How Teachers become Coaches
towards including coaching strategies in their classrooms All text © Martin Richards, Sweden 2023 1
The Author Martin Richards has been an educator for thirty years. He has worked as a teacher of Mathematics for teenagers and a teacher of English for adults. His company offered individual and group training in communication. He learned to use coaching as part of his teaching and training work. He is a CPCC certified coach. When he reached retirement, he turned to writing books for his clients and has authored thirty books on coaching in an education context. 2
All the teachers described in this book are composite characters based on the many conversations the author has had during the final 15 years of his work in teaching and coaching. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Nikita Gomez, Primary teacher Anjali Paterson, Primary teacher Kamil Squires, Secondary teacher Elwood Webster, Secondary teacher Yasemin Steele, Secondary teacher Edmund Pitts, Adult Education Roza Matthews, Secondary teacher Leah Hendrix, Secondary teacher To maintain confidentiality, the teachers’ names and photographs in this document are for illustration only and were downloaded from www.pexels.com The Interviews The format of this book is a stylised interview based on one question similar to, “How did you become a coach in your classroom?” 3
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● Encountered street coaching by accident ● Signed up for a coaching demo, and coaching practice 1-1 ● Now taking online courses to learn more about coaching. 5
classrooms as a teacher? I don’t know how it happened exactly. It started about six months ago. I was walking to a lecture when I saw a huge yellow beach umbrella and a screen someone had put up indoors in the hallway. Two people were standing by the umbrella in front of a screen and some chairs. One of them came up to me, said her name was Sheena and asked how I was doing. What did she expect? With all the confusion that’s been going on in the World, how is anyone doing? I told her. And she listened. I mean she listened. It wasn’t like she was selling anything. It was like she was there just for me to talk to. Sheena asked if I would like to sit on one of the chairs behind the poster, where we could talk more privately. We sat there and talked for ten, fifteen minutes. It was mostly me talking, she just listened. She was a good listener. In the end, I was almost in tears, but the good kind. It was such a relief to talk. Then a strange thing happened. The guy put his head around the side of the screen and said there were other people waiting. Sheena asked if I would like to come to a meeting where I 6
someone else. I said I didn’t know but I would think about it. She gave me a card with a date, time and place on it. Then the guy came up to me, said his name was Adam, and asked if I would like to share what had happened, why I was crying and what it had been like to talk. Adam held up his smartphone and was about to film me. He asked if it was okay, which I thought was good. When I started telling him what it had been like, the tears came again and I babbled on about how good it felt to get things out into the open, talk about them and be heard. Adam asked if it would be okay to show the clip to other people and I said yes. I mean, I wasn’t ashamed of my tears. They were tears of joy. I felt like a new person. I was late to the lecture, but that was ok. I went to that meeting. They called it a closed room experience. It was in one of the classrooms and there were about twenty people there all chatting. I didn’t know so many of them but there were a few from my teaching course, so I sat with them. What happened next was a bit strange. Adam and Sheena came in carrying an umbrella and two fold-up chairs. They closed the door and went 7
umbrella and two chairs. They looked friendly, but a bit serious like they had something to say. When we all went quiet they said we were welcome to the closed room experience where we were going to be talking in pairs, in confidence, and there was going to be a coaching demonstration. They pointed at two chairs that were set out next to the yellow umbrella. They asked us to promise each other confidentiality what we say here, stays here - they said, and we raised our hands to show we agreed. They gave us a definition of coaching - a partnership in finding solutions - and I wondered what problems we were going to solve. They asked us what we might be comfortable speaking about with our partners. That got people talking! I could have said something but what was coming up from the others sounded okay to me, as long as I didn’t have to speak in front of the group about it. In pairs would be okay. And then Sheena asked questions about the ideas that were coming up - what was that about, tell me more and stuff like that. The guy, Adam, asked questions too. They seemed to be focusing on three or four people near the front of the room. After a while, they asked one of them to come up and sit in one of the chairs. 8
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