In this episode of Stress-Free IEP®, Frances Shefter speaks with Laurie Chester, Academic Life Coach with Get it Done, ABC, LLC. Based in Northern Virginia, Laurie has been coaching for 20 years. Laurie primarily works with high school students to help them keep on track with their school work and goals. She works with local students in person and virtually with students from other parts of the country.
Tune in to the episode for these key takeaways:
What coaching is and how it differs from other support systems
How Laurie helps students set realistic goals and how to accomplish them
Executive functioning skills — what is it and how does coaching help?
The importance of fostering students’ self-advocacy
Frances Shefter is an Education Attorney and Advocate who is committed to helping her clients have a Stress-Free IEP® experience. In each podcast, Frances interviews inspiring people to share information, educate you, empower you and help you get the knowledge you need.
VOICEOVER: (00:00:04): Welcome to Stress-Free IEP®. You do not need to do it all alone with your host, Frances Shefter, Principal of Shafter Law. You can get more details and catch prior episodes at www.shefterlaw.com. The Stress-Free IEP® video podcast is also posted on YoutTube and LinkedIn and you can listen to episodes through Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and more. Now, here’s the host of Stress-Free IEP®, Frances Shefter.
Frances Shefter: (00:00:40): Hello, everyone and welcome to the show. Today’s special guest is Laurie Chester who is an ADHD academic and life coach with Get it done, ABC. Laurie, why don’t you say hello and introduce yourself a little bit to the audience.
Laurie Chester: (00:00:57): Hello. I’m very glad to be here today to share a little bit about what I do. As a coach, I am located in Northern Virginia and I’ve been coaching for about 20 years now.
Frances Shefter: (00:01:12): What is coaching because, you know, everybody says they’re a coach and they can coach you and coach you. But, what, what does that mean?
Laurie Chester: (00:01:19): Well, coaching is I first off like to point out that coaching is different from therapy And the coaching while therapy is kind of designed to figure out how you got to now and you know what your, your background is, what’s happened in the past. Coaching is about helping clients figure out where they wanna go and how to get there. Coaching is a collaborative process. I am not an authority figure. I am just somebody to be a support person and to help guide people to where they wanna go and whether it’s in life with life coaching or academics, with people who are still in school. It involves a lot of me asking questions and, and trying to help clients increase their self-awareness of what their strengths are most importantly, but also where they might need some help and some support to shore up those weaknesses, their weaknesses.
Frances Shefter: (00:02:31): So how does that work with in the academic setting? Because, you know, like I know, I remember when I was in high school, who knew where we wanted to be and what we wanted to do?
Laurie Chester: (00:02:40): Right. Right. And, and when I worked with young people, you know, middle school, high school, I emphasize with them that I I kind of I empathize with them and say, you know, I get that there’s pressure on you to figure out what you wanna do when you’re only 16 and you know, you don’t have a clue. So it’s, it’s really important to help young people kind of figure out what they like and what they don’t like and you know, what they should gravitate towards as opposed to perhaps what their parents are pushing towards and that’s, you know, that’s a fine line for me. Obviously, parents hire me and I’m, but I’m working for the student. One of the things I like to say to young people, and this is somewhat age dependent. I work with, my youngest right now is sixth grade. I do work with middle school kids, but primarily high school and older. But I like to tell them that and I warn the parents that I’m gonna say this, that part I see part of my job is helping the student to get their parents off their back. And by that, I don’t mean to, you know, downgrade parents or, you know, anything like that. But what I explained to the kids is that, you know, the parents don’t, aren’t having any more fun nagging you than you are listening to it. And my role is to kind of help parents step away from that role of monitoring where the kids’ grades are, what homeworks are missing and what the homework is and all that stuff. But I work with the student to try to help them set goals for individual classes. You know, to be realistic, you know, I preface I I use a goal sheet usually at the beginning of the year and I, that I have them fill out and I preface it by saying, I know everybody wants to, thinks they need to say they wanna have straight A’s. And if that’s what you want, that’s fine. That’s a fine goal, certainly. But I also want you to think about what’s a realistic goal. And, but then how are you going to achieve that goal? And the, this process is designed to help them think about what they need to do, what they’re gonna need to have on board in order to accomplish their goals. But then also to look at what are the potential risks of put down obstacles to you accomplishing your goals and this can be, this can be something like I’ve got two, I’ve got a lot of friends in the class and that can be a distraction or keeping up with the homework. This teacher gives a lot of homework and I need to watch out for missing assignments. So I help them try to come up with their own goals for their classes and, you know, overall their academic life, but also with a little bit of trying to get life balance in there too. You know, what are your goals outside of school?
Frances Shefter: (00:06:03): Right. I want to go back to getting your parents off your back because as a parent, I was like, wait I can pay somebody to do that. Like, I don’t want to be on my kids back. I want to play games with them. I want to have fun. I don’t want to be like, did you do your homework? Did you do this? Did you do that? You know, because it’s frustrating for them as well as me. So I, like, I’m thinking you give your, the kids more independence by helping teach them right?
Laurie Chester: (00:06:28): And, and it’s practicing using a resource, you know, I explained to them, we all use resources. You know, I don’t frankly do my gardening work because I kill plants. That’s just not my forte. So I hire somebody to help with taking care of some of my yard stuff. I have somebody, I hire somebody to cut my hair cause if I cut it, it would be silly. But so, it’s practice in using resources because some of these people, you know, they might need resource. Well, we all need resources regardless. So it’s, practice and, and independence in that realm. And as far as what I say to parents is, you know, I’m not out to disparage you at all. That’s, and, and much of what your student is going to hear from me, they will have already heard from you, but there’s a chance that they’ll listen to me because I’m not you. And, but I, I said, I do think that you get credit for it back in the recesses of their minds where they think. Hm. Maybe mom did know what she was talking about. So, it really legitimizes what you’ve been saying. But you know, the other part of it, what I say to parents too is that as, as time goes on and kids get to be, you know, in their teen years, you, you wanna be careful how you use your parenting chips and that you don’t necessarily wanna be using them looking at every homework assignment and being sure it gets done because you need to have the, the strength as a parent to step in to issues that might be much more important frankly than whether there’s a missing geometry homework. So i it’s sort of, it benefits the parent and, the student to have an outside person kind of keeping watch as much as, or a little as is necessary. I, also assure parents that if I see stuff that I’m worried about, I’ll let you know, you know, if things are tanking, you know, I may need to let you know if your student says something to me that worries me that and I explain that to parent to students as well, that I do need to share that with your parents. But otherwise if you need to come into my office or our Zoom meeting and say a few things about how your parents are driving you crazy. It’s not going to go any further than me.
Frances Shefter: (00:9:18): So it’sbuilding that trust.
Laurie Chester: (00:9:21): Yeah, exactly.
Frances Shefter: (00:9:22): When you were talking about setting the academic goals I’m assuming you help them make realistic because, like, somebody might have a goal of getting straight A’s and being the star of the football team but can’t throw a football or catch a football at all and is maybe not quite as bright as a straight A student. Although I don’t totally believe that because I think everybody could get straight A’s. So, do you talk through like, what the reality of that is?
