Coaching in the classroom

COACHING IN THE CLASSROOM
In looking to develop student potential we can learn a great deal from the worlds of business and sport and from the mass of psychological research on the achievement of excellence. To strive to achieve your very best in anything requires a great deal of determination, vision, self-belief, confidence, resilience, motivation and self-knowledge. Anyone who has tried tochange their lives in any significant way or who has faced a significant challenge will know how easy it can be to give up. To have low aspirations is the path of least resistance. If you aspire to little you are less likely to be disappointed and less likely to feel the pain of failure or rejection. For some people the greatest difficulty is knowing what it is they want in the first place! Ifonly I knew what I wanted to do I would go out and do it!

Being aware of the value of a coaching relationship and learning about some approaches to coaching can be another tool in the teacher’s toolkit. A coaching approach can enable a teacher to better understand a student and to guide the student towards a better understanding of themselves. It provides a method for handing over a greaterdegree of control to the student and thereby developing their independence.

Coaching is a way of being with people which provides and sustains a space in which they can think. It enables them to see where they are going more clearly and discover their own ways to move forward. It is about helping them to learn rather than teaching them.

Coaching is about a partnership approach to learningwhere the coach does not claim to know all the answers but acts to support the other person in identifying their own solutions and a commitment to action.

WHY USE COACHING IN THE CLASSROOM?
Students cannot learn if their mind is on basic needs like food, clothing, housing, and acceptance. When student’s focus is on their daily needs and if they are going to be met, then they are not focusing ontheir studies. Student’s thoughts become feelings, which become behaviors, which create actions. Those actions create results. Then student’s thoughts create education’s results.

What if you could create an environment for your students in the classroom like an environment is for an athlete in the locker room? If motivation can work on athletes, and visioning can make champions, we create anenvironment that fosters growth of students in the classroom.

Coaching in the Classroom is a method that will create just such an environment. Watch your students respond with enthusiasm when they meet their goal that they set, work harder when they have been legitimized with their abilities, and honored for their efforts.  The coaching relationship seeks to do a variety of things and the goalsof Coaching in the Classroom are:
* Lower students' stress levels
* Increase their productivity
* Improve self-esteem of students.
* Improve behavior of students in the community.
* Improve relationships between students, staff, and faculty in school.
* Improve relationships between the school and the community.
* Improve standardized test scores and other examinations.* Instill entrepreneurial spirit and skills; help students see the possibility of being local business owners and leaders within their community.
* Improve classroom morale & motivation
* Enhance an interactive environment
* Increase the ability to resolve conflicts
* Encourage better organization
* Promote creativity and high level scholarship
* Improve attendanceand positive behaviors, and negates tardiness

Teacher-Coaches as Motivators
How do we motivate students? First, we need to develop a relationship of trust, based on a sense of security in a risk-free environment. Students need to feel that they can move forward, reach higher, and take confident strides and make new leaps in their endeavors within the security of this relationship. Second,...