When Your New Student Is Way More Behind Than You Expected
The email arrived only an hour before the December session.
A panicked message from the parents of an Anti-Boring Learning Lab member’s new 10th-grade client:
His Algebra grade had collapsed.
He wasn’t turning in assignments.
He wasn’t dressing for PE.
They were “really worried and didn’t know what to do.”
Marissa (not her real name), a newer academic coach building her private practice, felt her stomach drop. She had met with him twice. He had been polite but quiet, cooperative but not forthcoming. Nothing had signaled a crisis.
Now the depth of the situation was unmistakable.
And to her surprise, her nervous system remembered something too: her own teenage child had gone through a similar phase years earlier. The emotion of this new case stirred up old parenting memories she hadn't expected to revisit as a coach.
We were in a one-to-one session when she told me the story, and was looking for a useful frame to figure out how to approach the next session with her students.
“This isn’t regular coaching anymore,” I offered. “This is triage.”
What did I mean? What is “triage coaching” when it comes to scattered students? And what tips are there for new academic coaches who are encountering triage for the first time, especially when it’s unexpected?
Let’s explore.
TL;DR
If you don’t have time to read the whole post, here are the main nuggets:
Triage coaching is a necessary part of academic coaching, especially with neurodiverse learners or students who enter coaching mid-semester. It shifts your role from teaching systems to stabilizing a student who is underwater.
New coaches sometimes feel confused when their go-to strategies fall flat, but the issue is often cognitive overload. A student in crisis doesn’t have the bandwidth for executive function coaching—yet.
With clarity, consent, and simple scripts, you can support overwhelmed students and their families without abandoning your coach approach. This post walks through a real case to demonstrate how.
This blog may resonate most with:
Academic coaches and tutors who want clearer language for crisis support
Classroom teachers who want to use a coach-like approach with overwhelmed students
Learning specialists working with neurodiverse learners and families experiencing school stress
First, let’s talk about the stages: proactive versus triage
In the last month, Marissa has had been so excited about getting her first coaching clients. She’s a member of our Rock Your Biz accountability cohort, and was thrilled to so easily land her first two clients.
But a month later she was surprised by the depth of this student’s challenges, which hadn’t fully surfaced during the intake process. The tone of urgency in the parents’ message especially took her of guard….including those feelings from when her own kiddo had descended into an abyss of mounting late work.
She was standing at the crossroads of:
concern for the student
navigating the parents’ intensity
feeling her own emotional echo
and uncertainty about what to do next.
What she didn’t yet have was language for the coaching stage this student was in.
When we named it—triage rather than proactive coaching—it gave her clarity. It helped her understand why her original plan didn’t quite fit, why the student wasn’t taking initiative yet, and why the parents' panic felt so overwhelming.
Naming the stage is not semantics. It‘s orientation.
And there’s a reason this distinction matters so much. When students are under acute academic stress — which is what I mean when I say they’re in “triage” mode — their access to working memory and executive function drops—sometimes dramatically. In other words, the very skills we’re eager to teach are often the least available in moments of crisis.
That’s why triage coaching isn’t about optimization. It’s about stabilization.
So what are the stages? in my years training coaches, I’ve found it helpful to have them identify whether the student is needing triage or proactive coaching, as they require different coaching moves. If you’re curious for a deep dive into the difference between these two stages, check out this blog entry from May 2025.
In the rest of this post, however, we’re going to explore “triage coaching” and what to do as coaches when we discover a student is descending into a swirl of increasing late work and (what the adults around them judge as) not enough action.
What Triage Coaching Can Look Like in Real Life
When a student is underwater, the goal is stabilization. Not habit building. Not optimization.
In Marissa’s case, here’s what I suggested “triage coaching” might look like. A useful note here is that we were having this conversation in early December, and the student didn’t have final exams until January. So there was room to turn things around before finals.