Laurie Chester: (00:9:50): Yeah. And I think the, ok, how are you going to get to that goal is where we can do that is what’s your first, what are the steps and of those steps? What is the first thing that you need to do to be able to throw that football? Ok. Well, I, I need to practice, ok, so how do you do that? Do you, can you practice alone or do you need to have somebody there that you’re throwing the football back and forth or somebody who can teach you how to throw it? So kind of breaking down and sometimes, you know, coaching is about helping asking powerful questions so that the client comes up with an answer that doesn’t mean that I don’t make suggestions and put out, you know, a menu of ideas if, if it comes to that, if they’re struggling to find an answer well, maybe this or that and what, do you think of those things and, and we might sort of analyze those. So, yeah, we try to bring it to a, an attainable place by looking at the steps involved in getting there.
Frances Shefter: (00:11:04): Right. Because there’s only so many hours in the day.
Laurie Chester: (00:11:07): Right. And, you know, and I absolutely have people who are, you know, who are strong writers but have a lot of trouble in math or vice versa. And that maybe having, you know, the A, as a goal if it’s, you know, a precalc class, and your history is not terribly strong in math that, you know, that might, might be not easily achievable. But then there’s also the, if you really want that, what, do you need to do to get there? Well, ok, I need to go to this, the teacher’s office hours. Maybe I need a tutor, you know, that kind of thing.
Frances Shefter: (00:11:52): It reminds me of in college. I remember one semester, a professor saying you’re gonna, most of you, you’re gonna all get C’s in my class. And I was, no, I’m gonna get that B and I worked my butt off and I got that B but I got C’s in all my other classes because I put so much time into that one class and it’s like, oops, you know, maybe I should have spread it out a little, took the C and got B’s in everything else, but it’s time management. Right. And finding that balance.
Laurie Chester: (00:12:19): So when I meet with the client, we look at you know, how they, the first quarter grades have just come out for, for most of my kids. And so we will be looking at, you know, so how are you feeling about these grades? Where, what went well, what, what didn’t go so well so that we can then set set goals for the next marking period or for the rest of the semester to try to accomplish what you wanna do.
Frances Shefter: (00:12:48): That makes sense and then, you know, executive functioning skills, that’s like everybody’s talking about executive functioning skills, executive functioning skills, you know, how do you teach executive, what are executive functioning skills? So how does coaching help with that? Like what the for people that don’t understand what executive functioning skills, how would you define those?
Laurie Chester: (00:13:07): I define them as kind of being the, the the dashboard of your life. First of all, I introduce them by with a little bit of brain science, which is, you know, your brain develops from the back to the front, the front is the last thing this part behind your forehead is the last to develop. And that’s where the majority of these things called the executive functioning skills take place. And, you know, we used to think that those executive functioning skills in that part of the brain was fully developed by, you know, early adolescents. But with noninvasive imaging that we’ve been able to do for the last what, 20-30 years, what we’ve learned is that that part of the brain isn’t completely developed until upwards of 25 to 30. So, you know, when you hear the term, somebody was a late bloomer, you know, that’s probably part of what was going on was that the frontal lobe hadn’t come on board fully until later. You know, people with ADHD are said to run as much as 30% behind developmentally. So there, you know, your 16 year old may be trying to manage executive skills, intensive tasks with a brain that’s really more like a 13-14 year old and that can be helpful to parents to help them understand. Then I kind of outline the things that I consider to be executive functioning skills. I’m not an expert in that. And then there are depending on who you talk to. You know, there’s 6,12,20 executive functioning skills, but I kind of focus on the time management, organizing, planning, and prioritizing working memory, observation skills, stress tolerance, task initiation, which is a huge one And, and, well, yes, that’s true. But it, the, the initiating part is, is what leads to procrastination and putting things off. So, that’s the one, the task initiation is, is an issue that I see across all ages. that as being the most common. So II, I try to explain it to them to say, you know, so see if you and I have them, when I first start working with somebody, I will have them do an an assessment on their executive skills just to get their read on it. And depending on their age, I also typically have the parents do an executive skills assessment on the kid. And it, it’s interesting sometimes to see where the parent says they’re strong and, or weak especially and the, the kid is like, I’m good across the board. But then things might come to light as we’re getting to know each other and work together that OK, so, this is, you know, I see you have a lot of papers that aren’t put anywhere, they’re just stuffed into your binder. These are organization skills and let’s walk through how to keep, how to manage your paper load. Less of an issue now than it was 10 years ago, but it, but paper is still management is still an issue for some
Frances Shefter: (00:16:45): Tt’s just now electronic paper, right? Yeah, so then like I know you say you work mainly with the kids. How do you help the parent, you know, like I’m thinking about it as coming from the parent side of, I’ve hired an expert to work with my child. How do you let the parent know what progress and what you’re working on? Does that make sense?
Frances Shefter: (00:17:06): You know? It’s interesting. It, it depends a lot on what, how much the parents want to know there are some parents of kids that I work with that I have very little contact with actually. I’m very upfront at the beginning. I don’t guarantee grades. I can’t make them do the work, , and I can’t make them do it correctly into whatever teachers specifications might be some people I will send an email update every week after I see somebody just to give them an idea of what we worked on and what I’m seeing. It’s kind of student dependent and, and parent demand dependent.
Frances Shefter: (00:17:52): Yeah, that makes sense because sometimes, you know, you hire the professional, like that’s why we outsource that you said with the planting, I kill plants. I used to when I lived in Florida. You know, my mom, I would bring a half dead, you know, plant that was almost dead to my mom and switch it out for a live one and she’d bring it back to life and then I switch, it would look like I could keep, keep a plant alive. But mom was doing it. So it’s just, you know, how much do you want to be involved and what do you want to be doing?
Laurie Chester: (00:18:16): Yeah, there’s, some of that now. I had, I had a girl, I was working with a number of years ago. I think she was in ninth grade in a, in a large public school at the time. And I remember her telling me that I got a text message from my mom during my history class. She had been on power school and had found that I was missing this assignment and she sent me a screenshot of it. And I said to her mom, you can’t be doing this while I’m in school. And so, I mean, that was an instance where I very delicately talked to the mom and said, I’m watching this and if I see stuff that, you know, you really need to know, I will let you know. But I, I ask of you that you work on stepping back from that because she was checking power school like every day, multiple times a day, that kind of thing. She was really very into it and she was very receptive and I was, I was delicate in my presentation. But and she did back, back down and back off a little bit, which helped her relationship with her daughter. And her daughter did just fine. She’s a sophomore at University of Tennessee now. So, you know, she got through high school just fine and she’s doing fine.
Frances Shefter: (00:19:44): I mean, it’s hard as a parent because you want to make sure your daughter, you know, your children are doing well, , and everything’s happening but, you know, it’s gotta let them learn to fly on their own and if we don’t do it while they’re living in our home, what’s going to happen when they go away to college? Right.
Laurie Chester: (00:20:02): There’s also this interesting and I don’t know if there’s actually real science behind this, but just sort of observationally there’s this interesting developmental leap that kids seem to take kind of between or between sophomore and junior year of high school or during junior year. And I call it something that I won’t repeat here, but I call it the, oh, darn it year and, , the, oh, darn it year is junior year when you realize oh, darn it, I only have one more year of high school. I need to get my stuff together and figure this out. And there does seem to be a shift in, in kids sort of during that junior year period or, and certainly relative to sophomore year. And I think it’s a, it’s a executive functioning, a frontal lobe development.
Frances Shefter: (00:21:04): Yeah, which makes sense because if you look back at developmental milestones like, when I was a teacher and stuff and I remember in first grade kid, you know, a child can’t read, can’t read, can’t read. And then all of a sudden they’re reading like crazy because that switch, you know, like, just all of a sudden it connects and they get it. And so that’s probably what’s happening, you know, in high school because I know it’s also happened to all of us in law school. It’s like you couldn’t understand what the teachers wanted and then you just take your exams. It’s like, oh, that’s how we do law.
