The Neuroscience of Academic Success: Executive Function in the Classroom

The Neuroscience of Academic Success:  Executive     Function in the Classroom

Does your child or student suffer from anxiety and executive function? Do you wish you had a better understanding of why they suffer, and how you can ease academic stress by giving them strategies for success in the classroom? On October 19^th, at 7:00pm the Dover-Sherborn SEPAC presents Dr. Karen Postal who will speak at Chickering School in Dover. Dr. Postal is a board certified neuropsychologist and dedicated to helping people think better in school, at work, and throughout later life.

The frontal lobe and related executive network is a system in the brain that is the seat of much of what we value in successful students:  bringing us the ability to set goals, plan, organize, pay attention, memorize, and retrieve information, and modulate our emotions- including anxiety.  This is the last brain region to develop, with a growth spurt in the teenage years, and full maturity around age 21 (when most students are finished college!)

Over the past decade, a substantial body of research has developed that describes when particular executive functions develop from kindergarten to college, what makes the system work more efficiently, what dampens its function, and intriguingly, how adults can "lend children their frontal lobes," setting up homework and classroom learning structures that make studying easier, less frustrating, and more successful.

The premise of this workshop is simple:  We now know an enormous amount about how this learning system of the brain works, why not bring the information to parents and students to make learning easier and more successful?

Brief Biography:

Dr. Karen Postal is a board certified neuropsychologist with a private practice in Andover. She is the president elect of the Massachusetts Neuropsychological Society and the immediate past president of the Massachusetts Psychological Association.  Dr. Postal has many years of experience in identifying barriers to academic success, and partnering with students, families, and school districts to design educational interventions to overcome those barriers. She is the author of several peer reviewed journal articles and a book chapter in the area of memory and cognitive neuroscience, and has a book in press with the Oxford University Press on explaining complex neuropsychological results to patients and families.   She lectures widely to parents, teachers, and special education staff about how neuroscience can inform better learning techniques.

For any questions please contact Page Kolligian at pkolligian@verizon.net