Susan Rankin Reid

Coaching in Education {23Jan17}

 ‘Teacher Training’, ‘Initial Teacher Training’, Teacher training routes’, University led Training’, ‘School-led training’…

 

It’s interesting isn’t it that we don’t talk about ‘Doctor Training’, or Accountant Training’ or ‘Lawyer Training’?

Teachers are needed. There are jobs for teachers, schools are crying out for Head Teachers, newly qualified teachers, teachers at every level.

There is a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention. At the same time, budgets are under pressure and the need for accountability is unrelenting. 

 

For schools, the focus is on how they can get the teachers they need, meet the teaching standards as required, build the teachers they need and keep the teachers they need.

 

For teachers, it’s about how they can find the right opportunity, grow within it and reach towards their potential, whilst negotiating the inevitable challenges of the journey and keeping alive the passion and interest that took them into teaching in the first place.

 

How do we make this happen?

In this current climate of constant demand and change, we need to be looking at methods of schools working with teachers and teachers working with schools that are flexible and mutually beneficial.

Textbooks and lectures are not going to meet this need. The one-size fits all culture does not fit today’s education environment.

 

What’s needed is a dynamic, responsive, context-specific approach that can bring the two sides together and serve the overall needs of education and of course, the children who must be at the heart of everything we do.

 

In the 21st Century, business and sectors across the board are finding that investing in coaching best achieves the levels of support, challenge and change needed. Schools and teachers are particularly suited to embrace this way forward. 

 

Coaching can offer:

• 1:1 support

• group support

• in ear support

• peer support

• moving through blocks

• facing fears

• growing skills

• build confidence

• managing stress

• managing the challenge of new promotion

• finding your direction

• develop a network of support

 

Coaching can be all this and more. Its flexible nature means new methods and approaches can be developed to meet particular needs. The world is changing and so is the way we deal with it. Coaching responds to this need; coaching can help all teachers be the best they can be.

The modern school must have coaching at the heart of its culture.

 

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