Laurie Chester: (00:21:33): Which is, you know, that’s another thing that is important to remember with students and something that I say to them. And remind parents of sometimes that, you know, when a student gets, especially to high school, they’re now working for seven bosses. None of us are working for seven bosses that have different rules and different expectations and, and you’re spending x amount of time with them every other day in most cases in a block scheduling kind of format and that it takes time at the beginning of the school year, like this first quarter, it takes time for the student to get the hang of how each teacher operates. And as I’m sure it’s the same for the teacher as well as how getting a feel for, for their students. But the student has to get a feel for how the teacher grades, how, what their expectations are, like what their demands are, how flexible they are and all of that, how quickly they update the grade book, you know, all those things and that is something that I work on with, with the students is reminding them that, you know, so, that’s just the way this teacher is or in for my college students. That’s the way this professor is. And, but I can almost guarantee you that if you reach out to them for help, they will be receptive and they would much rather hear from you as 9th grader than hear from your parent that it’s better for you to be working on that. So, self advocacy is another kind of adjunct thing that we work on for some kids. I have a current 10th grade guy who is an awesome email writer. Conversely, I have 7th grade girl who drafted an email to a teacher about a missing assignment recently and I said before you send it, would you read it back to me? She had no salutation. She just was, I don’t know what happened to such and such. Can I get another copy? And then, and that was it? So working on? Ok, we need to change the wording a little bit, you know, add a dear. So we say, you know, always, always say Thank you. And you know, working on some of those skills as well that go along with, with growing up.
Frances Shefter: (00:24:11): The basic skills that, that you don’t, you know, you don’t think about that kids need to be taught that, you know, like I, I do a lot of work in the abuse and neglect system in DC and the foster carers and, , well, also Montgomery County, but that’s personal side. It just, you know, I’ve heard social workers say, well, they’re 18, they should know how to do that. And I’m like, really, who taught them that, you know, and it’s that reality check of and it’s, it’s the same with our kids even that aren’t in the abuse and neglect system and all kids, most families now are two working, you know, both parents are working. We don’t have the time to sit them down and be like, oh, this is what you need to do and this is how you do it. This is the language you should use. So you are able to step in and help with that.
Laurie Chester: (00:24:58): Yeah. And I, and I do do that with some frequency. I have a college student who’s a, who’s a senior at JMU and, she has a difficult sociology class that she’s in and that’s not her major and she had a, another test coming up and she’s in the C range with her grade. And she is afraid to go see him during office hours. So I said I have suggested over the last few weeks, how about you just email him? You know, he’ll either answer or he won’t. It takes away that sort of personal fear of rejection a little bit. And she, and then after our call, you know, I said, ok, when are you gonna do it? I’ll do it today. And I said, and I’d like to hear from you after you’ve done that. So that we build in a little accountability piece there and she did email him and he was helpful and she did well on the test, she got an 85 on the test. So, yeah, so it, you know, not to belabor the self advocacy point. But I think it’s, it’s really a lot of what I do with students is really when it comes down to it, these are life skills, things that are gonna be important for them no matter what they do in life, both in their personal lives and professional lives.
Frances Shefter: (00:26:35): Right? And it’s, you know, I know for me doing the self adequacy, like builds self confidence, you know, because it’s like you’re so afraid to do it, so afraid to do it. Just the same thing as procrastination of things. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it. Once you’ve done it, it’s like, oh wait, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it was like I can do this and then it just makes it gets easier.
Laurie Chester: (00:26:55): So when we identify some of those executive functioning skill deficits, that somebody might have, there are strategies that I will kind of put on and I don’t know if it may be a crookedly worn coaching hat and share some strategies that can be helpful. And one of the strategies that I share with kids on task initiation is trying to, trying to use what I call a 10 or 15 minute burst, which is committing yourself to doing it, whatever it is just for 10 minutes, you only have to do it for 10 minutes, set a timer, whatever works, but you only have to do it for 10 minutes. And, you know, somebody might say, well, I know it’s gonna take me a lot longer than that. And I said, well, it might, yeah, but the point is you’re not getting, you’re not able to get yourself to do it right now. So maybe if you put it chunk it into a piece by time or, you know, I’m only gonna do five problems on the 20 page homework sheet. that, that will get you started. And I said the little trick to this is that very often once you get started, the 10 minutes goes by and you look at and the, the buzzer goes off and you think? Oh, well, I only have another 10 problems to do. I, I might as well keep going and you’re more likely to keep going and accomplish the task.
Frances Shefter: (00:28:28): Right. That’s my uncle used to say that 99% of working out is getting yourself to the gym. You know, because, like, once you’re there but, you know, that’s it and it’s the same thing. Once you start, it’s the starting. That I know for me also with procrastinating stuff, it’s the starting that gives me the anxiety and stress. And then once I start, it’s like, oh OK, and then finishing is much easier. So I see where that helps.
Laurie Chester: (00:28:53): And the same, the same can be true with, with organizing. I had a girl once years ago who was incredibly disorganized and the papers in her backpack were like, all over the place, but she was very anxious about throwing anything away or, or doing anything about it. So we would, we did a10 pieces of paper limit. We’ll just handle 10 pieces of paper and that’s all.
Frances Shefter: (00:29:24): chunking. Yeah. We call the IPS chunking.
Laurie Chester: (00:29:27): That’s what she was able to do. And that’s so that’s what we did. We didn’t make a whole lot of progress very quickly, but it at least started to contain the issue.
Frances Shefter: (00:29:38): And yeah, and that’s the thing. It’s, you know, progress quickly. They know, a lot of times parents might, and, you know, the kids themselves might have expectations that are not realistic when it comes to that because sometimes, you know, a little bit of progress goes a long way and you don’t realize it, that it takes time to build. So when you work with clients, is it like, you know, is it like a six month and a year? Four years, what is the time period usually?
Laurie Chester: (00:30:02): You know, it’s very, very individual dependent. I have an adult that I’ve been working with, I think for about 11 years. And, you know, we have not solved some of her issues. But the, what another part of coaching that’s important to remember is that coaching provides accountability. And I had a, a girl a number of years ago who I had worked with, I think I started working with her in eighth grade and at the end of junior year, I was still working with her. I said, to her and she was one who I didn’t have much contact with the parents. I remember saying to her at the end of the school year, you know, I’m just trying to get an idea. But do you think you wanna return? Do you wanna work with me next year? For senior year and she kind of was puzzled by the question and she said, well, if you’ll have me and I said, Well, of course, I’ll have you. I’d love to keep working with you. But I said, I don’t think you need me anymore. And she said, she thought for a minute, she said, well, but she said, you know what? I know every week when I come here, I know what you’re gonna ask me. I know what I said I was going to do and so I always take time to be sure that I have either done what I said, I was gonna do that. I will be able to answer your questions. And she said that really helps keep me on track. So same with my adult, it’s like sometimes she can’t get stuff done on her own. Sometimes she does it do things during one of our calls, she’ll write an email or, or send a text that she’s been putting off on the call because she just needed that, that body double aspect of coaching. But a lot of it is an accountability piece. So I do have people that I work with for maybe six months and we kind of go through things. I give them some strategies on time management, explain time blocking, maybe some stuff on organization, taught, task initiation, et cetera and study skills, which I also will work on with kids. And then they go on their merry way other kids I might work with throughout high school in part because I’m filling that space that maybe the parents aren’t able to do right now for whatever the reason is. So it can be a short or long term process.
