This is The Coaching Inn, a podcast from 3D Coaching. Well, good morning. Welcome to The Coaching Inn. My name is Ruth Bennett, PCC, and I'm here today with Sarah Clark, ACC. Good morning, Sarah. Hello, Ruth. So today, Sarah, you and I are going to be talking about coaching in education and in schools. Sarah is the Director of Workforce Development for Hope Learning Trust in the north of England.
And Sarah, just wonder if you could just start us off by just telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do. Yeah, thanks Ruth. So as you said, Director of Workforce Development at Hope Learning Trust. So my job is to work with our colleagues, our teachers and our support staff. to enable and empower them to enable and empower young people they work with.
So I used to be a teacher and now I just work with adults thinking about how we can develop really sustainable opportunities for CPD which enable our colleagues to kind of think about what's right for them and engage with the right opportunities for them really. we have, we start with everything from training secondary school. teachers up to supporting our headteachers and our executive leaders with the strategic thinking that they need to do and everything in between.
So working with 3D and developing a kind of coaching program for us has been really, important. And I'm really excited to kind of share what we've been thinking about over the last three and half years with you this morning. Fabulous. Gosh, it sounds like there's a lot of stuff there, a lot of working with people. Brilliant. So what are the, actually, no, before we dive into that, Sarah, wonder, tell us a bit about you as a person as well.
Just love to hear a little bit about, I mean, you and I have known each other a little while. We met a number of years ago, didn't we, on a training course. And I think you're one of the people who I've just seen get really excited about coaching and about its place in the. place in which you work and I think I found that really inspiring just to watch your enthusiasm about it. So tell us a little bit about that and your journey into coaching.
Yeah, so yes, relentlessly enthusiastic is something I am referred to by probably and I do love coaching. Every time I'm more engaged with it, I get more excited about it and the opportunity that brings because I think for me, it simplifies all the practice that we learn as teachers. So as teachers, and as a teacher myself, you're expected to be the expert and obviously you should be in the classroom.
And then as you develop in your career and you take on leadership positions, you take on more responsibility and more strategic oversight. And often you're having to make decisions in a very short space of time, often on the corridor, and also with a limited amount of resource.
And, you know, from people who kind of work in schools, who've got kids in schools or have been homeschooling for the last kind of a few lockdowns, we'll know kind of the challenge of managing little people, older people and adults too. And I think I first came to know 3D Coaching through a session with Clare. on a headship training program that I was supporting some colleagues on was coaching. And I thought, first of all, this is just a fantastic facilitator.
And the things that she was talking about, she said, you know, you're not going to learn anything new, you're just going to relearn the stuff that you know is useful and throw away the things actually you've been doing that are not effective. And I remember just thinking, this is not about you as the coach, this is about enabling other people, which sounds really straightforward, but was just, I've just found incredibly liberating that actually I don't need to have all the answers.
And name being someone else's doing their thinking, framing different ways, saying, we've got five minutes, what can we do in this time, what do we think about in this time? And that you can have that five minute thinking time anywhere with anyone. And the thing of being able to... and actually not know what the impact of your thinking or your conversation with that person is, it's really quite special in a way that they are doing their own thinking.
You are enabling them to experience transformation for themselves and just how powerful that is. Because I think in schools, we do a lot of work on mentoring and we would sort of call it coaching, but I think there are lots of different forms of coaching.
I suppose that's something that I would want to highlight now is that we know there's... very specific terms of forms of coaching for schools that we use, which are already impactful in our research informed, but this is a different approach I'm talking about today with you based on the ICF principles and I think for me, then engaging with. transforming conversations because there just happened to be a space, my colleagues happened to be free and the stars aligned.
We did this four day thing with colleagues from the diocese who probably thought, who are these two education people from York and what are they doing here? Was just amazing because there's opportunity to say, actually, we need to get back to the basics of these core ICF principles and how how we live them out through the way that we work together. And this is not just about a coaching conversation. This is about, for me anyway, the way that I live.
