Are Executive Function Coaches Teaching Students to Think, Or Just Comply?!
Have you heard of anarchist calisthenics?
I hadn’t — until yoga last week.
I’ve been going to a new yoga studio in Oakland that I love: a BIPOC-centered space grounded in liberation, community, and listening to what your body actually needs.
Before class started, the teacher previewed a few poses she planned to move us toward. I could tell right away that some of them would be too advanced for my body that day. I told her as much. I also shared that it’s a growing edge of mine to do what my body needs, even when that means not following the teacher’s guidance exactly.
She smiled and said, “Great. You can practice anarchist calisthenics.”
I made a face. Anarchist what?
“It’s a philosophy I just heard about,” she said. “The idea is that it’s good for humans to notice when we’re following rules automatically — and to practice small moments of resistance throughout the day. You can practice it during class.”
I’d already planned to modify, but the fact that this practice had a name changed something for me. During the rest of class, I didn’t simply opt out when a pose didn’t work; I noticed it. I chose differently on purpose. I stayed present.
As I rested in child’s pose instead of doing another downward-facing dog, my mind shifted to the Anti-Boring Learning Lab — and to our work in academic coaching and executive function coaching.
How often do we, as coaches, slip into automatic rule-following — parents’ expectations, school norms, even our own internal rules about what “good coaching” is supposed to look like?
And what about students? How often are they following rules about what it means to be a “good student” without ever stopping to ask whether those rules actually support their learning?
Could we all benefit from practicing anarchist calisthenics together? Could we be even more intentional about how we’re teaching neurodiverse students to think for themselves — and not just comply?
In the rest of this post, I want to explore these questions. I’ll share where the phrase comes from, how it shows up in academic and executive function coaching — especially with neurodivergent students — and why this idea feels especially relevant right now.
Before going further, a quick clarification: the word anarchism might feel scary to you. But in this post we’re not referring to a common assumption that anarchy means violence, chaos, disorder, and rejecting structure altogether. Instead, this is about exercising our metacognition and discernment muscles. I think this will be more clear when you learn the history.
Let’s dig in!!
A Little History of the Phrase
I’m a fan of research. So when my yoga teacher casually used the phrase anarchist calisthenics, I did what I always do: I went home and looked it up.
The term was coined by James C. Scott, the late anthropologist and political scientist. In his 2012 book Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play, Scott explores the many ways “anarchy” already exists in everyday life. In the opening chapter, he introduces what he calls “Scott’s law of anarchist calisthenics.”
Despite the word calisthenics, Scott wasn’t talking about physical exercise. He was describing a way to work out our intellectual muscles.
Scott argued that humans are remarkably good at being law-abiding. We’re conditioned to follow rules — even outdated, arbitrary, or unnecessary ones — with very little thought. His concern was that if we never practice making our own judgments in small, low-stakes moments, our ability to discern weakens over time. Our “disobedience muscle,” as he put it, starts to atrophy.
One of his favorite examples came from his time living in Germany. Late one night — around 4:00 a.m. — he noticed pedestrians waiting at a red Don’t Walk signal. There wasn’t a car in sight, yet people stood there, motionless, waiting for the light to change.
What troubled Scott wasn’t the rule itself, but what it revealed. When rules are followed automatically, without judgment, we lose practice deciding for ourselves. His suggestion was modest: occasionally and safely break a trivial rule, simply to stay mentally limber.
From Theory to Practice: What This Looks Like in Academic Coaching
Now let’s shift to our work with students — relevant whether you’re an academic, ADHD, or EF coach for students, or a classroom teacher.
What are schools, if not learning spaces shaped by explicit rules and invisible norms — much of which is arguably necessary if you’re trying to get an ungodly number of teenagers to do the same thing? (Did you know that one of the largest schools in the United States, Brooklyn Technical High School in New York City, serves roughly 5,800 students? Egads, that’s a lot.)
To maintain shared norms and create conditions for learning, rules need to be followed — by teachers, students, administrators, everyone. That part makes sense.
It also stands to reason that one of our core roles as academic and executive function coaches—working largely outside of, but adjacent to, the school system—is to help students learn how to navigate its rules as effectively as possible. There’s an unspoken assumption baked into this work: following the rules leads to success. Neurodiversity often makes those rules harder to follow, and we’re frequently positioned as the people who help students find the least painful, most workable ways to comply anyway.
Much of what we do with students involves helping them navigate systems built on default behaviors:
how to start work
how to organize time
how to respond to authority
how to perform “being a good student”
Many of these expectations are rarely named, inconsistently enforced, and deeply intertwined with identity, privilege, and power.
When students struggle in these systems, their behavior is often labeled as resistance, defiance, or lack of motivation. But through an executive function lens, we’re often seeing something else entirely: overload, misalignment, or a nervous system doing its best to cope.