Frances Shefter: (00:32:53): That makes sense. It’s just, and it’s interesting that she said, you know, will you have me? Because it would immediately came to my mind is that when kids have IEPs and they start doing really well and sometimes schools will try to take the IEPs away. And I’ve heard parents with that all the time and I’m like, they’re doing well because they have the supports in place. If you take them away, they are going to fail. And it’s that argument and I usually put it to, that’s like saying, ok, the person in the wheelchair can now get from A to B so they don’t need the wheelchair anymore, you know, and that’s the thing. It’s like, so with coaching, it’s the, you need that extra accountability and that extra checking in and making sure that’s understandable.
Laurie Chester: (00:33:35): There’s a lot of what I do that is very repetitive you know, that we do, we do the same thing at the beginning of the session, you know, for the, you know, a after we get through the few minutes of what have you been up to? What did you do over the weekend? You know, that kind of stuff. But it’s pretty, it becomes predictable. And the goal behind that is that I’m modeling what I hope they will start to do at home, which is usually looking at their grade book, looking at their portal and figuring out what they need to do and when they need to do it, there’s an interesting piece to the homework on the school’s portals and that is that I always pull up if it’s possible, depending on the school’s portal. I pull up the calendar view of their work because I wanna give the student a chance to, see time because they have very poor sense of, of time and the passage of time. So if you tell somebody on a Monday that it’s not due till Friday or next Monday, that’s like so far in the future, it’s off their radar. But if they look at it in as a series of days on a calendar and they say, oh, I have, I have two away games on Tuesday and Thursday and, oh, I’m in a tournament this weekend or we’re going to visit our grandparents that weekend. I won’t be able to, oh, I really better start it tomorrow because the long term planning.
Frances Shefter: (00:35:15): Which makes sense. It’s, you know, I know my daughter will be like, well, it’s not due till Friday. I’m like, yes, but on Thursday you have this and on Wednesday you have this and on Tuesday you have that and then she’s like, oh, so let’s do a little bit now and a little bit tomorrow and, and then she’s like, oh, ok. You know, she fights me sometimes but then she’ll, you know, realize, like, oh, it’s Friday and it’s not done, you know? So, like, I guess I can turn it on Monday and work all weekend, which is no fun.
Laurie Chester: (00:35:39): Which nobody wants to do. Exactly.
Frances Shefter: (00:35:42): I want to touch on a little bit and I don’t know if it’s, we can a little bit but, like, I know COVID impacted these kids so much and, you know, every age level, every grade, every, you know, it’s, they missed out on this or they missed out on that and they missed out on that. Do you see a big difference in, you know, our kids in their needs of learning this stuff due to the COVID era?
Laurie Chester: (00:36:08): It, you know, it’s very hard for me to put my finger on it. But yes, I definitely see an impact and I especially, well, because of the age group that I work with it kind of eliminates the younger kids to, to an extent. But the transition from high school to college for some kids has been especially difficult because they missed a big hunk of high school, especially if they were in a school system or at a school that stayed virtual pretty much for a full year and a couple of months. , they forgot how to be students, to a degree. And, and so when they got back to being students, their focus really, I think was to at least to some extent was trying to figure out how to be social again and how to, you know, most of them have pods of friends that they still saw, but very different from being in the kind of constant social milieu of high school and, and interacting with teachers and managing expectations, some of which were lowered pretty low and then brought back up and it’s been hard for them to stair step back to the, the higher level of expectation. So I work now with, I have far more college students than I used to have. And I think that’s very much a result of missed learning during high school.
Frances Shefter: (00:37:46): Which makes sense. Yeah, you only have so much brain power and, you know, trying to do the academic and the executive functioning and the social and all of that, it makes it hard. So having somebody help you organize and just think through makes a lot of sense.
Laurie Chester: (00:38:02): Right. And you know that having to, you know, simply get up at a certain time, get dressed and get out of the house. Those deals, you know, those are big deals when you could no longer stay in your pajamas and sit on your bed.
Frances Shefter: (00:38:18): Roll out of bed, you know.
Laurie Chester: (00:38:19): Like a big switch. And speaking of getting out of bed, that’s one of the things that I do advocate with parents, you know, I don’t make it my business to tell them what to do. But one thing I will tell them suggests that they do strongly is not be the responsible for getting their kids out of bed in the morning. At least by the time they graduate from high school that it’s a huge life skill that kids need to figure out a way to get up, whether it takes five alarm clocks or, you know, an atomic bomb alarm clock which does exist. We owned one once and because that will be the downfall of kids when they get both to college and beyond. I have adults that I work with that struggle with getting up. It can it jeopardize jobs and, and, and you’re standing in this place?
Frances Shefter: (00:39:21): Right. That totally makes sense. This has been so awesome and amazing. So how can people I know you said you’re in northern Virginia and you have an office? Do you only service clients in that area or?
Laurie Chester: (00:39:31): No, I actually, I, I work with college students now virtually, you know, I’ve got somebody in Michigan and somebody in Tennessee and somebody in Pennsylvania. I have a high school girl from Pennsylvania. So, you know what COVID did do for me was that it forced me into the virtual world. And so I see some local kids I see in person but otherwise I do work virtually. So I can meet with, with students on Zoom usually. And I usually ask for access to their, their school portal so I can see what they are doing. But I have students who are in school in DC and in northern Virginia, I don’t have anybody in Maryland right now. I haven’t had a lot of Maryland. Well, as Virginians don’t, don’t cross into Maryland either. So we don’t want to, it’s a strange phenomenon but it does exist all the
Frances Shefter: (00:40:33): People that grew up here. I really get it. We’ll all go to DC. But Virginia and Maryland?
Laurie Chester: (00:40:37): Yeah, it’s a different story. Right. But with, with virtual platforms available now it’s, it’s a little bit different.
Frances Shefter: (00:40:45): That makes sense. And how can people reach you? I know we’re going to have some of the stuff in the show notes. But just for those, our listeners now, how can people reach out to you to get, you know, if they want to find out more, if they want to start services with you?
Laurie Chester: (00:40:56): The, the best ways to reach me? I no longer at this juncture, have a website unfortunately. But, , is by email, which is m my business name. GetitdoneABC@ comcast.net or by cell, either text or phone,, 703-819-5829. Those are the two best ways to, to reach me. Oftentimes I’m a school’s academic center or support services may well have me on a list somewhere and some of the local psychologists who do testing are also familiar with me. So, and with, and with coaches in, in general. So if not me, then somebody else who’s also been trained, I have done specific training in ADHD coaching. So that’s a kind of a, a niche. But, , basically what, what you do with somebody who has ADHD is relevant to somebody who doesn’t, it’s not, it’s life skills. Exactly.
Frances Shefter: (00:42:07): Exactly. This has been so wonderful, Laurie. Thank you so much for being on the show and for sharing all of your wealth of information with our listeners.
Laurie Chester: (00:42:15): Well, thank you, Frances for having me. It’s been a pleasure
VOICEOVER: (00:42:20): You’ve been listening to Stress-Free IEP® with your host, Frances Shefter. Remember you do not need to do it all alone. You can reach Frances through www.shefterlaw.com where prior episodes are also posted. Thank you for your positive reviews, comments and sharing the show with others through YouTube, LinkedIn Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and more.
