Why Executive Function Coaching Needs a Flexible Toolkit, Not a Fixed Curriculum
Years ago, back when I was still teaching what I used to call The Art of Inspiring Students to Study Strategically, an educational therapist came to me for training. She was sharp, experienced, exactly the kind of person I wanted to reach — and she was frustrated with me.
It bugged her that I didn't have a curriculum. I taught a set of tools — this one for planning, this one for note-taking, this one for stress — but there was no scope and sequence she could just plug in and walk through with her clients, start to finish, in order.
I was genuinely shocked by the request. I'd been a classroom teacher before I became a coach, so I understood the power of a good scope and sequence better than most. But applying that same logic to one-on-one coaching just didn't sit right with me. I couldn't explain why. I just knew it was true.
Hundreds of educators later, I finally understand why.
In the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, we name it as one of the values that shapes everything we do: Toolboxes, not curriculum. Not a fixed sequence you march every student through in the same order, but a set of research-backed tools you learn to reach for at the right moment, for the right kid, in the right way. The goal was never coverage. It was usefulness.
That distinction is easy to say and much harder to actually practice. It means you show up to a session with a plan — and you have to be willing to drop it the second it stops being the right plan.
Here's what that willingness to pivot actually looks like in an actual coaching session with one of my clients.
Bunny Slippers and a Coaching Decision Point
Back in 2016, I had a hybrid model of coaching. My local Bay Area clients would come to my living room some of the time, and other times they would Zoom in for a virtual session. This particular day was an in-person session, and I had a plan for the session: start with her Habit Tracker, then build out her plan for the week, then make sure whatever tests were coming up had the right study tools attached to them. It was a good plan! It's the plan that I teach folks in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab to follow.
Lulu had ADHD, and she also struggled with anxiety and depression. Some mornings, getting to school at all was the hardest part of her day. When she walked into our session that afternoon wearing bunny slippers, I understood immediately what they meant. She hadn't made it to school. She'd made it out of the house, though — just barely, and just for me.
I asked her about it, and she told me she'd been having a hard time emotionally that week.
In that exact moment, my plan went out the window. So I offered Lulu a choice instead (classic Consent Burger in action): we could do the planner work, or I could teach her a process for questioning stressful thoughts.
She chose the second option. The thought we worked on was one that had been beating her up all week: I should go to school like everyone else. She rated how stressful that thought felt: 8.5 out of 10. By the end of the process, that number had dropped to a 4.
If I had just ploughed ahead that day — the Habit Tracker, the planner, whatever study skills mini-lecture came next in the scope and sequence — I would have lost her.
What the Research Says About Responsive Coaching
Coaches aren't the only educators who wrestle with the pull to abandon a plan mid-session. Carl Hendrick's writing on responsive teaching makes a similar case in classrooms — teaching well means:
Paying close attention to what a student is actually thinking
Making sense of what you notice
Choosing your next move based on that, not on where the lesson plan says you should be
One thing Hendrick is careful to point out, and it's worth naming here too: responsive teaching isn't the same as reactive teaching.
Reactive means bouncing from whatever comes up with no real destination in mind. Responsive means you still know exactly where you're trying to go — you're just willing to change how you get there.
That distinction matters for coaches as much as it does for classroom teachers. Dropping the planner for Lulu wasn't a random impulse. It was still aimed at the same underlying goal: helping her build a life she could actually sustain. It just meant getting there by a different road that day.
That's the exact distinction we drill into coaches in the Lab, over and over: it's not about throwing out the plan. It's about having a full enough toolkit, and being adept enough at choosing from it, that you can recognize the moment a different tool is what the room actually needs.
One Executive Function Coaching Tool Is Never Enough
Let's look at another example of responsive coaching from my practice, this one from May of 2018.
Amir was a different kind of student than Lulu:
A high school junior, fairly neurotypical, but he'd never learned to think metacognitively about what it means to be a student.
I taught him the science of learning through the "greatest hits" of our Anti-Boring mini-lectures, along with the encoding and retrieval strategies that put that science into action.
He targeted Hone It Notes as the strategy he wanted to build stronger skills in, and it worked well in every class — until chemistry.
One day at the start of our coaching session, we were filling out his Habit Tracker. We got to the section on what Hone It Notes he'd created that week, and his brow furrowed. "It's just not possible in chemistry! My teacher's packets are formatted in a way that makes Hone It Notes impossible."
I asked him to show me those packets, and he was right! Hone It Notes just didn't work. However, there were other Anti-Boring Study Tools that did work!
