Meet the McCloskeys: Innovators in Executive Function Practice
Executive functioning (EF) skills, from focus and sustained attention to self-regulation and impulse control, are the foundation for success in school, work, and life. Yet, many of these skills are simply expected of young children without being explicitly taught. Educators often lack the training and tools to support the development of these critical skills. Dr. George McCloskey and Laurie McCloskey are committed to helping change that.
The McCloskeys have spent decades researching, developing, and implementing strategies to strengthen executive functioning. Their shared mission is to ensure every student has the opportunity to build the executive functioning skills they need to thrive academically, socially, and beyond while ensuring educators have the knowledge and tools to make that happen.
Dr. George McCloskey: A Leader in Executive Function Research
With more than 40 years of experience in research, teaching, test development, and assessment, Dr. George McCloskey has established himself as a globally recognized expert on executive functioning. His career initially centered on evaluating student intelligence, but after 15 years, he began to observe a consistent trend: many students weren’t underperforming due to low IQ, but rather because of difficulties with task initiation, self-regulation, and cognitive flexibility which are challenges linked to frontal lobe functioning.
As Dr. McCloskey noted, “Executive functions aren’t directly correlated with intelligence. It’s not a learning disability. It’s a producing difficulty.” This realization shifted the trajectory of his work, leading him to focus on understanding the brain’s “supervisory system,” the set of processes he identified as critical to both academic achievement and overall life success.
Dr. George McCloskey has several notable accomplishments, including publishing two books on assessment and intervention for executive functioning and co-authoring a children’s book, The Day Frankie Left His Frontal Lobes at Home. Dr. McCloskey also developed the McCloskey Executive Functions Scale, the only EF assessment tool based on a comprehensive, theoretical model of executive functions.
In his words, “It’s a complex world we live in. You have to have a lot of executive function capacity to live in it.” Through his comprehensive work on executive functioning, Dr. McCloskey empowers educators to identify and strengthen the skills students need to grow.
Laurie McCloskey: Bridging Theory and Classroom Application
Laurie McCloskey is a certified general and special education teacher with decades of hands-on classroom experience. She has witnessed firsthand how executive function challenges can limit students’ ability to reach their full potential and how the right strategies can make all the difference.
Laurie co-authored The Day Frankie Left His Frontal Lobes at Home with George. She’s also played an instrumental role in bridging the gap between executive function theory and classroom application. With her unique ability to translate research-backed concepts into practical strategies, she helped develop the Silas/McCloskey Executive Function Toolkit, bringing their shared vision to life in an accessible format.
Collaborating with Silas to Bring Executive Functioning to Life
As longtime leaders in executive functioning and education, Dr. McCloskey and Laurie McCloskey teamed up with Silas to translate research and real-world experiences into a digital toolkit for educators. The Silas platform offered the ideal foundation for their vision of increasing accessibility of executive functioning tools. Silas was designed to empower students with critical social skills and self-management techniques, while offering teachers an easy-to-use tool that fits within their day-to-day instruction.
The Silas/McCloskey EF Toolkit integrates Dr. McCloskey’s evidence-based framework with Laurie’s practical classroom experiences. Many educators don’t have training or experience in executive functioning and don’t know how to best support students with deficits in these skills. “People don’t have to be experts in executive functioning to be able to pick up and use this [toolkit],” Laurie McCloskey shared. Their Toolkit offers simple, yet impactful activities and strategies teachers and support staff can implement to promote whole-child development and long-term success.
Inside the Toolkit: Equipping Students with the Skills to Succeed
The Silas/McCloskey EF Toolkit provides a comprehensive framework for guiding students in developing executive function skills. These skills are essential for all students and across all environments. Because of that, the Toolkit is designed with generalizability in mind and can be used in both general and special education classrooms.
The goal of the Toolkit is to shift students from prompt-dependency toward independently cueing themselves. As Dr. George McCloskey explained, “Every 504 accommodation plan should have a goal: Get off this as soon as possible by moving from external control to internal self-regulation through a bridging strategy.”
The Toolkit addresses several essential EF skills, including focusing and sustaining attention, organization, managing memory, tracking and estimating time, goal setting, planning and prioritizing, initiating, stopping and shifting, inhibiting impulsive responding and anticipating consequences, and flexibility. Lessons include information about each EF skill, goals and objectives, teacher rating scales, student self-ratings, and various activities to engage students and sharpen their skills, including videos, scenario discussions, games, and writing and drawing tasks. Additionally, students can bring lessons to life with the Silas movie maker feature. Each lesson also includes a home extension to share information on skills the students are working on with parents and caregivers.
One thing that makes this Toolkit unique is that it’s fully customizable. “It’s what works best for you, not what’s the best strategy,” Dr. McCloskey explains. “It’s what’s the best strategy for you, given how your brain works and what you know and what you can do.” Everyone’s abilities and experiences are unique, which is why the Toolkit emphasizes individualization and student ownership. Educators can adapt lessons to meet each learner’s needs, helping students discover which strategies are the most effective for them.
Paving the Way for Lifelong Success
Executive functioning skills are not simply tools for success in the classroom. They’re skills for success in life. These foundational abilities shape how students learn, interact, and thrive throughout and beyond their school years. Dr. McCloskey and Laurie McCloskey are committed to empowering educators with the knowledge and tools necessary to nurture these skills.
“The activities we designed are intended to help students understand what executive functions are, how you use them, and how you can get better at them.”
Discover the Silas Executive Function Toolkit, a powerful, customizable resource that brings research-backed strategies and engaging activities into everyday instruction. Built by Dr. George McCloskey and Laurie McCloskey, this toolkit makes it easy for any educator to support student success in focus, organization, self-regulation, and more.
Posted in Education, Special Education
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