Sarah Ward and Dr. Jessica Minahan

What’s the relationship between executive function and anxiety? Two distinguished experts, Sarah Ward and Jessica Minahan, are coming together to discuss executive function and anxiety and offer practical strategies for improving student success across the board. They will combine their expertise to help participants learn the best ways to build skills that reduce anxiety and improve their executive functioning, self-monitoring and task initiation.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 31.9% of adolescents aged 13–18 in the United States have an anxiety disorder. Overworked and overwhelmed adults require a new approach and need a practical and easy-to-implement toolkit of strategies that work.

Negative, inaccurate and overwhelming thoughts can contribute to disengagement and withdrawal. Traditional suggestions such as creating incentives, offering breaks or using a graphic organizer or checklists will not help the student initiate an activity. Rather, practical strategies that specifically target improvement in accurate perception, self-monitoring, self-regulation are essential. Here is a way to teach these skills without causing student dependence.

Join us and discover easy to implement preventive tools, new approaches and interventions for helping students thrive.

Sarah Ward, MS CCC-SLP has over 25 years of experience in the assessment and treatment of executive function skills. A recognized authority on executive function skills, she has conducted numerous presentations at international and national conferences and has consulted with over 1400 schools on the strategies she has developed.  Her 360 Thinking Executive Function Program received the Innovative Promising Practices Award from the National Organization CHADD.

Jessica Minahan, MEd, BCBA, is a licensed and board-certified behavior analyst, special educator, as well as a consultant to schools internationally. Jessica has over seventeen years of experience supporting students in urban public-school systems who exhibit challenging behavior. She is the co-author of “The Behavior Code: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students” and author of “The Behavior Code Companion: Strategies, Tools, and Interventions for Supporting Students with Anxiety-Related or Oppositional Behaviors.”