Solution

Solution

At THE TORVUS GROUP, we assembled a group of renowned educators and scientists to devise a program that provides students with the opportunity to become better learners, achieve greater academic success, and be more prepared to compete and succeed in a knowledge-based, global economy. Learn more about the course development here.

What is Managing Me?

Managing Me is an executive function and self-management program that was developed in 2016 and has been successfully utilized in select southern California schools for years. It is a comprehensive and integrated program that uses reflection, collaboration, and real-life application of skills to help students build and cement their understanding of the executive function and self-management techniques necessary to become a more motivated and productive learner. The curriculum engages parents and teachers in this process through frequent communication to ensure that at school and at home, each adult knows how to support children in becoming the best versions of themselves. The program is designed to help students reach their potential and overcome educational achievement gaps and recent COVID-19 learning gaps – which would help to address racial and income disparities, improve countless lives and save the United States hundreds of billions of dollars.

Why an executive function and self-management program? 

For students to reach their full potential, it is crucial that they develop the executive function and self-regulation skills necessary to become engaged and successful learners. These are the mental processes that enable individuals to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, juggle multiple tasks successfully, and control impulses.

But children are not born with these skills—and not every child has developed these skills to the same extent when they arrive in a classroom or learning environment. In addition, these skills are not explicitly taught in most schools in the United States, unless a student is identified with a specific learning challenge. This means that students who do not learn executive function and self-regulation skills outside of school are likely to struggle in school – and also likely to have problems setting and achieving goals in several aspects of their lives.

Ultimately, it is essential to teach children the foundational skills that enable them to become motivated and productive learners. For instance, society prioritizes success in math, so schools teach math. If society would like to prioritize success in learning, then there should be a class that teaches students how to learn.

Why this executive function and self-management program? 

In researching and brainstorming how to create a large-scale educational intervention that unlocks students’ full potential, we asked students, teachers, school counselors, school administrators, and extremely accomplished learners, “What can help students to become better learners?”

The responses were extremely consistent. They emphasized executive function, self-regulation, and additional skills sometimes missing in other programs. From here, we created TEMPO, the cornerstone of what makes Managing Me a comprehensive program.

  • Training the Brain (including study habits, self-control, and mindfulness)
  • Executive Functioning Skills (including planning, prioritizing, and time management)
  • Mindset (including growth mindset and grit)
  • Preparation
  • Organization

The program is also designed to be engaging for students and user friendly for teachers.

Why middle school?

In middle school, students are dealing with significant developmental changes – while suddenly being expected to know how to organize lockers, transition between multiple classrooms and multiple teachers, manage an increase in workload and in intellectual demands, and more.

The delivery of TEMPO skills during this critical stage of development provides much needed direction to students navigating a critical academic transition, and thus sets the stage for greater academic success over the course of their lives.

Please note that we are currently expanding to a K-12 program.

While researching “when” young students would initially benefit the most from this concentrated infusion of TEMPO skills, we asked school professionals, “Who needs this the most?” The responses varied but middle school was identified as a critical transition point.

While researching “when” young students would initially benefit the most from this concentrated infusion of TEMPO skills, we asked school professionals, “Who needs this the most?” The responses varied but middle school was identified as a critical transition point.

What do the experts say?

Renowned educational institutions and educators, as well as new research – support that improving executive function and self-regulation skills has the potential to fundamentally influence student achievement. In addition, a systemic intervention to improve these skills has the potential to help students in the United States to overcome longstanding educational achievement gaps and recent COVID-19 learning gaps.

Executive function and self-regulation are not explicitly taught in U.S. schools, which means many students will struggle.

Difficulties with executive function really set kids up to fail in school. If you imagine a nation with a generation of children who had not learned how to read, that’s how serious it is to not have good executive function skills.

Professor Stephanie Carlson,
University of Minnesota’s Institute of
Child Development

Executive function and self-regulation skills are crucial for learning and development.

Just as an air traffic control system at a busy airport safely manages the arrivals and departures of many aircraft on multiple runways, the brain needs this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses.

The Harvard University Center
on the Developing Child

Executive function, an important collection of attention-regulation skills, is malleable in childhood.

Boosting executive function among disadvantaged children in middle childhood may help close the achievement gap between them and their better-off peers.

2020 policy brief from the UC Davis Center for Policy

Prominent educational institutions and educators are publicly endorsing
programs that teach executive function and self-regulation skills.