How to Make Confident Coaching Decisions When Student Problems Overwhelm You
You're in a session. Your student has just updated you about the mess they're in this week. And suddenly you freeze. You're well-trained, experienced, and still — for a second — you have absolutely no idea which way to go.
This is a classic "deer in headlights” problem. It shows up at every stage of your career — not because you're underprepared, but because coaching neurodivergent students puts you in genuinely complex, fast-moving situations that no amount of general expertise automatically prepares you for.
Take, for example, a coach we'll call Nadia.
She was a seasoned reading interventionist — a leader in her field, skilled around neurodiversity, clear on her methods. Science of reading methods, that is. She wanted to expand her services, so she enrolled in our study skills certification to add academic and executive function coaching to her toolkit. And almost immediately, she ran straight into the deer in headlights problem.
She told me more than once in our training calls: "I feel like I'm not doing enough to support my students."
Then she got to the third module of the Anti-Boring Toolkit — and everything shifted. "Where have you been all my life?!" she typed into the comments.
What did she find? And why did it produce that immediate exhale of relief?
To understand that, we first need to talk about what's actually happening in your brain when you freeze mid-session.
When Your Own Working Memory Gets in the Way
If you've been following me lately, you know I'm obsessed with cognitive load theory, and the power of teaching students to understand their own working memory — and how to manage overload before it tanks their mental health.
But. Well. Ahem. Educators have working memories, too!
A colleague recently sent me this article from the Substack newsletter SoL in the Wild, and it named something I've been observing in coaches for years:
When a teacher's working memory is overloaded, instruction degrades — not because of a lack of knowledge or skill, but because good decision-making requires cognitive bandwidth. And in a complex, fast-moving classroom, that bandwidth gets eaten up fast.
Swap "classroom" for "coaching session" and the parallel is exact.
Think about what's happening in your working memory the moment an overwhelmed student sits down and downloads their stress to you. In the next few seconds you're simultaneously:
Trying to figure out what they actually mean
Deciding whether to ask a question or make an observation
Scanning your mental library of tools
Recalling what you know about this student's history
Monitoring their body language
Tracking what their parent told you in the email last week
and more — always more
Wowser. How the heck are we supposed to make a good decision in the middle of all that?
I wonder if Nadia's worry about "not doing enough" for her students was connected to her own working memory overload — the sheer weight of her students' multitude of needs landing on her all at once.
Without a structure to hold that complexity, her working memory was doing all the heavy lifting. And that's exhausting. And disorienting. And it can feel, from the inside, a lot like not being good enough.
Side note: If any of this is landing, you might want to save your spot at From Meh to Motivated — our free May 16 webinar where we walk through five coaching moves that help you navigate exactly these moments with confidence. Go ahead, I'll wait. 😉
A Tool To Help with Coaching Overload
So — remember how Nadia had been working through one of our Anti-Boring modules, and exclaimed, "Where have you been all my life?"
She was responding to a tool I call “The Academic Coaching Decision Making Tree.” This is a visual framework that organizes all our Anti-Boring tools into clear structure that coaches can lean on when they feel “deer in headlights” overload start to creep in.
The “tree” (which is really a chart) maps the landscape of academic and executive function coaching into three buckets — the Learn, Do, and Feel buckets — and walks you through a process for figuring out how to know which bucket to start with whenever you’re meeting a new client.
In other words: it holds the complexity of the coaching moment so your working memory doesn't have to.
And Nadia isn't the only one who reacted with excitement about the tool. Here's what I've come to expect when coaches encounter this tool for the first time:
"While I knew about each of these different issues, having them ALL charted out with the potential solutions readily available makes me feel so much more confident in my questioning practice."
"It definitely provides direction and prioritization in what can seem like a sea of confusion."
"I love having this one-stop-shop tool. I can already see how useful it will be as my go-to visual chart during initial discussions."
"I love the organization of this chart. The visual really helps me see clearly where to start after we've figured out what they are struggling with."
So why did the Decision Making Tree land for Nadia — and so many other coaches — so powerfully?
Because it addressed their working memory overload by giving them a framework to lean on in the midst of it.
A student walks in and says "I don't have enough time." Is that true? Or is it actually a study skills problem in disguise — because if she knew how to study effectively, the same amount of time would be plenty?
Another student says he keeps procrastinating. Is that an executive function problem? A time management problem? Or is it anxiety showing up in productivity clothing?
These are decision-making moments. And they come fast. The Academic Coaching Decision Making Tree provides a visual, step-by-step framework for thinking through exactly these situations — so coaches aren't making those decisions from scratch every time.
What about you? Do you have a framework you can rely on during your own deer in the headlights moments?
What Does a Good Framework Actually Do?
Even if you don't use our Decision Making Tree, I urge you to find or create a strong framework you can rely on in the midst of complex client scenarios.
Here's what a good framework actually provides:
It organizes without overwhelming. A pile of strategies is not a framework. A good framework gives every tool a home — so when a student walks in and says something, you're not rifling through a mental junk drawer in real time. The organization has already happened. Your working memory is free.
It starts with diagnosis, not prescription. Before it tells you what to do, it helps you figure out what you're actually looking at. Is this a learning problem? A getting-things-done problem? An anxiety problem wearing a productivity costume? A good framework gives you a process you can run almost automatically — which means you're not burning working memory on "where do I even start?"
It handles complexity without paralysis. Students are complicated. Their problems overlap and shift week to week. A good framework acknowledges the messiness and gives you a way to prioritize. When everything seems to be happening at once, the framework holds the complexity so you don't have to.
It embeds the values, so you can't use it wrong. For us, that means student agency and consent aren't add-ons — they're load-bearing walls. The way you move through the framework is the anti-boring approach. You can't shortcut it without violating the philosophy.
It builds your judgment over time. A checklist makes you dependent on the checklist. A good framework, used repeatedly, develops your instincts. You internalize the logic. Eventually the decision-making becomes automatic — which means it stops consuming working memory at all. That's what we saw happen with Nadia. Not overnight. But it started the moment she found the map.
Whether you come into the Lab to learn our Decision Making Tree or decide to build your own, I hope you'll sit with these characteristics. Thinking in advance about your own overload — and giving yourself a tool to lean on — is one of the kindest things you can do for yourself as a coach.
Want the Full Framework?
The Academic Coaching Decision Making Tree lives inside the Anti-Boring Learning Lab — specifically in Module 3: Academic Coaching 101.
And guess what?! We're opening the Lab for a summer cohort of educators who want to learn the full framework for yourselves!!
For more information about the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, the tools that live inside it, and the community of coaches who use it every week — please read up about our special summer session!!
Your Turn
Do you have a framework you rely on when you feel that deer in headlights freeze mid-session? If so, what is it — and how did you find it? If not, what do you do instead? Drop it in the comments — these are exactly the kinds of questions the Lab community loves to dig into together.