Anarchist calisthenics offers a different frame for helping us help students in this context.
Instead of asking students to comply more efficiently, it invites us to help them practice discernment — to notice when they’re following a rule because it helps, and when they’re following it simply because it exists.
That kind of judgment isn’t innate. It’s a skill. And like any skill, it’s built through repetition in low-stakes moments.
So what might anarchist calisthenics look like in an academic coaching context?
Small “Anarchist Calisthenics” Habits We Might Practice
For Students
For many students — especially neurodivergent students with ADHD, learning differences, anxiety, or sensory needs — school rules can feel less like support and more like a maze. Defaults about when to work, how to study, or what “focus” looks like are often designed for a narrow range of brains.
That’s where anarchist calisthenics becomes especially useful.
I had fun brainstorming specific academic coaching strategies where it’s actually helpful for students to practice not following the default rules. I’m sharing a short list here — and I’d love to hear others in the comments, especially examples that support neurodivergent learners in noticing where they have more choice than they might think.
Here are a few ways students can practice anarchist calisthenics:
Pause before starting an assignment and ask, “What is this actually asking me to do?”
Ask about the why: “What’s the point of this assignment?”
Think first, comply second — free-write or talk through the prompt before reading the rubric.
Choose a study tool intentionally, even if it’s different from the one suggested.
Study at a time of day that works for your brain and notice the results.
Take breaks based on focus rather than a timer.
Say “I’m confused” instead of pretending you understand.
Turn something in imperfectly once and track what actually happens.
These are executive function coaching strategies in action. They strengthen task initiation, cognitive flexibility, self-monitoring, emotional regulation, and decision-making. For neurodivergent students in particular, the goal shifts from “Can I follow the rule?” to “Can I notice what helps my brain learn?”
For Educators
Students aren’t the only ones navigating rules, expectations, and invisible scripts.
If anarchist calisthenics is about staying practiced in discernment, then coaches and educators are in this work, too — whether we name it or not. Many of the rules we follow most automatically don’t belong to students at all. They live in our training, our professional identities, and our internal stories about what good coaching or effective teaching is supposed to look like.
And just like our students, many of us are neurodivergent ourselves — or are working inside systems that reward speed, productivity, certainty, and visible “helpfulness.” That makes some of these defaults especially sticky. In practice, anarchist calisthenics for adults often shows up less in what we do — and more in what we resist doing by default.
Here’s my brainstorm of moments in coaching where this kind of resistance matters in teaching and coaching:
Catching yourself reaching for a strategy because it’s familiar, not because it fits the student in front of you.
Pausing when you hear “I should…” and asking where that rule came from — your training, your mentor, your fear, or your values.
Choosing not to introduce a new tool when a student clearly isn’t asking for one.
Letting a session be about listening, not problem-solving.
Sitting with silence instead of filling it with advice or reassurance.
Shifting your language from “You need to…” to “What feels doable right now?”
Naming uncertainty honestly: “I’m not sure yet what would help here.”
Noticing when you’re working harder than your student to generate solutions — and intentionally stepping back.
Letting go of the role of ‘idea generator’ and centering witnessing, reflecting, and sense-making instead.
Ending a session early because the work is complete — or letting a session feel “unproductive” by traditional metrics and noticing what actually changes afterward.
What else? Please post below if there are other small or large ways you practice noticing the unspoken rules that you follow as a coach or educator, and how you might disrupt them. I can’t wait to hear.
Under the hood, this is executive function work for adults. These moments draw on inhibition, cognitive flexibility, emotional regulation, perspective-taking, and self-monitoring — the same skills we’re trying to help students develop. After any of these small acts of resistance, it can be powerful to pause and reflect: what rule did I resist, what did that cost me, and what did it give the student? Where did I feel relief, and where did I feel discomfort? Over time, those reflections help us coach from integrity rather than autopilot — and model the kind of discernment we hope students will learn to trust in themselves.
A Note on Anti-Boring (and Why This Feels Alive)
This is also where I want to name something that’s been central to my work for a long time: anti-boring learning.
When we talk about boredom in regards to students and schooling, it’s often framed as a motivation issue or an attention problem. Students are bored because they don’t care enough. Or because they’re distracted. Or because we haven’t found the right hook yet.
But more often, boredom is a thinking problem.
Boredom shows up when students — and educators — are asked to follow rules, strategies, and routines without judgment, choice, or meaning. When thinking gets reduced to compliance. When the goal becomes “do it right” instead of “make sense of this.”
Seen this way, anarchist calisthenics is deeply anti-boring.
Not because it’s edgy or provocative, but because it keeps thinking alive. It invites curiosity instead of autopilot. Discernment instead of default compliance. It asks students — and coaches — to stay awake to what they’re doing and why.
