Student Success Coaching

This student is working actively. How can we tell?

This student is demonstrating that she is engaged in what she is doing by using her finger to point to the part of the text that she is focusing on. She looks around the page and moves her pointing finger around as she does so, working to find what she is looking for. She nods her head as she goes along and moves her mouth while she reads. She appears to be reflexive and thinks about what she is learning. She looks away and then smiles. She has evaluated her progress and is proud of herself when she's done.

Wouldn't it be incredible if every student could become independent, confident and active in their own learning & life?

Coaching Can Make a Difference

The Brightside Method for Coaching is a unique family-style heartfelt approach to supporting students in learning the tools & strategies they need to succeed, essentially helping them learn how to learn, make healthy choices, and develop their executive function and self-management skills.

Sessions are designed for students + families who are ready to make a change *together*

Student Success Coaching focuses on supporting complex learners and their families to learn and implement the strategies they need to achieve academic and personal success by developing & strengthening their executive function skills, and becoming active, engaged, and methodical learners. The approach used involves students and their parents working together, as a team, to create the required appropriate, supportive, and structured environment.

How do Coaching Sessions work?

In each session, students and families work with their coach to develop personalized strategies for success. Students and parents attend sessions either separately and/or together, depending on individual needs. Parents are expected to participate in and be available during these sessions; students are expected to share their login information for school work (as needed).

Step 1: Relationship-building

Focus is placed on building a strong and secure relationship with each student and their family by earning trust and buy-in to the process; supporting students and parents to implement a structure that puts everyone on the same page.

Step 2: Learning Skills & Strategies

Students and families learn tools and strategies to support student success (based on individualized needs):

Executive Function Foundations: Metacognition & active thinking, situational awareness, integrating a flexible thinking approach, developing time awareness, how to plan anything, and doing and following through.
Family Dynamics: Develop & manage healthy routines (for morning, homework, and bedtime), support families in developing appropriate expectations around academics, executive function-related tasks, and independence, implement strategies to reduce homework battles, set up communication with schools & support IEP development.
Organization & Time Management: Material management, planning & prioritizing, using a visual planner to track & manage time, breaking assignments into small, manageable parts, using an agenda properly, and setting up accountability systems.
Study Strategies & Test Prep: How studying works, how to prepare for a test, effective note-taking strategies, previewing upcoming academic material, how to study effectively, how to effectively answer various types of test questions, planning & estimating time during the test itself, and evaluating test performance.
Active Reading for Comprehension: Reading actively, reading for comprehension, previewing, finding the main idea, strategies for inferencing & reading between the lines, establishing connections, and identifying themes and literary devices.
Written Expression Development: Breaking down written work, developing a plan for written assignments, brainstorming & idea generation, developing a structured outline, developing a strong thesis statement, paragraph and essay writing, and editing your own work.

Step 3: Implementing (or doing)

Students and families work to implement strategies they’ve learned with the help of their coach. With support from their parents and coach, along with practice and follow-up, students will eventually be able to implement these skills independently. This can take place over several months or years.

Cost: $125.00 per 50-minute session (insurance receipts are provided).

*Note: Follow-up (i.e. check-ins, additional meetings with students, parents, school teams, other professionals, etc.) is billed at $150.00 per hour.