Who Should Teach Students How To Learn?

Podcasts & Interviews
Written By Gretchen Wegner

In this inaugural episode, Gretchen talks with Susannah Cole — executive function coach, educational diagnostician, and co-author of Flexible Mindsets in Schools — about the gap EF coaching fills and why school was never really designed to close it. Inspired by NPR's Wild Card, this first conversation runs three rounds of questions across three chapters of Susannah's life, going deeper than a typical interview. They trace her path from being misread as a student to burning out as a teacher, then into the work that finally clicked. Along the way: a look at who schools were actually built for, and a practical tool that changed the way Susannah runs sessions and relationships alike.

You'll Hear Us Talk About

  • Why "whose job is it to teach learning?" is such a thorny question once you look at the history of schools

  • Susannah's iceberg model — what's visible above the waterline in a struggling student, and what's driving it below

  • Whose nervous system is actually overwhelmed in the classroom, and why that matters for regulation and attention

  • The Consent Burger: a simple structure for inviting students in that reshaped Susannah's coaching

  • Learning to read what a specific student needs in a specific moment, instead of leading with enthusiasm

About Susannah Cole

Susannah Cole is an executive function coach, educational diagnostician, and co-author of Flexible Mindsets in Schools (with Dr. Julie Dunstan). With over 25 years across early childhood, middle school, autism therapy, learning support, and college teaching, she brings a strengths-based approach to helping students build the systems, habits, and mindsets behind self-directed learning. She holds an MEd in Developmental Psychology and conducts psychoeducational assessments. Find her at theefcoach.com.

Links + Resources

Guess what?! If you'd like to learn more about TEFOS (The Executive Function Online Summit), where Susannah and Gretchen first met, it's coming up again August 14–17, 2026! It's totally free to register:

Learn More About the Anti-Boring Learning Lab

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FAQ: Who Should Teach Students How to Learn?

(Episode 1 of the Academic Coaching Podcast, featuring Susannah Cole)

Whose job is it to teach students how to learn?
Gretchen and Susannah dig into the idea that traditional schooling was built to produce compliant workers, not self-directed learners, and was never really designed to teach the metacognitive skills students need. That's the gap coaching exists to fill.

What are executive functions (EFs), in plain terms?
Susannah's simplest definition: EFs are how we get stuff done. Teachers hand over content and information; executive function coaching is about the how — managing tasks, emotions, and a full life outside of being a student.

What is the iceberg model, and what does it reveal about struggling students?
Susannah's iceberg model separates what adults typically see in a student — missed deadlines, disorganization, forgotten planners — from what's actually driving it underneath: self-awareness, metacognition, emotional regulation, and core executive function skills like working memory and cognitive flexibility. The visible behaviors are just the tip; the real work happens below the waterline.

Whose nervous system is actually dysregulated in a learning struggle — the student's, or the adult's?
Susannah and Gretchen dig into how regulation and attention are entangled for both students and the adults working with them, and why co-regulation matters as much as any individual strategy.

What do top leadership researchers say are the core skills for thriving in uncertain times, and how does that connect to how students learn?
Susannah references a conversation among Brené Brown, Adam Grant, and Simon Sinek that named self-awareness, metacognition, emotional regulation, and attention as core leadership skills. She and Gretchen connect these directly to what actually helps students learn.

What is the "Consent Burger," and why does Susannah call it the most transformative tool she's learned?
It's a coaching structure from the Anti-Boring Toolkit: inviting a student's consent before teaching, then reflecting together afterward. Susannah describes how it shifted her out of a "teacher-ish" delivery style and into something that helps students own their own learning.

What is Susannah working to improve in her coaching right now?
She names two areas: finding sharper, more population-specific science to reach students like younger high school boys, and trimming her natural tendency to over-explain so her mini-lectures stay focused on what a specific student needs in the moment.

Where can I learn more about Susannah Cole?
Visit theefcoach.com for her coaching practice, and check out her book, Flexible Mindsets in Schools.

Gretchen Wegner
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