Students Don't Follow Through on Commitments?
Whether you are a classroom teacher or academic coach, it can be incredibly frustrating when students don’t follow through on their responsibilities.
For a classroom teacher, this could look like not turning in homework, regularly turning in incomplete work, or failing to turn in late work that they’ve promised to complete.
For academic coaches (or ADHD/Executive Function coaches or content tutors), students’ lack of follow-through is often related to promises they’ve made to us at the end of their hour-long session.
Case Study: Enthusiastic Student With No Independent Action
Recently, a coach who has been trained in the Anti-Boring Toolkit wrote into our community listserv with a frustration:
I have a client who is super keen when we are working together. She agrees to commitments and assures me that it is not overwhelming, and that everything is clear and doable. She then does not follow through at all. No matter the reminders I send her. I have decided to scale back the commitments and for now, just focus on filling in her weekly planner. Do you all have any other suggestions on how I can have an impact in a way that she begins to see success and wants to do it on her own? Thanks in advance!
This question underscores an issue that is very common in one-to-one coaching scenarios. Students show up to sessions compliant, at the very least, and often “super keen” (as this coach identified) during the actual sessions. They will enthusiastically commit to follow-up actions such as “Turn in my two late history assignments” or “Write a to-do list in my planner every evening.” The disconnect between the enthusiasm during sessions and the lack of follow-through outside of sessions can be very disconcerting for coaches.
What options are available to an academic coach who is encountering this lack of follow-through?
Although I have my own answers to this conundrum, today I’d like to highlight the excellent responses from the Anti-Boring Certified Coaches on the listserv. As I read through their reflections, I couldn’t help but notice that each one highlighted a different academic coaching skill that we focus on inside the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, where we teach the tools and the brain science students need to shift from unmotivated, bored, and struggling students into independent, motivated, self-starting learners. Let’s check out the first one.
Coaching Skill: Habits Versus Commitments
The first coach to respond to the above question zeroed in on an important distinction:
How is she with habits, as compared to commitments? If things are good on that front, it might be worth adding a habit for her to follow through on her commitments.
I love the distinction mentioned here between “commitments” and “habits.” In the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, I train educators in coaching via a system called “The Habit and Grades Tracker.” The tracker is a Google spreadsheet that’s used in a particular way to:
Take notes on student sessions
Record commitments the student makes
Identify and track specific habits the student is interested in developing
Track the students’ grades
And more!
In this system, we consider commitments to be time-bound actions that students promise to do over the next week, before their next session. The coach helps hold the student accountable for their commitment. Habits, on the other hand, are repeatable routines that students decide they would like to develop. We track the “commitments” in one place on the habit tracker, and the “habits” in a different place in the tracker.
This coach’s suggestion was quite clever: perhaps the student doesn’t yet notice that she has a habit of not following through on commitments. So perhaps it’s a good idea to create a new habit on her habit tracker for “how well do I follow through on my commitments to my coach?”
This particular coach then added a reflection:
I occasionally need to have a frank discussion with a student if commitments are regularly not being followed through on, as that's a sign that coaching isn't working (at least as well as it could be). Every 2-3 weeks or so, I check in with students about their long-term goals, and their progress toward them, and sometimes I dive in further and ask why those goals are important to them.
This reflection points to the power of connecting our daily and weekly habits with our long-term goals, to help students see the connection between the two. This is a powerful coaching tool, and something that’s harder to do in classroom settings.
Coaching Skill: Listening for the Why
Another Certified Anti-Boring Coach chimed in, pointing out the importance of discovering why a student makes the choices they make:
It sounds like a perfect opportunity to explore the "why" behind not following through on commitments, so you can work directly on the root. I am taking Crista's Executive Function course, and she was just talking about the importance of finding out the reasons behind behaviors (without making assumptions):
Is it overwhelm? Do the tasks you are setting feel like a low priority compared to everything else that is on a hard deadline (i.e., assignments)? Is it procrastination? Is it a lack of motivation? Is she a people pleaser, and just tells you what she thinks you want to hear? Is she an ADHD personality who gets super excited about too many things, but no follow-through?