And if we can live out some of those principles in our daily work, either professionally and personally, it gives us much more energy. It gives us more time. We enjoy life more. We have better relationships with people. Those are strengthened. And actually the people around you also benefit from it as well. That's kind of the magic, I suppose, of it is that actually by working simply, you're more effective and you enable others to be more effective.
And why would we not want to do that in our schools? And why would I not want to do that and enable people in my role, really? Does that give you enough about me? I'm not sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I'm hearing as you're talking is your enthusiasm for a start. There's a real energy when you talk about it. And I think that's about helping people grow. That's what I'm hearing is that kind of helping people discover stuff for themselves.
guess that's something about why people might go into teaching, wanting to see young people grow and become themselves, isn't it? I wonder if teachers often get bogged down with the kind of having to impart facts and teach kids to pass exams and that kind of thing that kind of gets in the way. I kind of hear a bit of a tension there, I wonder.
Yeah, and I think there's that kind of sometimes becoming Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so rather than, you know, Emily or whatever your name is, that sometimes you can kind of not lose a sense of yourself, but you know, the teacher identity is a really It was one that everyone is very proud of and you have a very important role.
And I think for me personally, having engaged with coaching early on in my kind of teaching career, actually having space and time to think with somebody else about the bigger picture, not just teaching in, I'm Reggae tomorrow morning and how I'm going to manage this class and I've got six lessons and need to do this.
homework and I've got an intervention and then the next day I've got something else and I've got a choir rehearsal and all kind of making space in the busyness of life I think, it's been really, really important. And I think what we want to do is not about culture change in school. I think it's about a culture shift in school where we hear people saying, I'm going to have my coaching session now. So I'm not available for that part of my PPA time or my free time or.
actually, have you spoken to so and so they were involved in this kind of coaching program that might be really useful for you or just hearing things like, can I offer something rather than, you know, colleagues being incredibly useful and wanting to kind of give their experience and the kind of mentor capacity and actually giving time to teachers to do their own thinking and speaking out loud and then offering solutions and a coaching approach, I think is much more useful.
but sometimes it doesn't feel as rewarding sometimes as giving the answer or sharing experience, especially when, you know, we are so grateful and so blessed to have such amazing teachers and support colleagues in our schools who've got so much to offer. But I think at the end of the day, you know, you're as a teacher, you're the one or as support staff colleague, you're the one that has to develop those relationships with those young people wherever they are.
to bring them to where you might want to be or guide them to where they can be in the future. And that's what makes great teaching great teaching is yes, knowing your curriculum really well, but also how do I make sure that I engage this young person with the stuff that's going on for them at the moment, which will change over time, but it's about your relationships with people. And I think that's why I love my job is because I loved teaching.
I never wanted to leave teaching at all, but actually I have learned for me that it's all about relationships and building those relationships and building that trust and building self-efficacy, not just of young people, but of teachers too, to make those positive decisions for themselves. And the more they can do that, the kind of the more resilient they become.
And also in an environment when we are so used to managing change all the time with, you know, whether that's some kind of policy or government or COVID, you know, Teachers are so good at adapting and responding and changing that actually sometimes we do need to take a step back and sort of think about, well, where do I sit in this and where am I going with this? And actually, is this in line with my own vision and values?
And I think that's really important throughout your career that you sometimes take some time to think about that and make sure you kind of almost realign yourself to what's going around. what's going on for you really. Gosh as you're talking there's so many themes in my head that I'm sort of thinking about and I'm wondering where to take the conflict. Can I just chuck out a few of the themes I'm hearing and just see where you want to go.
So there's something around the difference that's happened during this time of lockdown where we've had to home school and the learning from parents about teaching and what is valuable and maybe even the learning from teachers about what is what we really want from our children because teachers have had to think differently about teaching I guess. There's something about being time short in school I think so you know you're teaching four out of five lessons.
you don't, or five out of five lessons and there's no time to think or stop. And where are those moments to kind of reflect and have we actually got time for coaching or to have what feels like a self-indulgent conversation?