1. Stabilize before teaching skills
For this student, and most students at the “triage” stage, the immediate goal is to “stop the bleeding,” which in the case of a student means preventing semester collapse. This could mean many things including:
reducing the shame fog that the student was undoubtedly feeling
setting realistic expectations for what could be done and what couldn’t (“at this point we’re not shooting for A’s, but we can still shoot for not failing the class”)
building trust (so the student feels like someone is aligning alongside him rather than judging and pushing him)
helping the student survive the next five weeks, not redesign his entire system when there’s so much mounting time pressure.
2. Bring in supports the student cannot activate alone
One thing that was super clear is that this student needed Algebra support — this had been pointed out to Marissa by her accountability cohort in the Lab. Her student had clearly missed some foundational math concepts and could not catch up independently. Since they still had five weeks until finals, triage could mean suggesting a tutor to help build a few key math concepts, as well as normalizing that needing a tutor isn’t a failure—it’s a resource.
Triage also means being practical about late work. Should this student start with high-value assignments? Or low value easy wins? Does he even know which assignments are which? The choice depends on his energy and stress levels, not on perfection.
3. Use a temporarily more directive stance—with consent
So many coaches who come into the Learning Lab are proud of their “student centered” coaching philosophy. They don’t want to force students to do anything, even though parents often wish we would.
And certainly, the Lab also has a consent-based culture. We work on our habits of asking students permission before being too directive in our approaches.
That said, students in triage often don’t have enough emotional regulation and access to executive functions to be able to think through questions like, “Do I want this or that? Do I have other ideas for what will help?” Often they simply need to be instructed — to borrow from our own executive functions while they’re too freaked out to think clearly.
I recommended that Marissa tell her client that about the fact that they are in triage mode right now, and that her recommendation is to figure out how to “stop the bleeding” before finals.
I then suggested she try out her own version of the following:
“Normally I give you lots of choice in our sessions. But because we’re in triage mode right now, I’m feeling the need to be a little more structured until finals. Would it be okay with you if I get more ‘bossy’ for a few weeks and do things like help map out your missing work, prioritize tasks, and send a few check-in texts? After finals, we’ll go back to a more collaborative approach. And if I ever feel too bossy, you are free to tell me. How does this sound?”
This kind of “consent to be bossy” is, first, a little funny. and also, it’s a way to preserve the student’s agency even when offering structured scaffolding.
4. Reset the parent role
The parents in this scenario were clearly freaked out! It’s easy, when our own systems are dysregulated, to increase pressure on the student, often unproductively.
Marissa and I discussed how she might work with the parents to create more structure and supports without the unrelenting pushing.
For example, could they find a math tutor and provide the time and space for their son to have some sessions over the holiday break?
Could they provide time and space to get some late work done, if Marissa and their son prioritize what assignments are most important?
While all this is happening, what can they do to keep their own systems calm, given a calmer parent system often opens up space for student responsibility — or at least doesn’t make the student’s dysregulation worse.
5. Update intake systems to reduce surprises in future
Marissa and I also discussed how, in the future, she might focus her intake session differently, so that if the student is super behind this reality gets communicated to the coach before they contract to do academic/executive function coaching.
One idea that occurred to me is — could she request that the family provide two simple screenshots of the student’s grading portal?
the class where the student feels most confident
the class where things feel hardest
These screenshots might offer an early glimpse into whether the student is already operating in triage mode.
Also, though, it’s helpful to assume that if a family is looking for some kind of coaching midsemester, they are likely in triage mode already. The “proactive coaching” I mentioned earlier is usually only possible at the start of the semester, before the descent into late work has begun.
Why Triage Must Come Before Teaching EF Skills
At this point, it’s worth naming what’s actually happening under the hood for students in moments like the one Marissa’s client was in.
When academic stress spikes, the brain changes how it functions — and those changes matter for coaching.
Stress Shrinks Access to Working Memory
Under acute stress, the body releases cortisol and adrenaline. These chemicals are helpful in true emergencies, but they come with a tradeoff: they reduce access to working memory.
