Dr. Russell Hendel
 
Educational Background:
Russell Jay Hendel holds a Ph.D. in theoretical mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Associateship from the Society of Actuaries. He has taught his entire life at the college and university level and has covered the full range of mathematics courses.
 
Research and/or Professional Experience:
Major interests include discrete number theory, the overlap of art, poetry and mathematics, pedagogy, applications of technology to pedagogy, syllabus and challenging problem construction.

We explore aspects of essay writing requiring high-level organizational capacity and executive function. The literature supports the approach that specific and focused writing-skill mastery leads to reduced anxiety and increased self-efficacy which correlates with improved writing skills. Although essay writing is a complex multi-dimensional task, two particular strategies, tree-diagram and reference methods, specifically address the organizational skills characteristic of executive function. The tree and reference methods presented in this paper address the flow of information, not content, and consequently, the methods presented in this paper apply to mathematics and English as well as to K-12 and college level.