Valerie Sharpe - The executive function guidebook : strategies to help all students achieve success

• ROBERTA STROSNIDER
• VALERIE SAXTON SHARPE

Visit the companion website at http://resources.corwin.com/ExecutiveFunctioning for downloadable resources such as blank templates, modifiable versions of materials, and strategy cards.

We have had a variety of experiences in our teaching careers from P12 to college-level teaching. Most of our professional lives have been spent in school settings where students were having success; however, some students were not finding success. It was the latter for whom we first saw a need for executive function skill training.

We first had the opportunity to develop and teach executive function training skills to P12 students through a program we developed, Project Boost. Many people were responsible for helping us make Project Boost happen. We would like to thank Jim Strosnider for his dedicated work as financial officer of Project Boost as well as teaching at the camps. We thank all of our teachers including Kim Hale, Kristy Sharpe, and Kelly Sharpe for helping prepare for and teaching at Project Boost. Kim and Kelly continued to teach at every camp and provided planning for and executive function training throughout the year to students. We would be remiss if we did not mention that Kendall Hale attended every camp offered and assisted in teaching many of the skills. We thank Sophie and Brinkley Strosnider and Kendall and Jay Hale for the helpful videos they made to demonstrate their use of strategies they learned in Project Boost.

A special thank you goes out to Hannah and the Smith family for being our first student and family we worked with on executive functions. Hannahs success and their ongoing support were instrumental in our search for how to effectively teach executive function skills.

We thank Friends School, Hood College, Park School, our campers, teachers, and all those associated with Project Boost for giving us an opportunity to offer this program. It would not have been possible without the generous support from friends, family, and organizations such as Green-Walled Garden Club, P. Buckley Moss Foundation, and Leah Johnson with the Frederick County Child Advocacy Center for help with raising money for scholarships.

We thank our teacher candidates and graduate students at Hood College, Towson University, and Frostburg State University who were trained in and continue to teach executive function skills in their classrooms. We are grateful for your continuing to collaborate with us and allowing us to be a part of your classroom experience. Also, a special thank you to Kim Hale for making us part of her teaching experience in an ongoing partnership.

We have many colleagues and friends who have been instrumental in our successful completion of this book. We especially want to thank Dr. Debi Gartland for her years of belief in and promotion of our work. We thank Ms. Kirsten McBride, who guided and encouraged us to see our goal of writing this book to fruition. We thank Frostburg State University and Dr. Jamey Tobery-Nystrom for the opportunity to develop and offer a course in teaching Executive Function Methods. We appreciate the collaboration and encouragement we received from Dr. Steven Feifer, Dr. Oma Gail Simmons, and Ms. Jen Weaver for their collaboration and encouragement. We also thank all of the Corwin reviewers.