And there's something, I was very interested in what you were talking about, the culture shift as well, that idea of just seeing the language begin to change and that kind of, how do we, I suppose I have a question around how do we help the culture just gently shift and what do we do within education to help that just kind of shift slowly. There are some of the themes I'm hearing, which one would be interesting for us to talk about, do you reckon, Sarah?
I think the last one is a kind of good umbrella really for the ones that you shared before, because I think that what we've, well, what I've... Talking personally, what I've experienced during this kind of COVID time, everyone's kind of working in the back bedroom or the table in the kitchen or wherever they can find space to work is, it's about change and it's about culture change. And we're all experiencing change at the same time.
I'm wondering what the culture of our individual organizations or our communities really what really is the culture that we are experiencing? What really is the community that I live in? And kind of questioning that. And I think that for me, it's about trying to have a different conversation with teachers and colleagues about their own development.
So when was the last time that someone spoke to you and said, okay, so thinking about your kind of performance appraisal this year, What is it that you feel your real strengths that you'd like to share across our organization? And how might you do that? What is, how would you like to do that? What would be right for you? And we know that this happens in schools, but sometimes because of time, we can have sort of snatched conversations or we aren't able to fully kind of make time.
And when I talk about time, I don't mean about an like the length of time, mean, the quality of time. So, you know, are we creating, are we finding a quiet space, a different space from where we usually meet? So not the staff room or the classroom or, you know, space in the corridor. Are we finding a different, know, are we literally creating a different space, have a different kind of conversation about our own development?
Because we know that, I know, put simply, we spend the greatest, amount of money in schools on our teaching and on our staffing.
So we need to make sure they are fully equipped and they feel passionate about leading their own development because what we want to have is people who are passionate about not having loads of different initiatives and those strategies but being able to kind of see small improvements and go actually I've got I think I've got the solution to that and I think I can share that with you and actually we're all equal as professionals in this.
conversation, I think sometimes that's an issue, kind of a culture thing in schools as well, and maybe other organisations where they can be quite hierarchical, because we've all been through the school system. So we know, you know, we how it works. We know how it works, absolutely. because it the same way as it did 30 years ago. Yeah, it does. And some of that works really, really well. But you know, they are quite hierarchical.
So, you know, how can we create opportunities for colleagues to have a conversation, an equal conversation about their own professional development needs. Because also, you know, when you start teaching, if you're trained to teach, you have a mentor, have teaching standards that you have to meet and continue to meet throughout your career. There's a kind of performance appraisal in place, and it'll be better in your teaching.
And we're always kind of, you know, even when you're working with students, it's always, you this was good and this could be better. And I think that there's something there about just kind of stopping and going, actually, what does the big picture say to me about where, about my impact in the work that I do, whether I am a teacher or not? What are my gifts? What am I offering here? And for the person that's listening or creating that space to be really fully present.
even if that's five minutes or if it's 20 minutes, how can I be really present with that person? And actually, how can I have the confidence to say, that's really interesting? How will we do that together? Because we do have teams, we do have, and that's one of the amazing things about schools is that we have these bodies of people who will go, they will just do anything for young people and for each other, so supportive. But how do we go together to somewhere we don't know where we're going to?
How do we go together to somewhere that we don't know where we're going to? Wow, that's a big question. Yeah, because we want to be able to say to the person who we're maybe trying to influence about where we're trying to go, they'll probably want to know where are you going to? And we're very used to in schools knowing where we're going or having done it before or in my old school I did blah, blah, blah.
Sometimes we're asking people to... not take a risk, but we're asking them to sort of be okay with it not knowing and actually say for us, what is the purpose? The purpose of this is what the outcome is. if it's about enabling these group of children to make this progress or to understand this concept, ultimately the outcome is that we want them to able to understand it. How does, how we get there? How important is that? And in some cases it be very important.
But are we having an open, kind of rigorous, forensic conversation, which is really exciting, about teaching and learning about how we get those children to that place? Are we really thinking about what is, kind of, not what is best, but are we all engaging with, ultimately, what is a change management process? And they're happening all the time. But it's someone being not brave enough, but critical, challenging, if they're not the right words, but kind of, I suppose being equal enough.
