Our Guest: Jess Davis
Show Notes
Jess Davis joins the Voices in Montessori podcast to discuss the need for explicit instruction on executive functioning for Elementary and Adolescent students in order to set them up for success.
Executive functioning skills are cognitive (thinking) skills that support the processes needed to thrive in all areas of life- socially, physically, and academically. They help us plan, organize, and complete the tasks for basic needs and self-actualization. They help us control our emotions (vs. be controlled by them), actively engage in activities, make good decisions, and complete tasks.
Without strong EF skills, students will struggle to attend to lessons, follow directions, keep track of materials, retain content, and complete tasks. In addition, low EF can mimic a lack of motivation, comprehension, or memory and can be misinterpreted as intentional misbehavior or refusal.
If these challenges sound familiar when thinking of certain students in your classroom, you are not alone. In recent years, executive functioning skills have been an increasing concern for classroom teachers. Jess walks us through what to look for in the classroom, how to address EF deficits, and ways to work EF practice into daily routines. She explains the three categories of executive function, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control, and how these link to innumerable daily tasks. This is a great introduction to Executive Function and systematic ways to support the children in our care who need extra EF support.
About our Guest
Jess Davis, M.Ed
Assistant Head of School at Bloomington Montessori & Owner and Lead Consultant of Montessori Minds Consulting
Jess Davis was a Montessori student as a child, has two adult sons who graduated from Montessori, taught elementary for over a decade, and is now Assistant Head of School at a nonpublic Montessori school serving 234 students ages 3-12. She is also owner and lead consultant of Montessori Minds Consulting and host of the Roots and Wings Montessori podcast. She is passionate about holistic, research-based literacy instruction in Montessori, Montessori andragogy for adult learners and in-service teachers, systems development for continuous school improvement, Montessori inclusion, and most of all the intersection between cognitive science and Montessori. She is currently a PhD candidate at Indiana University in the Learning Sciences department, and was a 2024 American Montessori Society Emerging Leadership Fellow. In 2024, she published an executive function Montessori album, DOING: The Science of Getting Stuff Done, to help teachers incorporate research-backed explicit instruction of executive functioning skills into their classrooms.
Resources & References
Montessori Minds Consulting
montessorimindsconsulting.com
Tools for measuring EF through observation: https://www.public-montessori.org/executive-function-tools
How to Reduce the Cognitive Load on Students During Lessons
https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-reduce-cognitive-load-students-during-lessons/
Edutopia’s The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2025:
https://www.edutopia.org/visual-essay/the-10-most-significant-education-studies-of-2025
Development of the Time Horizon
https://www.efpractice.com/
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