For many students, especially neurodivergent students, this can be the difference between engagement and shutdown. Between participation and quiet resistance. Between feeling controlled and feeling human.
Anti-boring learning isn’t about entertainment. It’s about agency.
And anarchist calisthenics gives us a language — and a practice — for cultivating that agency in small, ordinary, repeatable ways.
Why These Small Practices Matter
Taken on their own, none of these habits look especially radical.
A student choosing a different starting point.
A coach holding back one more strategy.
A pause before complying.
A question instead of a fix.
But together, these small practices add up to something important.
They help students — and the adults who work with them — build the muscle of discernment: the ability to tell the difference between rules that support learning and rules that replace thinking.
This distinction matters for all students. And it matters especially for neurodivergent students.
Students with executive function differences are often navigating environments full of invisible rules — about timing, organization, productivity, tone, and compliance. When those rules are followed automatically, they can quickly become sources of shame or overwhelm. What looks like resistance from the outside is often a nervous system trying to protect itself.
Anarchist calisthenics, as a coaching practice, gives us a way to slow that moment down.
Instead of asking, Why won’t this student comply? we can ask, What rule are they bumping up against — and do they have the capacity to navigate it right now?
Instead of teaching students to follow strategies correctly, we can help them practice choosing strategies intentionally.
And instead of positioning ourselves as the enforcers of “what works,” we can model what it looks like to think, adapt, and revise in real time.
In that sense, anarchist calisthenics isn’t a political stance. It’s a developmental one.
It’s the quiet, daily work of helping students — and ourselves — stay in shape for thinking.
And for neurodivergent learners especially, that kind of thinking practice isn’t a luxury — it’s access.
If this way of thinking feels familiar — or feels like the kind of educator you’re actively becoming — you don’t have to do that growth alone. One of the things we care most about in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab is surrounding ourselves with educators who are practicing exactly the kinds of discernment, restraint, and agency-building described here.
If you’re curious, there are a few easy ways to dip your toe in:
Join our newsletter, so you get a heads-up whenever we publish new blog posts like this one.
Get your free entrance ticket to our free library, where you can explore student-tested tools and materials without any commitment.
Or, if you want to go a step further, join the Learning Lab itself. We offer a 24-hour free trial — truly a toe-dip — so you can explore the space, get a feel for the conversations, and see whether it feels like a place that feels like home.
No pressure. Just options. The same way we try to design learning for students.
Postscript: Staying in Shape for Thinking—When the Stakes Rise
There’s an important caveat here—one we can’t responsibly skip.
Not everyone can practice discerned resistance in the same ways, or with the same level of safety.
People with more privilege can question rules publicly and be seen as thoughtful, principled, or even brave. People with less privilege—particularly students of color, undocumented students, and those in marginalized communities—often face real and disproportionate consequences for the very same behaviors.
This isn’t new.
From the earliest days of this country—built on stolen land and sustained through enslavement—the cost of resistance has never been evenly distributed. That history didn’t end; it echoes forward, shaping whose questioning gets labeled “leadership” and whose gets labeled “defiance.”
Staying in shape for thinking matters because thinking doesn’t stay theoretical.
Judgment gets exercised in real time, under real pressure, in moments when the consequences are no longer abstract. The small, daily practices we’ve been talking about — pausing before complying, questioning defaults, choosing intentionally —don’t disappear when the stakes rise. They’re what shape how we respond when something actually asks more of us.
James C. Scott imagined anarchist calisthenics as preparation for a hypothetical future day when resistance might be required.
But for many students — and many communities — that day doesn’t feel hypothetical at all.
This past Friday, January 30, 2026 tens of thousands of students across California walked out of their schools in protest of the excessive use of force by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The videos were everywhere. Hard to miss — and hard to look away.
Here’s one from not far from where I live, in Oakland, California:
It was a massive, collective flex of agency. These students weren’t simply skipping class. They were refusing to stand at the metaphorical red light of a burning intersection just because the system told them to stay put.
And the momentum didn’t stop there. On Monday, February 2, walkouts continued in cities like Chicago, Fresno, and Indianapolis, with hundreds — sometimes thousands— of students again refusing to carry on with “business as usual” while government representatives continue to terrorize immigrant communities and those who advocate alongside them.
And given everything that’s going on, I’m curious:
How are you talking with your students about the protests and walkouts? Did you mention them?
Did any of your clients or students actually walk out?
How are you creating space to hear what students in your world are thinking and noticing about what’s happening in the country — and the world!!— these days?
Do you feel comfortable bringing it up, or do you believe that these kinds of conversations are outside the scope of academic and executive function coaching for you?
Having these conversations — listening without rushing to correct, contain, or sanitize — is another way we can push back against narrow definitions of what’s considered “appropriate” in learning spaces. It’s another way we practice discernment.
Perhaps asking these questions of our students is another way to practice anarchist calisthenics.