Step 1 Positive Language

Since the school working environment is filled with communication, I chose Positive Language as the first step because it encourages the teacher to LISTEN, in particular to themselves.

All developments come from working with yourself, and usually start by removing something.

Some of the effects of using Positive Language that you might notice are:

• You notice the effect that your thoughts and words are having on the people around you, i.e. the Pygmalion Effect.
• You hear your Inner Audio Loop, the voice that tells you to be wary, be careful, give up, etc. You learn how to use that information in a more constructive way.
• You become more aware of why people say what they do, and recognise the Drama Triangles that surround you, and detach from the worst of them.
• You can then begin to work on using the Positive Language that is needed to soften the Drama Triangles, and create the working environment in which change is possible.

Read more here

Teachers!

• Do you ask your students for feedback on your lessons and courses?
• Do you plan to include feedback from your students in the future?

Planned or not, it's already happening
You can see their feedback in the quality of your relationship, the communication between you, and your shared sense of purpose.

As a teacher you probably give your students feedback all the time. Not just when you return their test papers with a grade, but every time you get into conversation with them. The tone of your voice and your body language speak loudly, much louder than your words. You probably already know that.

And the students give you plenty of feedback in the tone of their voices and their body language. You probably already know that too.

The challenge is to get some clarity and constructive changes from their feedback.

So I'm suggesting that you, as teacher, ask your students for feedback in a more concrete and planned way than simply observing the general tone of voice and body language. Based on the information you receive you will be able to influence the quality of your relationship, the communication between you, and your shared sense of purpose.

So what's coming up in your mind right now about asking students for feedback? If your relationship with the class so far has been less than wonderful, some students might use feedback as an opportunity for revenge. You might learn some inconvenient truths about your teaching. You might risk having your self-confidence shattered by certain remarks. So let's see what you can do to minimise the potential damage so that you can get to the useful information that can guide you in developing your relationship with your students.

• First of all, the feedback can be anonymous.
• Second, the feedback can focus on one lesson, or part of a lesson.
• Then, depending on your current relationship, interpret the feedback with the knowledge that there might be some revenge going on.
  Take a pinch of salt with the feedback.

I feel confident that teachers can design feedback forms, so I will give just a few examples here.

Anonymous Feedback
Use one sheet for the whole class.
Pass it round the room, or pin it to the door.
Good for a first experience of giving feedback.

What did you think of today's lesson?

Poor
OK
Good
Great

Detailed Feedback
Use one sheet for each student.
Good for allowing more detailed comments

What did you think of today's lesson?

Explain what you want the students to give you feedback on, for example:

Contents
How relevant was it for this course?

Delivery
How interesting was it?

Effect
How much did you learn?

                    Poor     OK    Good     Great    Comments

Contents 

Delivery

Effect  

After five years of research, asking teachers what works really well in their classrooms, and relating what they told me to the Core Skills that are required of a Coach, I notice that there are at least a dozen distinct, interconnected coaching skills that teachers use in the classroom.

Students want their lessons to be 'fun'.

So why not tell a few jokes?
Jokes get old, and can easily backfire with the 'wrong' class, in the 'wrong' mood on the 'wrong' day.

So let's use humour
What's humour? Amongst other things:

• it is created in the moment
• it is an essential ingredient in keeping the students minds' awake
• it can be designed into a lesson

Here are some ways of creating humerous moments, based on 'making mistakes'

• Pause (appear to have lost your place in what you were saying). Wink at the students to let them know that you are doing this deliberately.
• Say "Left" and point "right", Say "Up" and point "Down". Remember to wink.
• Write something wholly incorrect on the whiteboard, and continue as if it were correct. Pretend to be taken aback when the students catch the mistake, then tell them it was not the first or the last one today. Encourage them to keep an eye / ear out for more 'mistakes'.
  
• Include 5 mistakes in the first half of the lesson, and when you get to halfway through the lesson, mention that you are doing it deliberately, and ask how many mistakes students have noticed.
• Write a sentence that is too long for the whiteboard and mime writing on the wall. Then mime wiping the wall clean. Wink!
• 'Accidentally' switch all the lights off.
• Drop your whiteboard pens, or why not chuck them all up in the air as if you were going to juggle them; and fail to catch them.
• Look for your glasses, whilst wearing them on your head. (OK, you may have done that for real, but I mean that you choose to do it, at a time that suits the mood of the class.)