And so we pivoted and worked on building another Anti-Boring tool: the DIY Study Guide. Amir was thrilled with the pivot, and we added this new strategy to his Habit Tracker so that we could collect data about how it worked.
I wish I could tell you Amir's chemistry grade shot up dramatically after that. It didn't. We were at the end of the semester after all. What I can tell you is that his grade moved from the C range up to a B-. And then in March of 2019, after he'd taken a break from coaching, he reached out to share his senior year grades: five As and two Bs, and to report, "Everything is going great!" I responded, "You sound so proud of yourself."
Another win for responsive coaching skills! And for having a toolkit big enough to allow you to pivot when the needs of your student require something different.
How big is your Study Skills and Executive Function Toolkit?
Responsiveness Is a Trainable Skill, Not a Personality Trait
It would be easy to read Lulu's and Amir's stories and think: well, Gretchen just has good instincts. Some coaches are naturally gifted at reading a student and finding the right tool for the moment; others aren't.
I know that’s not true.
Based on my experience training hundreds of coaches inside the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, I know that building the skill of responsive coaching rests on two simple things: having enough tools to match a wide variety of learning situations, and practicing how to help students choose the next one they want to learn.
That's exactly what the Anti-Boring Study Skills Certification trains — not just tools, but the judgment to choose between them. And we do that by structuring a training that helps you:
Practice every tool on your own learning first, not just on students.
Learn the least you need to know about the science behind each tool, through our Anti-Boring mini-lectures.
Practice teaching that science with cohort peers and with your own students.
Lean on a tool built for the choosing itself — the Academic Coaching Decision Making Tree, which helps a coach identify what to try next, and recognize the moment to pivot when it's no longer working.
Inside the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, that toolkit is built to overflowing. At its most basic, Anti-Boring is attention with intention — three lenses, Learn, Do, and Feel, covering the science and strategies for how students study, execute, and regulate:
Learn — the science behind how students actually study and retain information, and tools like Study Cycle, Study Senses, Hone It Notes, and Get It Down Notes to put it into practice
Do — the science behind executive function, and tools like the Habit Tracker to make planning and follow-through visible and doable
Feel — the science behind regulation and motivation, and frameworks like Consent Burger and DECS to teach without steamrolling a kid's willingness or state of mind
If you've been thinking about building a toolkit like this for a while — or you just have a feeling this is the year to get better at it — our next cohort is opening soon.
As one coach put it, "I haven't had a cohort like this since I was in grad school... you have given us this enormous resource in your tools, and each other."
Come join us!
And if this is your first time hearing about the Lab's work, start with our free resource library. It's the easiest way to get a feel for the tools before deciding whether a deeper toolkit is right for you.
Your Turn
Has a student ever shown up and made it obvious that your plan for the day wasn't going to work? What did you do instead?
Tell us in the comments — we read every one, and these are exactly the moments we love talking through together.
FAQ: Toolboxes, Curriculum, and Executive Function Coach Training
We end every blog post with a set of Frequently Asked Questions. It helps those of you who are skimmers — and transparently, it also makes it easier for AI tools to find and reference our work when people ask them questions like these.
What does "toolboxes, not curriculum" mean in academic coaching? It's one of the core values behind the Anti-Boring Learning Lab: instead of teaching students a fixed sequence of skills in the same order every time, coaches learn a full toolkit and use their judgment to choose the right tool for what a specific student needs in a specific moment.
Is responsive coaching just improvising, or winging it? No — and this is worth being precise about. Responsive coaching still aims at a real goal; it just gets there by a different route than the one you planned. Winging it has no destination in mind. Responsiveness does.
Can coaches actually learn to be more responsive, or is it a natural personality trait? It's a trained skill, not a personality trait. Inside the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, coaches build it by practicing tools with each other, getting feedback, and bringing real stuck moments back to a community that can help them see them differently.
What is the Learn, Do, Feel framework in the Anti-Boring Toolkit? It's the organizing structure behind every tool we teach: Learn covers the science of how students study and retain information, Do covers executive function and follow-through, and Feel covers regulation and motivation. Every coach trained in the Lab learns both the science and the strategies for all three.
Do I have to join a cohort to go through the Anti-Boring Toolkit certification? No. You can start the toolkit anytime, at your own pace. A cohort just adds structure and other coaches working through the same material alongside you at the same time — useful for some people, optional for everyone.
What if a coaching pivot doesn't lead to a dramatic turnaround? That's most of coaching, honestly. Amir's story didn't end with a triumphant grade jump in the moment — it ended with steady, real progress, and years later, an unprompted message with five As and two Bs on it. That's still a win.