Coaching Students to Academic Success with Laurie Chester
Stress-Free IEP® with Frances Shefter, Episode 38
In this episode of Stress-Free IEP®, Frances Shefter speaks with Laurie Chester, Academic Life Coach with Get it Done, ABC, LLC. Based in Northern Virginia, Laurie has been coaching for 20 years. Laurie primarily works with high school students to help them keep on track with their school work and goals. She works with local students in person and virtually with students from other parts of the country.
Tune in to the episode for these key takeaways:
Learn more about Laurie Chester:
Stress-Free IEP®:
Frances Shefter is an Education Attorney and Advocate who is committed to helping her clients have a Stress-Free IEP® experience. In each podcast, Frances interviews inspiring people to share information, educate you, empower you and help you get the knowledge you need.
Watch more episodes of Stress-Free IEP®:
Connect and learn more from your host, Frances Shefter:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
VOICEOVER: (00:00:04): Welcome to Stress-Free IEP®. You do not need to do it all alone with your host, Frances Shefter, Principal of Shafter Law. You can get more details and catch prior episodes at www.shefterlaw.com. The Stress-Free IEP® video podcast is also posted on YoutTube and LinkedIn and you can listen to episodes through Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and more. Now, here’s the host of Stress-Free IEP®, Frances Shefter.
Frances Shefter: (00:00:40): Hello, everyone and welcome to the show. Today’s special guest is Laurie Chester who is an ADHD academic and life coach with Get it done, ABC. Laurie, why don’t you say hello and introduce yourself a little bit to the audience.
Laurie Chester: (00:00:57): Hello. I’m very glad to be here today to share a little bit about what I do. As a coach, I am located in Northern Virginia and I’ve been coaching for about 20 years now.
Frances Shefter: (00:01:12): What is coaching because, you know, everybody says they’re a coach and they can coach you and coach you. But, what, what does that mean?
Laurie Chester: (00:01:19): Well, coaching is I first off like to point out that coaching is different from therapy And the coaching while therapy is kind of designed to figure out how you got to now and you know what your, your background is, what’s happened in the past. Coaching is about helping clients figure out where they wanna go and how to get there. Coaching is a collaborative process. I am not an authority figure. I am just somebody to be a support person and to help guide people to where they wanna go and whether it’s in life with life coaching or academics, with people who are still in school. It involves a lot of me asking questions and, and trying to help clients increase their self-awareness of what their strengths are most importantly, but also where they might need some help and some support to shore up those weaknesses, their weaknesses.
Frances Shefter: (00:02:31): So how does that work with in the academic setting? Because, you know, like I know, I remember when I was in high school, who knew where we wanted to be and what we wanted to do?
Laurie Chester: (00:02:40): Right. Right. And, and when I worked with young people, you know, middle school, high school, I emphasize with them that I I kind of I empathize with them and say, you know, I get that there’s pressure on you to figure out what you wanna do when you’re only 16 and you know, you don’t have a clue. So it’s, it’s really important to help young people kind of figure out what they like and what they don’t like and you know, what they should gravitate towards as opposed to perhaps what their parents are pushing towards and that’s, you know, that’s a fine line for me. Obviously, parents hire me and I’m, but I’m working for the student. One of the things I like to say to young people, and this is somewhat age dependent. I work with, my youngest right now is sixth grade. I do work with middle school kids, but primarily high school and older. But I like to tell them that and I warn the parents that I’m gonna say this, that part I see part of my job is helping the student to get their parents off their back. And by that, I don’t mean to, you know, downgrade parents or, you know, anything like that. But what I explained to the kids is that, you know, the parents don’t, aren’t having any more fun nagging you than you are listening to it. And my role is to kind of help parents step away from that role of monitoring where the kids’ grades are, what homeworks are missing and what the homework is and all that stuff. But I work with the student to try to help them set goals for individual classes. You know, to be realistic, you know, I preface I I use a goal sheet usually at the beginning of the year and I, that I have them fill out and I preface it by saying, I know everybody wants to, thinks they need to say they wanna have straight A’s. And if that’s what you want, that’s fine. That’s a fine goal, certainly. But I also want you to think about what’s a realistic goal. And, but then how are you going to achieve that goal? And the, this process is designed to help them think about what they need to do, what they’re gonna need to have on board in order to accomplish their goals. But then also to look at what are the potential risks of put down obstacles to you accomplishing your goals and this can be, this can be something like I’ve got two, I’ve got a lot of friends in the class and that can be a distraction or keeping up with the homework. This teacher gives a lot of homework and I need to watch out for missing assignments. So I help them try to come up with their own goals for their classes and, you know, overall their academic life, but also with a little bit of trying to get life balance in there too. You know, what are your goals outside of school?
Frances Shefter: (00:06:03): Right. I want to go back to getting your parents off your back because as a parent, I was like, wait I can pay somebody to do that. Like, I don’t want to be on my kids back. I want to play games with them. I want to have fun. I don’t want to be like, did you do your homework? Did you do this? Did you do that? You know, because it’s frustrating for them as well as me. So I, like, I’m thinking you give your, the kids more independence by helping teach them right?
Laurie Chester: (00:06:28): And, and it’s practicing using a resource, you know, I explained to them, we all use resources. You know, I don’t frankly do my gardening work because I kill plants. That’s just not my forte. So I hire somebody to help with taking care of some of my yard stuff. I have somebody, I hire somebody to cut my hair cause if I cut it, it would be silly. But so, it’s practice in using resources because some of these people, you know, they might need resource. Well, we all need resources regardless. So it’s, practice and, and independence in that realm. And as far as what I say to parents is, you know, I’m not out to disparage you at all. That’s, and, and much of what your student is going to hear from me, they will have already heard from you, but there’s a chance that they’ll listen to me because I’m not you. And, but I, I said, I do think that you get credit for it back in the recesses of their minds where they think. Hm. Maybe mom did know what she was talking about. So, it really legitimizes what you’ve been saying. But you know, the other part of it, what I say to parents too is that as, as time goes on and kids get to be, you know, in their teen years, you, you wanna be careful how you use your parenting chips and that you don’t necessarily wanna be using them looking at every homework assignment and being sure it gets done because you need to have the, the strength as a parent to step in to issues that might be much more important frankly than whether there’s a missing geometry homework. So i it’s sort of, it benefits the parent and, the student to have an outside person kind of keeping watch as much as, or a little as is necessary. I, also assure parents that if I see stuff that I’m worried about, I’ll let you know, you know, if things are tanking, you know, I may need to let you know if your student says something to me that worries me that and I explain that to parent to students as well, that I do need to share that with your parents. But otherwise if you need to come into my office or our Zoom meeting and say a few things about how your parents are driving you crazy. It’s not going to go any further than me.
Frances Shefter: (00:9:18): So it’sbuilding that trust.
Laurie Chester: (00:9:21): Yeah, exactly.
Frances Shefter: (00:9:22): When you were talking about setting the academic goals I’m assuming you help them make realistic because, like, somebody might have a goal of getting straight A’s and being the star of the football team but can’t throw a football or catch a football at all and is maybe not quite as bright as a straight A student. Although I don’t totally believe that because I think everybody could get straight A’s. So, do you talk through like, what the reality of that is?