A great way to raise academic performance, lower stress levels and at the same time create a heightened sense of community.

Stress?
How many of you students are stressed about their results, have a higher stress level which in turn risks lowering their results? Do you see a negative spiral?

Breathing - naturally
Probably the most important thing we do is breathe. We breathe, we live. But when did you learn to breathe? When did you teach your students to use breathing as a way to reduce their stress levels?

Unless you are one of an increasing number of yoga students, you may not have learned to breathe properly yet.

Benefits
What can you and your students get out of breathing properly? More air, cleaner air leads to more highly oxygenated blood, which energises your whole body and most importantly your brains. You are more awake! Students are better prepared to learn, and you and better prepared to teach. Win-win.

Academic performance
Spending 5-10 minutes on a breathing exercise at the start of the lesson will greatly increase the amount of information the students will take in simply because they are more awake, for longer.

A breathing exercise in the middle of the lesson will give the students' brains time to assimulate what they have already heard in the first half of the lesson, and prepare them for the second half of the lesson.

Community
Doing simple breathing exercises as a class can seem silly to begin with, and when you have done it three or four times, you will want to do it every lesson.

Students have reported to me that they get to the lesson on time because they don't want to miss the breathing exercise.

Method - a coaching approach
What exercises shall you choose? There are many breathing exercises to choose from, the most important thing is to get started. Here is a coaching approach to getting students to breathe deeper for the first time.

Note Here I use 'sitting up straight' and 'feeling powerful' as examples of beneficial changes that I want to see in this class, as well as 'breathing slowly and deeply'.

Ask these open questions

• How many of you here are breathing?
  (wait for the laugh)
• If you are breathing, please raise your hand.
• How many of you here are breathing deeply?
• If you are breathing deeply, please raise your hand.
• How many of you here are breathing deeply now?
• How many of you are sitting up straight and feeling powerful?
• If you are sitting up straight, please raise your hand.
• How many of you are sitting up straight and feeling powerful?
• If you are feeling powerful, please raise your hand.
• How many of you here are breathing slowly and deeply now?
• If you aren't breathing, please go to the school nurse.
  (wait for the laugh)
• How many of you here are breathing slowly and deeply now?
• What do you notice about how straight you are sitting?
  (pause for comments)
• How slow is your breathing now?
• What do you notice about how powerful you feel?
  (pause for comments)
• How deep is your breathing now?
• What do you notice about how energetic you feel?
  (pause for comments)
• How was this breathing exercise for you?
• How ready are you for the next part of the lesson
  (pause for comments)

My aim is to get the students to become more aware of the benefits of breathing properly, before I teach them any specific method. In fact, I often leave it to the most interested students to research a breathing method, then allow them to teach their peers; and me.

The noted neurologist turned educator talks about the science of boredom, how to get students' attention, and the most important lessons for 21st-century learning.
Hold students' attention

One of many inspiring and informative videos from www.edutopia.org

This skill is one that teachers have reported as being their most developed coaching skill. There are however ways for you to further develop this vital skill. One particular direction that usually needs consideration is how to share the design process with the students.


Part of the ICF description of this skill reads "The ability to create, together with the students, opportunities for ongoing learning, during coaching and in other life situations, and for taking new actions that will most effectively lead to agreed-upon coaching results"


Brainstorm
One way of generating ideas for actions is to brainstorm. And in this case it is the student or students who are expected to generate the ideas. As coach you need only set up the activity and later assist in filtering the ideas for those actions that will most likely enable the student to "demonstrate, practice and deepen their new learning".

How
You could us questions such as, "How will you discover what is needed for this part of the syllabus?", "How can you increase your chances at getting this work done in time", "In what ways could you practice this kind of equation?". These questions encourage the students to start their process of brainstorming. If this is the first time that you have brainstormed there may be an expectation that the teacher provide the answers as well as the questions. That is the teacher's role. It is not the coach's role. As coach, you don't need to provide any answers.