Coaching

The Interactive Classroom
27 Siebrecht Place
New Rochelle, NY 10804
T: 914-636-0888
E: astix@optonline.net

Who Can Use Coaching Skills?

Teachers (K-12)
There is nothing wrong with setting the stage for an activity or lesson with a 5- to 7-minute lecture. In fact, the shorter the better: Research has shown that students lose interest and focusing ability after the first 7 to 15 minutes of listening to a lecture (Bonwell & Eison, 1991; Powell, 2004). At the outset of a lesson, the main objective for any teacher is to set the stage by motivating students to engage enthusiastically in the day's activity.

Teachers who work as coaches have the same responsibilities as always - those are never abandoned - they just take a more interactive approach toward them. Like sports coaches, these teachers mix with everyone and are involved in everything. They motivate students to achieve results by instructing, guiding, and listening to them; when the going gets tough and enthusiasm wanes, they are there to show students the way. The classroom is the playing field, the students are the team, and the teacher, as the coach, holds everything together.

Students
Students are being trained to use life coaching skills in the classroom. Students are selected for Leadership Coaching by either their teachers or the guidance department because of their highly tuned social intelligence. At some locations, not only are students being selected due to their social ability, but the entire school population is being trained as well. It is a subset of the Teachers as Classroom Coaches program, which involves training students to use coaching skills with friends and classmates and other peers. In the Leadership Coaching course, they learn a set of skills that motivate and engage themselves and their peers who have the potential to become passionate about their endeavors. Coaching encourages and ensures harmonious group work, improves organizational and note-taking skills, enables individuals to recognize and overcome emotional and environmental roadblocks, defuse and resolve conflicts, and empowers students through motivation and engagement by allowing them ownership of their work.

Administrators
It's not just teachers and students who are involved in coaching. Principals and assistant principals are strongly encouraged to participate-both with students and with each other. Using coaching skills are paramount for establishing a coaching environment. Setting up weekly or monthly coaching meetings to discuss what teachers are teaching, what students are learning, and what procedures are being implemented can help cultivate a cadre of learners at every level of the school community.

Students are not the only ones in school to learn. Teachers and principals may learn from each other as well as from their students. Sharing is the key to creating a school community that values and supports communication at all levels. Principals establish the standards for an egalitarian atmosphere, allowing it to flourish and grow. However, they must walk the walk as well as talk the talk: Teachers evaluate principals' levels of commitment to policies not by what the principals say, but by the actions that they take. Highly committed principals honor the methodology of coaching.

It is essential that principals model ways to obtain and share information in a variety of settings for teachers if teachers are to do the same inside their classrooms. When everyone talks about what they've learned, the directions they're taking, and what they can teach one another, the attendant synergy and vitality can motivate people to expand their intellectual horizons.