Laurie Chester: (00:9:50): Yeah. And I think the, ok, how are you going to get to that goal is where we can do that is what’s your first, what are the steps and of those steps? What is the first thing that you need to do to be able to throw that football? Ok. Well, I, I need to practice, ok, so how do you do that? Do you, can you practice alone or do you need to have somebody there that you’re throwing the football back and forth or somebody who can teach you how to throw it? So kind of breaking down and sometimes, you know, coaching is about helping asking powerful questions so that the client comes up with an answer that doesn’t mean that I don’t make suggestions and put out, you know, a menu of ideas if, if it comes to that, if they’re struggling to find an answer well, maybe this or that and what, do you think of those things and, and we might sort of analyze those. So, yeah, we try to bring it to a, an attainable place by looking at the steps involved in getting there.
Frances Shefter: (00:11:04): Right. Because there’s only so many hours in the day.
Laurie Chester: (00:11:07): Right. And, you know, and I absolutely have people who are, you know, who are strong writers but have a lot of trouble in math or vice versa. And that maybe having, you know, the A, as a goal if it’s, you know, a precalc class, and your history is not terribly strong in math that, you know, that might, might be not easily achievable. But then there’s also the, if you really want that, what, do you need to do to get there? Well, ok, I need to go to this, the teacher’s office hours. Maybe I need a tutor, you know, that kind of thing.
Frances Shefter: (00:11:52): It reminds me of in college. I remember one semester, a professor saying you’re gonna, most of you, you’re gonna all get C’s in my class. And I was, no, I’m gonna get that B and I worked my butt off and I got that B but I got C’s in all my other classes because I put so much time into that one class and it’s like, oops, you know, maybe I should have spread it out a little, took the C and got B’s in everything else, but it’s time management. Right. And finding that balance.
Laurie Chester: (00:12:19): So when I meet with the client, we look at you know, how they, the first quarter grades have just come out for, for most of my kids. And so we will be looking at, you know, so how are you feeling about these grades? Where, what went well, what, what didn’t go so well so that we can then set set goals for the next marking period or for the rest of the semester to try to accomplish what you wanna do.
Frances Shefter: (00:12:48): That makes sense and then, you know, executive functioning skills, that’s like everybody’s talking about executive functioning skills, executive functioning skills, you know, how do you teach executive, what are executive functioning skills? So how does coaching help with that? Like what the for people that don’t understand what executive functioning skills, how would you define those?
Laurie Chester: (00:13:07): I define them as kind of being the, the the dashboard of your life. First of all, I introduce them by with a little bit of brain science, which is, you know, your brain develops from the back to the front, the front is the last thing this part behind your forehead is the last to develop. And that’s where the majority of these things called the executive functioning skills take place. And, you know, we used to think that those executive functioning skills in that part of the brain was fully developed by, you know, early adolescents. But with noninvasive imaging that we’ve been able to do for the last what, 20-30 years, what we’ve learned is that that part of the brain isn’t completely developed until upwards of 25 to 30. So, you know, when you hear the term, somebody was a late bloomer, you know, that’s probably part of what was going on was that the frontal lobe hadn’t come on board fully until later. You know, people with ADHD are said to run as much as 30% behind developmentally. So there, you know, your 16 year old may be trying to manage executive skills, intensive tasks with a brain that’s really more like a 13-14 year old and that can be helpful to parents to help them understand. Then I kind of outline the things that I consider to be executive functioning skills. I’m not an expert in that. And then there are depending on who you talk to. You know, there’s 6,12,20 executive functioning skills, but I kind of focus on the time management, organizing, planning, and prioritizing working memory, observation skills, stress tolerance, task initiation, which is a huge one And, and, well, yes, that’s true. But it, the, the initiating part is, is what leads to procrastination and putting things off. So, that’s the one, the task initiation is, is an issue that I see across all ages. that as being the most common. So II, I try to explain it to them to say, you know, so see if you and I have them, when I first start working with somebody, I will have them do an an assessment on their executive skills just to get their read on it. And depending on their age, I also typically have the parents do an executive skills assessment on the kid. And it, it’s interesting sometimes to see where the parent says they’re strong and, or weak especially and the, the kid is like, I’m good across the board. But then things might come to light as we’re getting to know each other and work together that OK, so, this is, you know, I see you have a lot of papers that aren’t put anywhere, they’re just stuffed into your binder. These are organization skills and let’s walk through how to keep, how to manage your paper load. Less of an issue now than it was 10 years ago, but it, but paper is still management is still an issue for some
Frances Shefter: (00:16:45): Tt’s just now electronic paper, right? Yeah, so then like I know you say you work mainly with the kids. How do you help the parent, you know, like I’m thinking about it as coming from the parent side of, I’ve hired an expert to work with my child. How do you let the parent know what progress and what you’re working on? Does that make sense?
Frances Shefter: (00:17:06): You know? It’s interesting. It, it depends a lot on what, how much the parents want to know there are some parents of kids that I work with that I have very little contact with actually. I’m very upfront at the beginning. I don’t guarantee grades. I can’t make them do the work, , and I can’t make them do it correctly into whatever teachers specifications might be some people I will send an email update every week after I see somebody just to give them an idea of what we worked on and what I’m seeing. It’s kind of student dependent and, and parent demand dependent.
Frances Shefter: (00:17:52): Yeah, that makes sense because sometimes, you know, you hire the professional, like that’s why we outsource that you said with the planting, I kill plants. I used to when I lived in Florida. You know, my mom, I would bring a half dead, you know, plant that was almost dead to my mom and switch it out for a live one and she’d bring it back to life and then I switch, it would look like I could keep, keep a plant alive. But mom was doing it. So it’s just, you know, how much do you want to be involved and what do you want to be doing?
Laurie Chester: (00:18:16): Yeah, there’s, some of that now. I had, I had a girl, I was working with a number of years ago. I think she was in ninth grade in a, in a large public school at the time. And I remember her telling me that I got a text message from my mom during my history class. She had been on power school and had found that I was missing this assignment and she sent me a screenshot of it. And I said to her mom, you can’t be doing this while I’m in school. And so, I mean, that was an instance where I very delicately talked to the mom and said, I’m watching this and if I see stuff that, you know, you really need to know, I will let you know. But I, I ask of you that you work on stepping back from that because she was checking power school like every day, multiple times a day, that kind of thing. She was really very into it and she was very receptive and I was, I was delicate in my presentation. But and she did back, back down and back off a little bit, which helped her relationship with her daughter. And her daughter did just fine. She’s a sophomore at University of Tennessee now. So, you know, she got through high school just fine and she’s doing fine.
Frances Shefter: (00:19:44): I mean, it’s hard as a parent because you want to make sure your daughter, you know, your children are doing well, , and everything’s happening but, you know, it’s gotta let them learn to fly on their own and if we don’t do it while they’re living in our home, what’s going to happen when they go away to college? Right.
Laurie Chester: (00:20:02): There’s also this interesting and I don’t know if there’s actually real science behind this, but just sort of observationally there’s this interesting developmental leap that kids seem to take kind of between or between sophomore and junior year of high school or during junior year. And I call it something that I won’t repeat here, but I call it the, oh, darn it year and, , the, oh, darn it year is junior year when you realize oh, darn it, I only have one more year of high school. I need to get my stuff together and figure this out. And there does seem to be a shift in, in kids sort of during that junior year period or, and certainly relative to sophomore year. And I think it’s a, it’s a executive functioning, a frontal lobe development.
Frances Shefter: (00:21:04): Yeah, which makes sense because if you look back at developmental milestones like, when I was a teacher and stuff and I remember in first grade kid, you know, a child can’t read, can’t read, can’t read. And then all of a sudden they’re reading like crazy because that switch, you know, like, just all of a sudden it connects and they get it. And so that’s probably what’s happening, you know, in high school because I know it’s also happened to all of us in law school. It’s like you couldn’t understand what the teachers wanted and then you just take your exams. It’s like, oh, that’s how we do law.
