For my 100th blog post I thought I’d share with you some of the work I’ve done with a client.
I’ve worked with this team on several occasions doing a range of training and 1-1 coaching. Although most of my work is usually in schools, this is a Local Authority team of teachers responsible for supporting SEN pupils in mainstream schools.
“Relationships with our schools are as important to us as our team’s teaching skills. The latter is only successful if we can develop positive relationships with staff”.
The ways I addressed this situation had a lot to do with helping this team develop their leadership skills, since they are effectively leading on SEN development and support when they go into schools and delivering in-house and local authority training.
I’d previously delivered Coaching Skills Training to the team, initially for team/peer support and development. So the first thing I did was a refresher day on this and how it could be applied to their work with the teachers/TAs in school. The day was entitled: Target-Setting and Coaching in Schools, and gave them tools to develop more effective target-setting skills with SEN pupils, encouraging the pupils to take more ownership of their targets and routes to success.
It’s important to me to evaluate the effectiveness of my coaching and training, and I do this through asking for feedback at the end of training events, and also arranging at least one follow-up meeting/phone call with the client.
The following is the feedback I received with the SEN Team Manager, when asked about outcomes from the training I’d delivered.
“We recognise that the best progress with pupils will only happen when we have good relationships with staff in schools. To this end, we needed more formal coaching training, which you gave us, rather than our teachers going into schools and assuming they know how to empower the teachers.
“By using coaching, we can step outside the situation, be less emotional, and find ways for moving things forward. We now have more self-awareness of how to solve problems; we can reflect better, and do self-coaching as well as peer coaching. We’ve used your training to develop each other’s skills with teaching and learning, as well as developing more positive relationships with schools.
My next case study (next month) will be about my coaching of a teacher new to a senior leadership team role, the challenges it gave her and how she overcame them.
Feel free to share your successes in the comments box below.