Executive Function Skills (HIP)

Two minutes on how we teach thinking

What is HIP?

Executive Function Skills (HIP) | Avenues New York - The Science

Training the brain's air traffic control system

The science behind HIP

Executive function is often described as the brain’s air traffic control system: the ability to hold information in working memory, switch flexibly between ideas, and resist distraction. Research suggests it is a stronger predictor of long-term academic success than IQ.

HIP is built on deliberate practice with expert teachers. Teachers act as coaches, offering targeted feedback on specific thinking moves rather than on right answers. Over time, with enough repetition, the underlying habits become automatic. Students build intellectual muscle memory in critical thinking, creativity, abstraction, empathy, metacognition, mental agility, and planning.

Students practice in two modes: HIP Writing and HIP Thinking, offered in English, Spanish, and/or Mandarin Chinese in grades 5–11, depending on the student’s language ability.

What makes HIP truly unique is its lasting impact. The thinking skills students develop—mental agility, creativity, empathy, and critical reasoning—extend far beyond the classroom. Whether they’re crafting essays, solving complex problems, or navigating life’s challenges, Avenues students carry these essential skills into every facet of their lives.

Erin Sheehan

Associate Division Head, Upper Division

Meet our faculty

Building the habits behind powerful thinking

How HIP Works

Focused practice

Athletes, musicians and artists strengthen their craft through repeated practice and precise feedback. HIP applies that same principle to thinking. In focused sessions, typically lasting around 20 minutes, students experiment, receive immediate feedback and try again.

Expert teachers coaching the process

The goal is not to produce a perfect answer or polished final product. It is to strengthen the process students use to reach one. Teachers act as coaches, offering targeted feedback on specific thinking moves and helping students reflect on the choices they make along the way.

Growing independence

Starting in grade 6, students encounter increasingly sophisticated HIP challenges, moving from explicit instruction in the framework toward greater independence. Depending on their language level and learning pathway, they may participate in English, Spanish or Mandarin Chinese.

Developed skills for any challenge

Over time, students develop creativity, mental agility, empathy, analytical reasoning and awareness of their own thinking—as well as the confidence to remain engaged when a problem is difficult, ambiguous or entirely new.

Hear from HIP students in their own words

Whether it is the freedom to explore every idea for an essay without judgment, the mental stamina to keep writing when it gets difficult, or the creativity to respond to a prompt in a unique way, all the practice I had in HIP has really made a difference.

Martin

Avenues student

High-Intensity Practice (HIP)

What is HIP?

The science behind HIP

How HIP Works

Hear from HIP students in their own words

Your child’s Avenues journey starts here

Cookie Policy