Laurie Chester: (00:21:33): Which is, you know, that’s another thing that is important to remember with students and something that I say to them. And remind parents of sometimes that, you know, when a student gets, especially to high school, they’re now working for seven bosses. None of us are working for seven bosses that have different rules and different expectations and, and you’re spending x amount of time with them every other day in most cases in a block scheduling kind of format and that it takes time at the beginning of the school year, like this first quarter, it takes time for the student to get the hang of how each teacher operates. And as I’m sure it’s the same for the teacher as well as how getting a feel for, for their students. But the student has to get a feel for how the teacher grades, how, what their expectations are, like what their demands are, how flexible they are and all of that, how quickly they update the grade book, you know, all those things and that is something that I work on with, with the students is reminding them that, you know, so, that’s just the way this teacher is or in for my college students. That’s the way this professor is. And, but I can almost guarantee you that if you reach out to them for help, they will be receptive and they would much rather hear from you as 9th grader than hear from your parent that it’s better for you to be working on that. So, self advocacy is another kind of adjunct thing that we work on for some kids. I have a current 10th grade guy who is an awesome email writer. Conversely, I have 7th grade girl who drafted an email to a teacher about a missing assignment recently and I said before you send it, would you read it back to me? She had no salutation. She just was, I don’t know what happened to such and such. Can I get another copy? And then, and that was it? So working on? Ok, we need to change the wording a little bit, you know, add a dear. So we say, you know, always, always say Thank you. And you know, working on some of those skills as well that go along with, with growing up.
Frances Shefter: (00:24:11): The basic skills that, that you don’t, you know, you don’t think about that kids need to be taught that, you know, like I, I do a lot of work in the abuse and neglect system in DC and the foster carers and, , well, also Montgomery County, but that’s personal side. It just, you know, I’ve heard social workers say, well, they’re 18, they should know how to do that. And I’m like, really, who taught them that, you know, and it’s that reality check of and it’s, it’s the same with our kids even that aren’t in the abuse and neglect system and all kids, most families now are two working, you know, both parents are working. We don’t have the time to sit them down and be like, oh, this is what you need to do and this is how you do it. This is the language you should use. So you are able to step in and help with that.
Laurie Chester: (00:24:58): Yeah. And I, and I do do that with some frequency. I have a college student who’s a, who’s a senior at JMU and, she has a difficult sociology class that she’s in and that’s not her major and she had a, another test coming up and she’s in the C range with her grade. And she is afraid to go see him during office hours. So I said I have suggested over the last few weeks, how about you just email him? You know, he’ll either answer or he won’t. It takes away that sort of personal fear of rejection a little bit. And she, and then after our call, you know, I said, ok, when are you gonna do it? I’ll do it today. And I said, and I’d like to hear from you after you’ve done that. So that we build in a little accountability piece there and she did email him and he was helpful and she did well on the test, she got an 85 on the test. So, yeah, so it, you know, not to belabor the self advocacy point. But I think it’s, it’s really a lot of what I do with students is really when it comes down to it, these are life skills, things that are gonna be important for them no matter what they do in life, both in their personal lives and professional lives.
Frances Shefter: (00:26:35): Right? And it’s, you know, I know for me doing the self adequacy, like builds self confidence, you know, because it’s like you’re so afraid to do it, so afraid to do it. Just the same thing as procrastination of things. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it. Once you’ve done it, it’s like, oh wait, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it was like I can do this and then it just makes it gets easier.
Laurie Chester: (00:26:55): So when we identify some of those executive functioning skill deficits, that somebody might have, there are strategies that I will kind of put on and I don’t know if it may be a crookedly worn coaching hat and share some strategies that can be helpful. And one of the strategies that I share with kids on task initiation is trying to, trying to use what I call a 10 or 15 minute burst, which is committing yourself to doing it, whatever it is just for 10 minutes, you only have to do it for 10 minutes, set a timer, whatever works, but you only have to do it for 10 minutes. And, you know, somebody might say, well, I know it’s gonna take me a lot longer than that. And I said, well, it might, yeah, but the point is you’re not getting, you’re not able to get yourself to do it right now. So maybe if you put it chunk it into a piece by time or, you know, I’m only gonna do five problems on the 20 page homework sheet. that, that will get you started. And I said the little trick to this is that very often once you get started, the 10 minutes goes by and you look at and the, the buzzer goes off and you think? Oh, well, I only have another 10 problems to do. I, I might as well keep going and you’re more likely to keep going and accomplish the task.
Frances Shefter: (00:28:28): Right. That’s my uncle used to say that 99% of working out is getting yourself to the gym. You know, because, like, once you’re there but, you know, that’s it and it’s the same thing. Once you start, it’s the starting. That I know for me also with procrastinating stuff, it’s the starting that gives me the anxiety and stress. And then once I start, it’s like, oh OK, and then finishing is much easier. So I see where that helps.
Laurie Chester: (00:28:53): And the same, the same can be true with, with organizing. I had a girl once years ago who was incredibly disorganized and the papers in her backpack were like, all over the place, but she was very anxious about throwing anything away or, or doing anything about it. So we would, we did a10 pieces of paper limit. We’ll just handle 10 pieces of paper and that’s all.
Frances Shefter: (00:29:24): chunking. Yeah. We call the IPS chunking.
Laurie Chester: (00:29:27): That’s what she was able to do. And that’s so that’s what we did. We didn’t make a whole lot of progress very quickly, but it at least started to contain the issue.
Frances Shefter: (00:29:38): And yeah, and that’s the thing. It’s, you know, progress quickly. They know, a lot of times parents might, and, you know, the kids themselves might have expectations that are not realistic when it comes to that because sometimes, you know, a little bit of progress goes a long way and you don’t realize it, that it takes time to build. So when you work with clients, is it like, you know, is it like a six month and a year? Four years, what is the time period usually?
Laurie Chester: (00:30:02): You know, it’s very, very individual dependent. I have an adult that I’ve been working with, I think for about 11 years. And, you know, we have not solved some of her issues. But the, what another part of coaching that’s important to remember is that coaching provides accountability. And I had a, a girl a number of years ago who I had worked with, I think I started working with her in eighth grade and at the end of junior year, I was still working with her. I said, to her and she was one who I didn’t have much contact with the parents. I remember saying to her at the end of the school year, you know, I’m just trying to get an idea. But do you think you wanna return? Do you wanna work with me next year? For senior year and she kind of was puzzled by the question and she said, well, if you’ll have me and I said, Well, of course, I’ll have you. I’d love to keep working with you. But I said, I don’t think you need me anymore. And she said, she thought for a minute, she said, well, but she said, you know what? I know every week when I come here, I know what you’re gonna ask me. I know what I said I was going to do and so I always take time to be sure that I have either done what I said, I was gonna do that. I will be able to answer your questions. And she said that really helps keep me on track. So same with my adult, it’s like sometimes she can’t get stuff done on her own. Sometimes she does it do things during one of our calls, she’ll write an email or, or send a text that she’s been putting off on the call because she just needed that, that body double aspect of coaching. But a lot of it is an accountability piece. So I do have people that I work with for maybe six months and we kind of go through things. I give them some strategies on time management, explain time blocking, maybe some stuff on organization, taught, task initiation, et cetera and study skills, which I also will work on with kids. And then they go on their merry way other kids I might work with throughout high school in part because I’m filling that space that maybe the parents aren’t able to do right now for whatever the reason is. So it can be a short or long term process.
