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.

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.

Since we now expect students to continue studying well through their teens and into their early twenties - key personal development years, the Education System needs to include personal development as well as intellectual development, in a structured and professional way.

I believe that a coaching approach is a step in the right direction.

I am a teacher and a coach, my aim is to bring a coaching approach to the Education System. Looking at how good teaching is carried out in schools it's easy to see that good teachers already coach!

Four key aspects of coaching, compared with teaching Based on the International Coach Federation's description of Core Coaching Skills

www.coachfederation.org


1)    Professional
In both professions there's an overall agreement from a governing body that describes the role of the teacher/coach. There are also agreements on behaviours and goals that describe the teaching/coaching at an individual level. There are specific standards for how to teach/coach, and ethics that guide us through challenging situations.


2)    Personal relationship
Teaching/coaching is based on a relationship of mutual trust. In both professions effort is put into building up and maintaining a level of trust and confidence in each other so that the teaching/coaching has an effect.

Simply put:

• A teacher/coach is genuine, displays personal integrity, honesty and sincerity.
• A teacher/coach is clear, keep promises and is supportive in all situations.

3)    Effective Communication
The best teaching/coaching relies on effective communication that is adapted to the student's/client's visual-auditory-kinesthetic style of communication, as well as their way of perceiving the world.

In both professions it's essential to listen actively to hear what's happening below the level of the words in what's being communicated.

Both professions use questions to generate the desired change, although a different mix of closed/open questions is used for teaching/coaching. Good teachers know that open questions open up the conversations so that more learning can take place. Coaches use open questions almost exclusively. Good teachers know that questions that are related to the student's world are most effective. Coaches aim to use open questions that bring the client's values into play.

Teachers follow the school's given course plans and their own lesson plans. Coaches use well-researched tools and well-established techniques that follow sequential steps. However, for best results, both professionals know to be flexible and adapt to what's happening in the moment.

In both professions honest and direct communication produces the best results.

4)    Learning and Results
The focus for both teaching and coaching is to arrive at a specific result, and learn from the process, the balance between the result and learning will be different from one time to another.

Teachers and coaches both aim to create awareness so that the next step becomes visible and desirable. For teachers it's more effective to guide the students to become aware of what more they can learn about the given subject before attempting to teach it. For coaches, guiding the client to become aware that there is something they can learn about themselves is the major part of the coaching process.

Both professionals know that internally-motivated students/clients are capable of achieving much more than externally-motivated students/clients.

Both professions design activities such as practice, research, trying something new, holding focus etc, aimed at reaching the desired goal. Teachers and coaches may have some favourite suggestions to make, but both know they do better when such activities are co-designed with students/clients.


Both professions use planning and goal-setting as part of their design structure. The difference is in the degree of influence the teacher/coach has over the planning and goal-setting.

In the school situation much of the overall planning, such as the number of lessons per week and what time of day they will be, are the result of logistical compromises based on physical limitations, the size of the school, the number of teachers, the number of students, and all the other lessons that the school shall provide.

Coaches have time-planners too. The number of coaching sessions, dates and times have to be in synchrony with the coach's and the coach's other clients' availability.

In the Education System goal-setting is currently based on an externally imposed curriculum. The coach's goal-setting comes from the client's expressed need for change and development.



Summary
The Education System was originally designed to make a positive difference to society by providing education free of charge, to all. An astounding and controversial investment in our shared future!

A generation or two ago students left school in their early teens, most moved on to jobs that their parents could only have dreamt of. The current system has provided opportunities for higher education and better employment. It has succeeded.

Now the Education System is expanding to include support for students well through their formative teenage years, and into their early twenties. To encourage and enable students to remain this long in the Education System, it has to offer more than just intellectual development. It has to offer personal development.

But that's OK. Because good teachers already coach!

Negative Inner Voice, Inner Critic

Ways of dealing with the gatekeepers to change

• Why we have that voice
• How to deal with it in advance
• How to deal with it when it speaks

Why we have that voice
This is the voice that warns us of perceived dangers. It comes from our parents "Don't eat that, you will get sick", it comes from our society, "We don't do that here", it comes from our sense of self-preservation "It hurt the last time I did that.

The Inner Critic can use hurtful wording
(dogs growl and have sharp teeth)
Examples
Some of the things that the Inner Critic can say

• "You aren't good enough"
• "You are going to fail"
• "People don't like that kind of thing"

Actual comments from a student

• "I should just admit that I don’t have what it takes for this level of work!"
• "This whole process is going to take too long; I’ll never find the time."
• "I can’t make heads or tails of these statistics — How will I ever write them up?"
• "The committee will never accept this crap. Who am I trying to fool?"
• "I am so disorganized—I will never get it sorted out and finished!"
• "So what if I do finish? A degree and a dollar won’t buy a cup of coffee much less a decent job anymore!"

Part of the ICF description of this skill reads "the ability to integrate and accurately evaluate multiple sources of information, and to make interpretations that help the client to gain awareness and thereby achieve agreed-upon results".

Where does that information come from?
And what does it mean to "make interpretations?"

The information comes mostly from the student's vocal language and body language when they are talking about what they are doing, thinking and feeling compared with what they want to do, what they want to think and what they want to feel. It also comes to a lesser degree from the coach's thoughts and feelings that come up during the session. As coach you need to be aware of the difference between your own thoughts and feelings, and those that you pick up from the student that you are coaching. The thoughts and feelings that are used in the coaching process are the ones that come from the student. That's easier said than done. It takes practice to separate the one from the other. One way to become better at separating the two is to ask yourself "Whose thoughts and feelings are these?"


I will use a general example of creating awareness to show what it means to make interpretations

Imagine that you are coaching a student who has described a particular goal that they want to achieve. The student has also described what they have been doing during the past two weeks and seems to be stuck in an undesirable behaviour, a behaviour that's not working well for them. What they are currently doing is not moving them towards their desired goal. It's a common situation.

What can you say that could get this student moving towards their goal again?