Roza Matthews - an Educator's Coaching Journey

This is Roza, a composite character created to describe how teachers become involved in coaching and begin to apply it in their classrooms. You can read her backstory here .

Teacher: Roza Matthews

Workplace: Secondary School

Subject / Students: Maths (advanced)

Interview

What’s your current situation?

I work in a competitive school. I have a large class of ambitious students. There is stiff competition to be accepted into this school and especially this class. I have noticed every year that there are always two or three students who struggle for a term or two and then have to leave. They are easily replaced by other students.

How do you feel about it??

It’s never felt good to eject such students. They are offered a place in one of the parallel classes and generally they do well. But. There’s a but.

What would you rather see??

I would rather see all the students, in all the classes, doing well. Even if the school produces excellent results, it does so by moving struggling students down and then removing failing students.?

How would you feel about that?

The current competitive strategy seems like cheating, cherry-picking and keeping only the best students is not the same as being a good school.

I don’t want to feel like a cheat. I want to feel that I am a real teacher.

Action Steps

One thing to develop during the next two-four weeks.

When I read the agreements for the coach and the coachee, I was astounded by their simplicity. I want to have something like this for my students. I felt that this is what a teacher should be doing, taking on the students as they are and turning up authentically. That resonated with me.?

This is important because

For myself, this is what I want to do as a teacher. For my students, they will more likely succeed when I can coach them as well as teach them.

Strategy

I am going to include coaching sessions for all the students at the beginning of each lesson, and especially for those students when I see that they are struggling.

If I am honest, most of the clever students don’t really need me. They learn most from solving problems.

Action Plan

I will offer the 1-1 coaching as a bonus for students who are making the effort.

Follow Up

Results

I rewrote the agreements to suit the language that I thought would work better: Turn up on time. Have a question you want to solve. Keep it real. Be open to changing your mind. Keep it to ourselves.

The first coaching sessions were Maths problem-oriented. The second sessions touched on thoughts and beliefs that were getting in the way of learning, and we finished with solving the maths problem. By the third session we were focusing almost all the time on their limiting thoughts and beliefs. Once those were dealt with, they started learning again.

Supporters

One of the parents called to complain that I was favouring certain students by coaching them. The parent thought it was unfair to other students who wanted to get a place in this top class. I am glad that I had been clear about this support being available to all the students in my class.

Several teachers have asked me to coach their students so they can have a chance to get into the top class. I offered to show the teachers what I did and invited them to a start of lesson coaching, or a 1-1 coaching session. Who knows, maybe this will catch on?

Observations

Even though I offer coaching, most of the bright students carry on regardless. We have begun to include some of the ideas from coaching into the lessons. When students ask me how to do something, I ask “Who else can you ask?”. They quickly got the message about sharing their learning.

Feedback

Groupwork has become easier! I didn’t expect that. It’s probably due to the lowering of the competitive temperature in the room. They collaborate more often and are getting better at it.

Reflection

As much as I might dream of turning all the teachers into coaches, I get it that some don’t want to. The same applies to making this school more collaborative. It’s not the school culture to help anyone but yourself. That’s what’s been etching into my self-image as a teacher.

Conclusions

I am considering switching to a less competitive school where I could use coaching even more. That’s appealing. The drop in salary is something I will have to think on.