Frances Shefter: (00:32:53): That makes sense. It’s just, and it’s interesting that she said, you know, will you have me? Because it would immediately came to my mind is that when kids have IEPs and they start doing really well and sometimes schools will try to take the IEPs away. And I’ve heard parents with that all the time and I’m like, they’re doing well because they have the supports in place. If you take them away, they are going to fail. And it’s that argument and I usually put it to, that’s like saying, ok, the person in the wheelchair can now get from A to B so they don’t need the wheelchair anymore, you know, and that’s the thing. It’s like, so with coaching, it’s the, you need that extra accountability and that extra checking in and making sure that’s understandable.
Laurie Chester: (00:33:35): There’s a lot of what I do that is very repetitive you know, that we do, we do the same thing at the beginning of the session, you know, for the, you know, a after we get through the few minutes of what have you been up to? What did you do over the weekend? You know, that kind of stuff. But it’s pretty, it becomes predictable. And the goal behind that is that I’m modeling what I hope they will start to do at home, which is usually looking at their grade book, looking at their portal and figuring out what they need to do and when they need to do it, there’s an interesting piece to the homework on the school’s portals and that is that I always pull up if it’s possible, depending on the school’s portal. I pull up the calendar view of their work because I wanna give the student a chance to, see time because they have very poor sense of, of time and the passage of time. So if you tell somebody on a Monday that it’s not due till Friday or next Monday, that’s like so far in the future, it’s off their radar. But if they look at it in as a series of days on a calendar and they say, oh, I have, I have two away games on Tuesday and Thursday and, oh, I’m in a tournament this weekend or we’re going to visit our grandparents that weekend. I won’t be able to, oh, I really better start it tomorrow because the long term planning.
Frances Shefter: (00:35:15): Which makes sense. It’s, you know, I know my daughter will be like, well, it’s not due till Friday. I’m like, yes, but on Thursday you have this and on Wednesday you have this and on Tuesday you have that and then she’s like, oh, so let’s do a little bit now and a little bit tomorrow and, and then she’s like, oh, ok. You know, she fights me sometimes but then she’ll, you know, realize, like, oh, it’s Friday and it’s not done, you know? So, like, I guess I can turn it on Monday and work all weekend, which is no fun.
Laurie Chester: (00:35:39): Which nobody wants to do. Exactly.
Frances Shefter: (00:35:42): I want to touch on a little bit and I don’t know if it’s, we can a little bit but, like, I know COVID impacted these kids so much and, you know, every age level, every grade, every, you know, it’s, they missed out on this or they missed out on that and they missed out on that. Do you see a big difference in, you know, our kids in their needs of learning this stuff due to the COVID era?
Laurie Chester: (00:36:08): It, you know, it’s very hard for me to put my finger on it. But yes, I definitely see an impact and I especially, well, because of the age group that I work with it kind of eliminates the younger kids to, to an extent. But the transition from high school to college for some kids has been especially difficult because they missed a big hunk of high school, especially if they were in a school system or at a school that stayed virtual pretty much for a full year and a couple of months. , they forgot how to be students, to a degree. And, and so when they got back to being students, their focus really, I think was to at least to some extent was trying to figure out how to be social again and how to, you know, most of them have pods of friends that they still saw, but very different from being in the kind of constant social milieu of high school and, and interacting with teachers and managing expectations, some of which were lowered pretty low and then brought back up and it’s been hard for them to stair step back to the, the higher level of expectation. So I work now with, I have far more college students than I used to have. And I think that’s very much a result of missed learning during high school.
Frances Shefter: (00:37:46): Which makes sense. Yeah, you only have so much brain power and, you know, trying to do the academic and the executive functioning and the social and all of that, it makes it hard. So having somebody help you organize and just think through makes a lot of sense.
Laurie Chester: (00:38:02): Right. And you know that having to, you know, simply get up at a certain time, get dressed and get out of the house. Those deals, you know, those are big deals when you could no longer stay in your pajamas and sit on your bed.
Frances Shefter: (00:38:18): Roll out of bed, you know.
Laurie Chester: (00:38:19): Like a big switch. And speaking of getting out of bed, that’s one of the things that I do advocate with parents, you know, I don’t make it my business to tell them what to do. But one thing I will tell them suggests that they do strongly is not be the responsible for getting their kids out of bed in the morning. At least by the time they graduate from high school that it’s a huge life skill that kids need to figure out a way to get up, whether it takes five alarm clocks or, you know, an atomic bomb alarm clock which does exist. We owned one once and because that will be the downfall of kids when they get both to college and beyond. I have adults that I work with that struggle with getting up. It can it jeopardize jobs and, and, and you’re standing in this place?
Frances Shefter: (00:39:21): Right. That totally makes sense. This has been so awesome and amazing. So how can people I know you said you’re in northern Virginia and you have an office? Do you only service clients in that area or?
Laurie Chester: (00:39:31): No, I actually, I, I work with college students now virtually, you know, I’ve got somebody in Michigan and somebody in Tennessee and somebody in Pennsylvania. I have a high school girl from Pennsylvania. So, you know what COVID did do for me was that it forced me into the virtual world. And so I see some local kids I see in person but otherwise I do work virtually. So I can meet with, with students on Zoom usually. And I usually ask for access to their, their school portal so I can see what they are doing. But I have students who are in school in DC and in northern Virginia, I don’t have anybody in Maryland right now. I haven’t had a lot of Maryland. Well, as Virginians don’t, don’t cross into Maryland either. So we don’t want to, it’s a strange phenomenon but it does exist all the
Frances Shefter: (00:40:33): People that grew up here. I really get it. We’ll all go to DC. But Virginia and Maryland?
Laurie Chester: (00:40:37): Yeah, it’s a different story. Right. But with, with virtual platforms available now it’s, it’s a little bit different.
Frances Shefter: (00:40:45): That makes sense. And how can people reach you? I know we’re going to have some of the stuff in the show notes. But just for those, our listeners now, how can people reach out to you to get, you know, if they want to find out more, if they want to start services with you?
Laurie Chester: (00:40:56): The, the best ways to reach me? I no longer at this juncture, have a website unfortunately. But, , is by email, which is m my business name. GetitdoneABC@ comcast.net or by cell, either text or phone,, 703-819-5829. Those are the two best ways to, to reach me. Oftentimes I’m a school’s academic center or support services may well have me on a list somewhere and some of the local psychologists who do testing are also familiar with me. So, and with, and with coaches in, in general. So if not me, then somebody else who’s also been trained, I have done specific training in ADHD coaching. So that’s a kind of a, a niche. But, , basically what, what you do with somebody who has ADHD is relevant to somebody who doesn’t, it’s not, it’s life skills. Exactly.
Frances Shefter: (00:42:07): Exactly. This has been so wonderful, Laurie. Thank you so much for being on the show and for sharing all of your wealth of information with our listeners.
Laurie Chester: (00:42:15): Well, thank you, Frances for having me. It’s been a pleasure
VOICEOVER: (00:42:20): You’ve been listening to Stress-Free IEP® with your host, Frances Shefter. Remember you do not need to do it all alone. You can reach Frances through www.shefterlaw.com where prior episodes are also posted. Thank you for your positive reviews, comments and sharing the show with others through YouTube, LinkedIn Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and more.
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