If we think about Teaching and Coaching, even though they are different, it’s not a lie that they clearly can pair up and go together really well.
Discovering the power of the combination of these two roles was the goal of the new edition of the course “Coaching skills for teachers, school and adult education staff” that took place in Palermo from 28/05/2022 to 03/06/2022. The participants came from all across Europe, with Marika, Riina and Meelis from Luua Forestry School in Estonia, Olga e Deonémia from Agrupamento de Escolas D. Dinis de Leiria in Portugal, Daphne from Holland University of Applied Sciences in Netherland, Zrinka from Trgovačka škola Zagreb in Croatia, Magnús from Borgarholtsskóli in Iceland, Maarit from Länsirannikon Koulutus Oy and Pirita from Kalliolan kansalaisopisto in Finland, in last addiction Melania from Centro de Profesorado de Monzón and María from IES Alfonso X «El Sabio» in Spain.
We start the course by exactly differentiating a coach from a teacher in order to understand their differences but also how you can unite these two professionals. After it, the participants had the opportunity to reveal their current practices in the classroom to engage the pupils, what other exchanges are they open to do and what are the challenges that they feel that they have to face. To complete this thought, the teachers did a reflection of their own skills and the best way to implement them.
It is very important to maintain and know how to manage our emotional intelligence. As you all know, this part is crucial because it controls a big part of who we are. Emotional intelligence is also having the capacity of recognizing our feelings and being capable of understanding the feelings of others. We live in a world where everything is insanely fast, sometimes you look around and it feels that you don’t find time to think about yourself even less about others.
After exercising the emotional intelligence we thought it would be a good opportunity to start talking about conflicts. A remarkable coaching skill to take in mind is the ”know how” to manage this situation the best way possible. However, one idea that some people have is that a conflict is only negative, when it doesn’t necessarily have to be, in fact a conflict can be a great opportunity to grow and find positive outcomes.
To improve not only as a coach but as a person we must look for answers and solutions in order to discover new things, experiences and absorb new knowledge. By saying this, a strong methodology in a coaching point of view is to ask questions, never be afraid about them, they will give you new perspectives and even if we don’t reach a clear answer or neither a conclusion, questions make us reflect and sometimes give us different angles and perspectives.
A crucial statement that was in perfect time to present in the final moments of our course was the type of mindset and beliefs that guide our behaviors and which kind of consequences we can create on reality. To know or to change our process and attitude, we need something that can help a lot in this sense, feedback. We study how important this communication is, how motivated and inspirational a positive feedback can be when you have reasons, how to give effective feedback and “do’s” and “don’ts” about it.
Definitely we were surrounded by precious knowledge to develop and improve coaching skills. But most importantly we practiced different alternative ways, as so with the experience of the participants they saw various points of view to expand their horizons, to approach in a different perspective and create motivation in the classroom.