I want to come back saying equal enough to say, can I just check in with why we're doing this? Can I just check in with what actually, and I've got question about what my part is in this puzzle or my part is in this project rather than. you know, actually, sometimes we have this again that we have much time and we're really enthusiastic that we all start doing each other's jobs, which is kind of helpful, but also really unhelpful for people too.
And again, that's, you know, people listening probably kind of think, maybe that happens in my kind of work context. It's not limited to teaching, but the confidence to have clarity and the confidence to have. a genuine equal professional conversation with a colleague without judgment, I think is super important. And I think, yeah.
And I guess they're very different sort of conversations to the ones that you would normally have as teachers where it's about, you know, the curriculum, what do I need to do? What do I need to cover in this, you know, or advice, how do I manage the class or anything? It must be quite a shift. for teachers to kind of have a different sort of conversation, I guess.
Yeah, and I think it's some, mean, we have to be realistic about this amount of time we have to work with other adults because the majority of your time you are working with young people. In the classroom, yeah. And I love what you said about the length of time and the quality of time. I guess the thing is that they're not they don't counter out, counter out each other. Does that make sense? don't know. You know, so it's about having short conversations that are of quality, I suppose.
And in, in your setting and in lots of other settings, I can imagine in the NHS or in a business where time is money, you know, short conversations actually are really important, I guess. And so having, using that time really well and being clear about what we're doing feels like a good thing, really.
Yeah, and I think for the, and I think what this is where kind of, using the ICF competencies, yes, to have an explicitly kind of coaching conversation when you know that that's what you're setting, that's what you're, that this is what it is, but also being able to use those principles, as I said before, just daily working, daily relationships.
enabling and I use the word transformational and it's that kind of 3D music a lot but I genuinely believe it is because it gives you so much more energy and time and so you end the day with colleagues who are clearer or exploring who are going to check in with you at some point about what they're doing or checking with each other and actually It's when we talk about living life and living life to the full and how do we enable to, you know, our colleagues in our trust to do that.
people are kind of have job satisfaction, you know, they're happy at work and we want, you know, we want all our children to get to be educated in a setting where, where happiness is around them and modeled to them. in a very genuine way, we want our teachers to be happy. I'm not saying it's about everything always being easy. That's not the case. It's a very challenging setting, but yeah, think that's super important that we can kind of live out what we believe really.
And I think that's where this kind of culture shift is. It is challenging because we also have to be our full selves. I because if we're not bringing ourselves to the conversation or actually listening with our whole body, we're not able to listen properly to somebody else. And that's not about sharing your own stuff or making it about you.
But if I'm not creating my own of my own head space to listen to what someone else is talking or thinking about or feeling that I won't be able to have, I won't be able to give them as much as I could in that 15 minutes or 20 minutes. And they're not really being heard. Yeah. I'm aware as we're talking, I'm very, I'm really interested in our conversation and I'm really kind of sort of leaning into it almost. And, and I'm also saying to myself in my head, and what about the practical?
So we're kind of talking quite a lot about the kind of ideas, aren't we? And I'm wondering whether it'd be useful for us to just touch for a moment on what the practical stuff is. So I'd love to hear how have you used coaching within your trust? You've got. I don't know how many schools, you've got loads of schools in your trust, haven't you? And how have you used coaching across your trust and what difference have you seen it making? Let's really try and pin down some practical.
Okay, so, yeah, so we've got a few different programmes that we use. We've talked a little bit about how some colleagues are already engaged with gonna 3D training and how they're working on that kind of individual. So I won't touch on that. We'll start with our executive leaders. there's funding for one or two colleagues in each of our school settings to have coaching sessions throughout the year. So they're four half hour sessions. are, know, some people say, that's far too short.
You need much longer time to do your thinking and actually. when I check in with the colleagues who are having those, say, I have to work so hard. They are really, actually, I feel really tired at the end of them, I've only half an hour. Or when people said, I've done my thinking. So can you let Ruth know that kind of after 25 minutes, I'm kind of done. I said, yeah, just tell me that you've finished up your work done. That's great. It just demonstrates how quickly they do their thinking really.
