Your Teaching Role Model

Steps to a Coaching Classroom: Newsletter 18

What teaching and coaching have in common is 'Dreams'.

"I might not be able to pay teachers more money, or give them the public recognition they deserve for the amazing work that they do, but I can teach them about a coaching approach. And that will be my contribution to a better world.", Martin Richards

Teaching is about dreams. As a teacher I guide and support young people to find a vision of who they are - with fully developed interests and talents - and then working together to bring that vision into reality.

Coaching is about revealing hidden dreams. As a coach, I’m interested in what the client wants for their life. There may be day-to-day survival issues to sort out, but when that’s done, it’s the dreams that will put the colour into their lives. So, I ask about what they are passionate about, what they dream of, what they are scared of, etc in order to bring those passions to the surface so the client can see them, and choose (again) whether or not to pursue them.

Impossible Dreams

Many young people have ‘impossible dreams’, in sports, science, space travel, music, theatre, social media, the list is long. And, just as each person looks different to other people, no two visions are exactly the same. That’s true even for identical twins.

Whose Role Model?

When coaching students towards a fulfilling life, their role models are a boon. If you can see that they dress, talk and move like their heroes, you can access their inner vision of who they are becoming. At the end of this article, there is a story of how to do exactly that.

I worked for some time in a Christian school. Often, when the teachers wanted to motivate a student to make a good choice, they would ask, “What would Jesus do?”. Although the teachers took their religion seriously, the students would frequently mimic their sincerity and ask me the same question at random intervals during a Maths lesson. Reflecting on that, I came to the conclusion that the teachers had been using their own role models instead of using the students’ role models. I wonder how things might have been different if the teachers had a broader palette of role models to hand?

Teacher's Role models (for better or worse)

When teachers are being trained, one factor they have in common is that their role models are their previous teachers. That factor can be something to lean into, or unlearn. As teachers, we have to understand that if it works for us, it may or may not work for the students we are teaching. Whatever role models we have, we benefit from learning about our students’ role models.?

How can we find out a person’s dreams??

Simple! Ask them,

• “What’s your impossible dream?”
• “What kind of life would make you happy?”
• “Who is living that kind of life?”?

Some subjects lend themselves to asking such questions. In English lessons, for example, we can ask that kind of question as a way of getting students to open up and talk to each other at a deeper level. I think it would be useful if such information, about students’ dreams and visions of themselves, were shared amongst all the staff who teach those students. Is this information too private? I don't think so.

Keep it Real?

We might think that a young person’s dream is in fact impossible, and may want to steer them away from it, to save them the pain of failure. But we do not know the future of the young people we are teaching, and we really should not judge their dreams.

After all, in 1962, the speech given by United States President John F. Kennedy about his plan to land a man on the Moon before 1970, was largely written by presidential advisor and speechwriter Ted Sorensen.

Maybe you have a Ted or a John in your class this year?

The Ambassador story

Khaled was a teenage refugee from Syria who had fled, alone, to Sweden. He, and his classmates were learning Swedish because they had to. All other subjects were being taught in Swedish. They were struggling and their teachers were frantic that they were not learning fast enough and so were pushing and pushing them to study, study, study. This had led to a ‘strike’ where the students were resisting their teachers' efforts to teach them.

My task was to pour oil into this jammed machinery. I began by quickly getting to know the students, and letting them get to know me.

I invited a student to come up and be coached, in front of his classmates. It was Khaled who volunteered. That's how I got to know him.

I asked Khaled about who he was and who he dreamed of being. He could not see past his current situation. So, I asked him to physically take a step back to when he was five years younger and describe how he felt. He had been happy then, so he became more comfortable. I invited him to take two steps forward to five years ahead from today and say how he felt there, and what he was doing. I asked him to show us who he had become. He stood more upright, proud and confident.

He told us he saw himself as an ambassador for his people, living in a strange new country, making peace.

I asked him to take a step back and ask for what he needed. He wanted to learn Swedish. He asked his teachers to teach him Swedish.

Coaching Strategy

1. Self as a child
2. Self in the future
3. Self today
4. Ask for what you want

Next

You might want to read the full version of the Ambassador story here