At a Florida high school, the leadership team set out to strengthen problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills, not only for students but also for teachers. Their goal was simple: Prepare students for future careers by building strong foundations of executive function.

To support this mission, the school embraced the Professional Learning Experience (PLE) Executive Function: The Pathway to Student Achievement to build a culture of professional learning around executive function. What began as a resource soon evolved into a framework for rethinking how teachers learn, set goals, and incorporate mindfulness into their daily practice.

Mindful Beginnings: Setting the Tone for Success

The principal shared how teachers connected the PLE directly to their school improvement plan goals, particularly in relation to mindfulness. Each morning now begins with a mindful moment for students during the first period, anchoring the day with calm, clarity, and intention. Teachers drew on the PLE’s Mindful Moments to build this routine, aligning professional learning with student well-being.

Personal Reflection Driving Professional Growth

In the very first PLE module, teachers create an Efficacy Notebook, a space where they write personal mission statements, set goals, and track growth. The Efficacy Notebook is designed for students and teachers to cognitively engage the brain in ways that build learning retention.

At this Florida school, the principal provided each teacher with a simple composition book. Soon, pages filled with reflections, inspirations, and even resources printed from MyQPortal, the school’s companion subscription. Teachers were not just consuming learning; they were shaping it around their identities as educators. See sample pages from one teacher’s Efficacy Notebook below:

Aligning Teacher Growth Goals with Schoolwide Success

The impact didn’t stop at journaling. Teachers began using their PLE resources to set deliberate practice goals, which are specific teaching strategies they wanted to implement, refine, and strengthen with feedback. These goals were tied directly to their formal professional growth plans, ensuring the work was both personally meaningful and institutionally aligned.

The principal noted that upcoming staff check-ins would explicitly use the PLE as a guide for these conversations, weaving professional learning seamlessly into day-to-day growth and development.

The Power of an Efficacy Notebook

Key Point: This is not an ordinary notebook for information capture! The Efficacy Notebook in our PLEs asks you to summarize what you’ve learned, connect it to something you’ve learned in the past, consider how you could use this learning in your classroom/classwork (teachers/students), and identify what else you want to learn. This level of reflection and drawing on past learning builds executive function and further solidifies learning.

Why Executive Function Matters for Every School

This story shows that professional learning is most powerful when it is:

  • Connected to school-wide priorities such as mindfulness and achievement,
  • Personalized through tools like the Efficacy Notebook, and
  • Practical in supporting deliberate practice goals.

When schools invest in experiences that honor teacher agency, align with improvement goals, and provide tangible strategies, the ripple effect reaches students. In this Florida school, executive function is not just a student skill; it’s a faculty-wide pathway to success.

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Interested in how executive function can strengthen your school community? 

Explore our Professional Learning Experiences to see how they can support your teachers’ growth and your students’ success.