But yeah, so that's, we've run that for a couple of years now. And kind of a big piece of art, kind of work to start with was having to share with colleagues actually what coaching is and what coaching isn't. This is not about underperformance.
This is about providing strategically and resourcing time and space for a most senior need is to think about what it is they need to think about to be the best they can be in their roles, which sounds very waffly, but actually all of those people know exactly what that thing is that they need to think about.
it's the thing that they can't think about at school with that colleague because maybe it's personnel thing at school or it's a thing that actually someone doesn't want to share at school because they just don't have that kind of space to do that and that's totally fine. So we always kind of link it to kind of our trust development plan or the school development plan so that we have a kind of three way contract really with.
kind of the line manager or the head teacher or the kind of the CEO with the thinker, the person doing the thinking in the school and with 3D. kind of everyone is always in the same room, if you like. And then I sort of check in with yourself or another colleague from 3D about how it's going, not in terms of the content of the conversation, but just in terms of engagement. ultimately, do we think colleagues are making progress with their own thinking?
a couple of surveys a year to check in with colleagues see how that's getting on. And how they found it? What's the feedback from them? exactly. Everyone has, 100 % of colleagues have said they would recommend it to another colleague or a friend and they all have very different, not very different but it mainly talks about kind of confidence, exploring different perspectives.
The fact that actually that they may be involved with coaching, they know it's a good thing to do, actually having to find the time forces them to do the thinking. So it's not that they wouldn't do it if they didn't have the opportunity, but it's that actually it will be highly unlikely because of the immediate kind of urgent priorities that sometimes come up in schools, know, safeguarding issues. It feels almost a bit self-indulgent, doesn't it?
Because it's like, it's time for me to do thinking. Yeah, it feels like it's about me, where actually it's not, it's about others, isn't it? It's what I need to do to support. Yeah, I think it's that understanding that actually the impact you can have in our teaching capacities is massive. Actually, the way that you do your role can easily enable even more people to be involved in that decision making or that positive change or understanding, whatever it is you're exploring.
And so something maybe perhaps a little bit scary about that as well, about, wow, I am actually responsible for a lot of things here actually. And sometimes there's a frustration because some of the things may not be working. I suppose coaching conversations really highlight to people, it shows in the mirror, really, doesn't it? About what to, what is actually really going on?
What are you... impactful really are you in your role and what do you need to do to make sure that you're highlighting your priorities and actually thinking of yourself as a resource is I think super important and thinking with the time I have how am I going to use that to deliver the priorities I've been asked to deliver across my school.
think we also have some funding for developing women's leadership in education which we're really passionate about across the trust been rolled out for about three years. And we wanted to enable some of our colleagues on the next steps programme to engage with coaching. had a couple of sessions just to explore what it was they were learning during some of our facilitated sessions and how that was going to play out in their own environments with their own action plans.
And again, get them thinking perhaps in a slightly different way about their own career development. So I suppose we've used coaching to support with strategic career development and the kind of strategic processes in schools and what needs to happen there. But also with our subject mentors and professional mentors for training teachers and thinking about actually when we're wearing our mentoring hats and when are we wearing our coaching hats.
And just being able to draw on, know, quite a few simple strands again, looking to the ISF principles and thinking about actually we could make this more explicit for colleagues and if they're more interested they can. They can get a read up on it. They can join other sessions, but we don't have to sort of ram it down people's throats. They have to change their practice. This is just about offering something in a really light way and saying, have you thought about this?
This might be useful for you. And ultimately what we all love, teachers especially, is to be able to take, you know, someone said, look, I could save you 20 minutes today. And they love that. And there's lots of little coaching things that you can say to people. perhaps you might want to explore this, this might be the outcome for you.
And I think that's, as you said, it's about the big ideas and it's about the culture change, the culture shift rather, but it's also about being practical and enabling people to be able to involved in small ways that they feel ready for. And then when they're for a bit more, they can be involved in the way they want to.