Working memory is what students rely on to:
plan and sequence tasks
hold multiple steps in mind
weigh options and make decisions
When working memory is compromised, asking a student to “prioritize,” “make a plan,” or “use better strategies” often backfires — not because the student is unwilling, but because the cognitive space to do so just isn’t available.
This is why executive function coaching can feel like it slides right off during crisis moments.
Academic Stress Fuels Avoidance — Not Effort
There’s a common assumption that when students are behind, they need more pressure to act.
But research on adolescent academic stress tells a different story. When stress levels rise, many students:
avoid tasks they care about,
withdraw from help-seeking,
and experience a sharp drop in confidence.
That pattern showed up clearly in Marissa’s student. He wasn’t being resistant or oppositional. His nervous system was overloaded, and avoidance was doing the job of short-term protection.
Neurodiverse Students Have Less Margin for Error
For neurodiverse learners — including students with ADHD, anxiety, autism, or sensory sensitivities — the buffer is even smaller.
These students often operate with a higher baseline cognitive load to begin with. When a crisis hits, they move into shutdown faster and recover more slowly. Expecting them to engage in reflective planning or habit-building at that point isn’t just unrealistic — it can increase shame and disengagement.
Cognitive Load Theory Makes the Case for Triage
Cognitive Load Theory helps explain why strategy instruction fails in moments of overwhelm.
When a student is in crisis:
intrinsic load (the difficulty of the work itself) is already high
extraneous load (stress, shame, urgency) skyrockets
leaving little to no space for germane load — the mental energy required to learn new strategies
When extraneous load dominates, learning can’t take hold.
That doesn’t mean growth isn’t possible. It means stabilization has to come first.
Triage coaching reduces extraneous load so that, later, real executive function growth can happen (in what I call “proactive coaching” mode).
The Big Picture
Seen through this lens, triage coaching isn’t a step backward or a compromise.
It’s a developmentally and neurologically appropriate response to a student (and family!) in distress — and a necessary bridge to the proactive, student-centered coaching we ultimately want
What Marissa Took Away
By naming the stage more accurately, Marissa left the conversation with clearer orientation.
She had language she could use with parents.
She had a more realistic frame for what the student might be capable of right now.
She had permission to be temporarily more directive without abandoning her student-centered values.
She also noticed her own emotional reactions more clearly — including where this situation was brushing up against her experiences as a parent.
None of this guaranteed a smooth path forward.
But it gave her a way to make more intentional choices about what not to push, what could be supported, and where to focus her energy next.
Perhaps most importantly, she stopped interpreting the struggle as evidence that she had misread the situation or failed as a coach.
It was simply a different stage of work than she had originally expected.
If This Situation Sounds Familiar
Many educators and coaches find themselves in moments like this — partway through a semester, realizing that the work in front of them is more about stabilization than skill-building.
Often, what’s missing isn’t effort or care.
It’s shared language, realistic expectations, and opportunities to think through these moments with other educators who understand the complexity of the work.
That’s what the Anti-Boring Learning Lab is designed to support.
Inside the Lab, we practice applying the study skills and executive function strategies from the Anti-Boring Toolkit to real student situations, whether in triage or proactive coaching scenarios, with both neurotypical and neurodiverse learners and their concerned families.
For those building a private practice, Rock Your Biz offers a parallel space to think about intake, boundaries, communication, and sustainability — without rushing to tidy answers or one-size-fits-all solutions.
If this post helped you feel a bit more oriented, we urge you to consider joining the Lab!
You’re welcome to join us.
👉 Access our FREE Tools in the Visitor’s Center
👉 Join the Learning Lab to learn the FULL Toolkit.
👉 Consider the Rock Your Biz Add-On
And Now, Your Turn
Think about a student you’re working with right now — or one you’ve supported in the past.
Looking back, do you think they were in a triage phase or a proactive coaching phase at the time?
If you’re comfortable sharing, drop a comment with:
what made the situation feel urgent (or not), and
what you wish you’d had language for in that moment.
Chances are, someone else reading is navigating something similar.