Depending on what is going on, then you will be able to pull out tools to help. Likely what you are seeing is happening elsewhere in her life, too.
I love this comment because it is all too common for adults to make faulty assumptions about why students do the things they do. Our knee-jerk reaction is often to assume that students are being lazy or intentionally oppositional. However, the opposite is true. When you get good at questioning a student without preconceptions, you often discover that there is an unintentional logic to their choices.
Once this logic has been revealed, it’s much easier to help a student make intentional choices instead. In the Anti-Boring Learning Lab’s Academic Coaching 101 micro-credential (part of the CORE Toolkit), we learn how to ask different kinds of questions that get to the heart of what is going on for students.
Coaching Skill: Helping a Student Notice
A third coach chimed in with an important communication nuance:
The only thing I can add, which might seem obvious but I sometimes forget to do, is simply naming for the student what I'm seeing and experiencing from the perspective of their coach. Reflective conversations about what is actually happening can be so revealing when done from a place of compassion and with a desire to understand what's going on for the student.
Yes! Yes! One of the assumptions adults make about students is that they see the patterns that we see. So often they don’t. Coaching can be so powerful because it helps make a student’s actions and subsequent consequences visible to them, sometimes for the first time. It can be so helpful for the coach to compassionately narrate what they observe to the student, and then to ask empowering questions to help the student to identify why. I call this coaching tool the “Do/Notice Loop.” To learn more about it, check out this video from my YouTube channel:
Coaching Skill: Adjusting Our Expectations
Back to our question about what to do when a student doesn’t follow through.
A final Certified Coach responded to the conundrum with an important reminder about adjusting our expectations:
I echo what other coaches have responded with. But I am also reminded that sometimes this is where students are at in their coaching journey. I know we have talked about this many times over the years with Gretchen, and have often concluded that for some students doing all the work with us in a session is growth. Expecting that they will do it on their own isn’t always realistic for all students. It can make our coaching feel less effective, but measuring our worth in different ways is equally important.
Hear! Hear! So many of our students struggle with multiple executive function challenges that get in the way of their ability to do what they say they’ll do. Sometimes it’s enough to simply practice new actions during our coaching sessions, with zero expectations that the student will follow through on their own.
Have you heard of the popular 3-step parenting/teaching process?
I do
We do
You do
This refers to the importance of the adult first modeling the action in question; then doing it alongside the student; and finally, expecting the student to do it by themselves. Often in coaching, we need to practice certain actions over and over during our sessions before the student will ever take action on their own.
Which Coaching Skill Do You Need to Work On?
The above advice provided by the Anti-Boring Certified Coaches is so nuanced and compassionate. I’m always so touched by the expertise in the room during our Anti-Boring Community Calls, and it’s one of my deep joys to convene such a community of skilled educators.
Where are you in relationship to the skills modeled here:
Do you make the distinction between commitments and habits with your students? Do you have a system to help “make visible” their habits?
How well do you know how to catch yourself making assumptions about students? And instead ask questions that get at the “why” behind the student’s actions?
Have you honed your ability to help a student notice the patterns in their behavior without making them feel judged? In a way that helps them see themselves compassionately, and choose actions that move them in the direction of their goals?
Do you know how to adjust your expectations about where your students’ growth edge is?
If you would like to skill up in any of these areas, please consider joining our community of coaches (academic, executive function, ADHD), tutors, and teachers inside the Anti-Boring Learning Lab. You can find more information here, as well as sign up on the waiting list to get a peek inside and a free trial. We open the doors to our courses/community every few months, and I swear to you, it’s one of the best professional development opportunities you’ll find anywhere.
Perhaps someday you’ll be the Certified Anti-Boring Coach providing the expert feedback to questions from new Anti-Boring coaches? I can’t wait! If you’re not ready to join, perhaps you’ll consider coming to one of my free monthly office hours? Find out the date for the next one, and sign up here.