by educators and coaches, breaking executive function into eleven concrete skills across a thinking and doing split. It is the vocabulary in the section above.
How coaching works
Goals and starting point
We start with a conversation about the student's classes, goals, and where they are getting stuck. An English and Math assessment is available on request to pinpoint gaps.
A plan with purpose
Telos means purpose. Every student gets a personalized plan tied to their courses and goals, tracked in TestTracker so progress is never a mystery.
Weekly maintenance
Sessions are the venue for checking in, homework support, quiz and test preparation, remediating gaps, and previewing upcoming material.
Mastery that transforms
Real understanding, not just a better grade. Students learn how to learn, gaining skills and confidence they carry into every class.
What it costs.
1:1 hourly and pay-as-you-go, with no minimum commitment. Your rate is locked when you enroll and stays unchanged for as long as you keep the service.
Executive function coaching isn't listed on the public rate table. We'll confirm the rate at your free consultation, before anything is scheduled.
Common questions.
How is this different from tutoring?
Tutoring teaches the material. Coaching builds the systems around it: planning, prioritizing, organization, and follow-through. Students who understand the content but still miss deadlines usually need the second, not more of the first.
What ages is it for?
Middle and high school students. Those are the years when workload and independence rise faster than most students' systems for handling them.
What happens in a session?
Sessions work on planning, prioritizing, and time management, then build systems for focus and follow-through that the student can run without an adult standing over them.
What does coaching cost?
Executive function coaching isn't listed on the public rate table. Bring it up at your free consultation and we'll confirm the rate for your student before anything is scheduled.
What are your affiliations and credentials?
AffiliateTutor Program
ACT's own program and directory for tutoring providers, which ACT runs in partnership with the National Test Prep Association, licensing us to use official ACT test questions in our test prep materials.
The professional association for test prep. Every member subscribes to its code of ethics, and Telos belongs as an organizational member.
Performance Specialist certification in leading performance psychologist Dr. Ben Bernstein's model for overcoming self-doubt, overwhelm, and distraction.
Start with a free consultation.
No obligation, no pressure. You leave understanding where the student stands and what a plan would look like.