Balancing Language, Academic Content Areas, and Executive Functioning (featuring Jill Fahy)

What if choosing between language and executive functioning for your students wasn't an "either/or" decision? And how can we effectively balance academic content with broader cognitive skills? It's a complex challenge, and the answer isn't always obvious.

In this episode, I share commentary and a clip of my conversation with Jill Fahy, where we discuss the impact of executive functioning skills on the college experience. 

Jill is a licensed speech-language pathologist and professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Eastern Illinois University. She is also the co-director of the Autism Center and Director of the Students with Autism Transitional Education Program, where she develops and delivers transitional programming in social skills and executive functions for college students. 

In this episode, you’ll discover:

✅ Should we work on language or executive functioning first? The answer isn’t straightforward.

✅ Balancing academic content areas and broader cognitive skills: Why both parents and professionals need to learn about executive functioning as it relates to their context. 

✅ Educating the public on cognition and evidence-based practices, and why it’s so easy for vulnerable individuals to grasp on to pseudoscience. 

✅ How to use “asset stacking” to address the need to work on multiple interconnected areas at once (e.g., content area skills, language, cognition).

You can connect with Jill via email at jkfahy@eiu.edu. You can read her article, Assessment of Executive Functions in School-Aged Children: Challenges and Solutions for the SLP from ASHA Perspectives here: https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/sbi15.4.151

You can learn more about the Students Transitional Education Program at Eastern Illinois University here: https://www.eiu.edu/step/ and the Autism Center here: https://www.eiu.edu/autismcenter/

In this episode, I mention the School of Clinical Leadership, my program for related service providers who want to take a leadership role in implementing executive functioning support. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/efleadership

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