Over the past few years, teachers have expressed concerns (and frustrations) about students’ lack of executive functioning skills. They complain on numerous Reddit forums about children being unable to switch focus from one task to another or organize themselves effectively. Of the 28 teachers from the Miles River Middle School and Hamilton-Wenham High School interviewed, 61% believed that they saw a decline in students’ executive functioning skills.
Despite the huge disparity between responses, many of the teachers had similar reasons for why this may have occurred. Seven teachers directly attributed it to the “post-COVID” landscape, a period marked by remote learning, social distancing, and increased reliance on technology, and 17 teachers mentioned seeing executive functioning skills fluctuate when technology was introduced to schools.
“I don’t know if I’d say that it’s a decline in executive functioning skills. I’ve noticed the impact of technology. There’s definitely a correlation, in my opinion, [and] it’s become more difficult,” said Tyler Walker, 8th-grade Civics teacher.
7th grade math teacher Laura Irwin said there was “a decrease, but I’d also say just a change in general. I think – especially the past few years since Covid – with technology so available, students are quick to rely on it.” However, Irwin also spoke of the benefits of technology, saying, “There is so much practice that students can do now online; [there are] so many different topics and interactive materials they can use.”
In addition, Hamilton-Wenham has added things to help support children who struggle with executive functioning skills. Tiered support systems and class time, or even adding hyperlinks to Google Docs, can assist students. Breanne Sette, an 11th-grade Humanities teacher and 9th-grade English teacher, said she pays special attention to the aesthetic structure of her worksheets. “I’ll look at things I made five years ago and think, ‘That’s so ugly!’ I feel a little embarrassed that I made them.”
Although many teachers in Hamilton-Wenham say COVID-19 and lockdown had an adverse effect on children, Lydia Austin, a 7th-grade English teacher at Miles River, believed otherwise, saying she felt “the pandemic, in a lot of ways, really did damage to kids’ progress in school skills, but in some ways, it didn’t…some kids just really need[ed] a lot of support and [were] still developing their executive functioning skills and the pandemic was like a nightmare for them. But for other kids who, all of a sudden, had to really develop those skills out of necessity, and I think it stuck.”
While educators may not agree on the cause of the decline in executive functioning skills in the Hamilton-Wenham school district, the district has clearly been making strides to support students.
