Mind in the Making, based on Ellen Galinsky’s book, The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs, is a movement to promote executive-function skills in adults and directly through them in children. The goal is to keep the light in children’s eyes burning brightly towards learning.
Executive-function skills are needed for children to achieve their goals and get along better in their world. Mind in the Making is based on brain science research, but it’s putting these skills into practice inside homes and classrooms that makes the difference.
Mind in the Making is a series of workshops designed for adults, parents, grandparents, caregivers, teachers, etc. The workshops start with applying executive-function skills to the lives of the adults and then going forward modeling them for children.
The sessions are designed to complement the great work parents and educators are already doing. However, what makes this work different is it is one of the only trainings where adults reflect on their own lives to enhance the essential skills we are teaching our children.
I love being in a Mind in the Making session and seeing parents and teachers making personal discoveries about their own lives and their classrooms and knowing that going forward, the children they interact with will benefit from these skills. It is creating a foundation for children to become life-long learners and helps them do better in school with strategies that will carry them forward to a successful adulthood.