And it sounds like those little bits of coaching, the kind of half hour every... term or every half term or something, even though it's a time-wise, it's a little piece of time, those things can be really significant, can't they? I'm wondering whether you have any insights about any of the difference any of those moments have made in any of your colleagues? Have you had very specific feedback like that or was it more general feedback you're getting?
Well, the first thing that springs to mind is we're talking about growing our own.
at Hope and not that we don't want anyone else from other organisations to come in but we really want to invest in the people that we have and I suppose one of the examples is a colleague who I think had kind of one or two sessions and actually decided to apply for another role in a different trust within the city and was successful with that role and it was exactly the right move for this colleague having having been in one setting for a number of years.
that's, I I should give an example of people where they, know, people trust really, I think this colleague who hadn't really experienced this kind of coaching before had a really transformational thinking experience with someone from 3D and then made, you know, quite a massive decision. to leave kind of the safety of the school where I think they were very, very well established, really loved where they were, to be in a different place and to kind of take their energy and experience elsewhere.
And I think that sort of demonstrates the fact that actually these, this thinking time is about what you need to think about for you. And I don't think this colleague went into that conversation thinking that they were gonna have the outcome they did. And I think that's where, of checking in where we've got senior leaders who are being, who are engaging with coaching and checking in with their heads and saying, know, just wondered how so and so is gonna getting on.
We do encourage people who are engaging with coaching to talk about the, the themes from those coaching conversations with their line manager or with other people they line manage with permission. Because I think this is about, we've kind of talked about it a little bit earlier about making conversations about coaching normal, making conversations about thinking normal, rather than conversation about what we're going to do all the time and how we're going to do it.
But actually let's think about how we're going to think about this. or I've had a really, yeah, just kind of moving from the, yeah, go for it. So I guess there's leaders, as leaders within the trust who are sort of benefiting from having a bit of external coaching.
And then I guess there's something about the culture and the shift down, like we talked about before about the language that sort of changes, because what I'm presuming what you're not gonna do in the trust is, train a lot of people to be coaches. It's about just doing things a bit differently. Is that sound fair? Yeah. And I think it's about, it's not about having for me anyway, we only have one way of doing it and that's how we do it.
We have the conversation we have, what I have, I think with colleagues regularly is what is the kind of problem we're trying to solve or what's our greatest risk and how we're going to mitigate that or how are going to work together so that we we don't experience that or we need to experience this thing. actually 3D coaching works really well and we need to create space and time for someone to do some thinking.
If we're needing to support a colleague to make quite rapid improvement with their teaching in their first year of teaching, having a coaching model, know, underpinned by the ICF principles for them probably wouldn't be the most appropriate because actually what they need is really clear mentoring. and think called instructional coaching, which is very specific and quite different to what we're talking about here.
And I think it's about us being really on it in terms of the kind of being really well research informed that actually we can say this development opportunity is probably the most appropriate for this colleague at the moment, but also to be more, we know we've done a lot of work on being more transparent about what is open for people and what we mean by different forms of coaching so that actually they can say,
this one is probably going to be the best one, useful one for me because this is what I'm trying to achieve. And part of that process is for the colleague to think, what am I trying to achieve? What's the outcome going to be for me? Therefore, who do I need to have a conversation with? And what development opportunity do I need? So almost, and actually just that in itself is thinking that colleague has to do on their own rather than their line management, like doing all that thinking for them.
So it saves time. So there's something in that, isn't there, about the principle of listening? That we need to hear what colleagues need and be able to work with them to help them find what they need. there's, mean, and that in itself is a bit of a kind of coaching thing, isn't it?
And even if it's not coaching they need, maybe they need the instructional coaching or the mentoring or the learning and, you know, safeguarding or whatever it is that, that... it always is going to start with the listening. And I wonder if that's something that is a useful kind of thing to think about with schools is how much do we enable our schools and our peers and our students to listen? How much do we teach them to listen and really and listen to themselves?
that's probably really relevant, isn't it? for students. mean, we could do another whole podcast on coaching students, couldn't we really? I we haven't got time to do that today. But yeah, I'm not sure what my question is in any of that. I'm not sure I have a question. That's just some, that's just what I was thinking about, about how important listening is, I think. Yeah, and as you were talking, I was thinking, is it a, the question, how do we listen better? I'm not sure that is the question.
