Coaching in the Classroom

The Covid-19 Pandemic changed our lives forever. The global shutdown allowed many people to reevaluate what they wanted for their lives. Slowing down from the hectic pace we set for ourselves, we came back to what’s most important to us – our well-being. This book offers a way to bring greater self-awareness of well-being into the classroom to benefit both teachers and students.             I want to thank you for taking the time to explore the ideas this book represents for education. It is the culmination of my life’s work in trying to mesh coaching with teaching. Coaching can be implemented by any teacher wanting to reconnect with the passion to make a difference in the lives of students. Through coaching, we help our students and ourselves in designing lives that bring more joy, more creative use of our abilities and strengths, and greater freedom from stress.             As a professional coach and mother of three, events catapulted me into making the decision to enter the classroom. I spent many years as an involved parent in education, but when my son dropped out of high school and my clients began asking me why coaching wasn’t used in schools, I made the decision to get a Master’s degree in Education and become a teacher. Education as it has been structured in the past is failing our youth. The model we have continued to use is a one-size-fits-all approach to learning and was patterned after the industrial concept of mass production. Why are we expecting all students to learn the exact same things at the same time of development and then offer only one way of evaluation (standardized testing)? An education system such as this is one that limits the creative potential of students and is disempowering for many. As I recently played with my 15 month old granddaughter, I was reminded again that we develop in our own ways in our own time. We don’t expect babies to talk, walk, or work puzzles all at the same time in the same ways. How is it we change that expectation once our children attend school? Our students need so much more than what we are currently offering in a school setting.             Teachers are the only ones who can change this. You can’t wait for the governing bodies or experts to make meaningful change. You have the knowledge, wisdom, and relationships to offer students a different way of learning – through coaching. No real change can happen in education without the teacher. This book offers you an opportunity to shift your perspective and take back your power as a teacher/coach. As I took the time during the Pandemic to reflect on my upcoming retirement from teaching, I realized that I was being gifted the perfect opportunity to bring coaching more forcefully into my classroom. In other words, I made personal growth and development a priority and weekly focus for most of the 2021-22 school year. This book reflects what I have learned over 35 years as a mother, coach, and teacher. I share stories of my fourteen years of teaching and coaching in middle school and high school. Some of them are based on recall and to the best of my ability. In most cases, I changed the names and personal information to protect anonymity. It is my hope that this book can be used as a springboard to greater possibilities for you, your students, and our education system as a whole. You have amazing abilities, insights, knowledge, and experience. This book offers you an opportunity to use them more fully in empowering students through coaching. Change is often driven from within. You, dear teacher, are uniquely positioned to do that. I know many of you share my vision of someday having an education system that allows every student to explore and grow and develop at a pace that is conducive to him/her. This book offers you one way to contribute to that vision. Linda L. Hopper, Ph.D. January 2024   INTRODUCTION ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.’  Margaret Mead             I had two years of teaching under my belt and my level of confidence as a teacher was increasing. Entering my third year I taught a section of 8th grade AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination). I taught the AVID curriculum to most of these same students the year before when they were in 7th grade. The AVID program was designed to target “bubble” students, those students who may need extra help and preparation for gaining college admission. Many of these students did not have any family members who had gone to college. While the structure of the program was firmly defined (organizational, methodology, tutors), the content was not. I saw this as an opportunity to explore coaching in a classroom setting by introducing concepts that were new to the students. I was unclear how coaching would fit in the classroom or even how the opportunities would present themselves. I was very much a fish out of water, not yet mastering teaching and lesson planning, and at a disadvantage in coaching teenagers since all of my coaching experience was in the business setting. It was with this 8th grade class that I began to formulate my ideas on what coaching in the classroom could look like.             AVID’s curriculum is based on adhering to a prescribed set of organizational skills, developing reading and writing skills, discourse and debate skills, and test taking skills, among others. College tutors are hired to work with students in groups, targeting classes where students have the most trouble. Anyone who has taught middle school or junior high know that many students at this age lack the organizational skills to keep track of six or seven different classes and teachers. AVID offered a prescribed method of organizing using a binder and planner. These were checked for grades on a regular basis. Binders had to be organized in a specific manner for each of the students’ classes. Students were required to use a planner and to write in assignments, tests, and extracurricular activities. Sounds awesome doesn’t it? My 8th grade students already had experience with the system of organization and were used to it, the system was working for most of them, but not all. Although the core of my 8th grade class was made up of students I had the prior year, a few new students were added to the class. One of them was McKenzie, known as Kenzi, a confident petite blond who took learning seriously. Kenzi struggled with AVID’s system of organization. As a serious student, she had developed her own system utilizing post it notes, colored index cards and colored folders. After several weeks of trying to use the AVID method she asked, exasperated, “Why can’t I just do it my own way if it works for me??” Her question hit me like a thunderbolt, why indeed? And it forced me to consider in that instant why coaching was so necessary in a school system that operated in a business model of mass production. The coach in me really wanted to help the students find their own method of organization, one that worked for them. However, in order to carry out the integrity of the program, Kenzi was required to be consistent with the other students in class in the AVID method of organization. I admire the AVID program and believe it helps a lot of students, but I also knew that it would be my last year teaching it. I was feeling uncomfortable that I was not aligned with my beliefs and values. In education we don’t always allow students to figure out for themselves what works in their learning or growing, nor do we allow them to figure it out at their own pace. I think anyone who works with young people (or people in general) knows that we all grow, learn, mature and develop at individual rates. From that incident, I knew I wanted to coach students in self-awareness, especially of their strengths, abilities, and aptitudes. It felt like an overwhelming challenge to create a balance between a rigid education syst