As I think, I'm always thinking about How could we improve this? What could we do to make it better? And actually I don't think sometimes, and I think sometimes that the betterness or the striving gets in the way of actually the context that we're working in. And I remember kind of Claire, think talking in one of the podcasts about the real and the ideal and what is my real and what is my ideal?
And actually within the real that we experience in our professional lives, whether you're a teacher or public sector, you know, private sector or part-time or whatever you're doing. how how can I be most effective in my real? And I think that's kind of what it is for me. Again, I'm kind of going perhaps a bit bigger than listening, but it definitely is taking that time to be still in ourselves and recognize what am I recognizing in my own self as I'm speaking now?
There's lots of things I'm thinking, of course. But actually, I need to model this for other people. And I think in the education setting and what I have noticed personally from my own experience is we have to model what we want to promote in our professional spaces. if we want colleagues to be, you know, research informed, which of course all teachers are and support staff are. Are we creating time?
Are we modeling that for people to say, I'm going to have this conversation about this piece of research? How often do we hear that? Is it possible? How often do we, how often is the kind of what we're looking for role modeled to us? And I think for me, that's, how often do we see people just take 10 minutes to sit and not do anything or look like it's not. look like you're not doing anything. because we're just used to, as we talked about before, everyone's experienced schools.
We watch documentaries or programs about schools on TV, which are not really that accurate, or actually sometimes not that helpful for the education sector when we're trying to create possibly or change cultures that... doing some really good listening and creating more questions might be a better use of our time than blocking time for meetings with actions when people are going away heavier than they are when they enter. So it's about lightening.
And there's something playful that I love about coaching as well. you know, when you're relaxed, you bring your whole self to something and you are able to draw on things that you're not when you're stressed or when you're tense and there's something, know, and it's not about coaching, you know, you can't laugh with somebody or smile or explore something because that's when our, We are our true selves.
And there's something as well about, know, yes, we have to go to work to earn money, but also it should be joyful, you know, and, you know, sister. Yeah. We should be able to, and also if we are, if we're joyful in the way that we work, then the pupils will, it all is all part of the same thing. you know, but it's, but but sometimes it feels like it's harder than it really needs to be because some of the, when we are still and we are listening, some of that can be uncomfortable.
And it's about making sure also that when it is uncomfortable, that we are really safeguarding ourselves as colleagues who are supporting that. knowing if that's our role or if it's somebody else's role, we'll able to signpost colleagues to that for whatever reason. And actually checking it out, is this coaching, this mentoring, this, and with that person as well, I think there's probably something really important as we're kind of talking about schools that safeguarding is on there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Sarah, I could talk to you all day. We probably shouldn't. Yeah, because we probably got other things we ought to do as well. Yeah. I wonder though, as we finish, one one thing you'd like to. One last thing you'd like to say about coaching and education. What's the most important thing for you? Do you think about coaching within the education sector? Wow, one thing. As you've heard. No pressure. Difficult, quite difficult to kind of stick on one thing. for me.
I think, what do I to say about coaching? I suppose I want to say to anyone who's having listened to this as a teacher or sports staff or anybody. that if you are working in a support capacity, so as a mentor or as a coach, that actually it's not about you, it's about enabling the person that you're working with to get to where they need to be. And the more you need to pull parallel with students as well. Yeah, yeah. And teachers and students. That's what we're about as teachers, I guess.
Yeah. Is enabling the student. And. that not knowing is part of the joy of coaching. And of course you can do that, you can do that safely. But yeah, it's not about you. And when it's not about you, it's so much better as well. It's not about me. Yeah. And I think the name for a new podcast should be the joy of coaching. I love that phrase. Yeah, well, let me know. Brilliant. Sarah, thank you very much for joining us today.
It's been lovely to have you and to chat to you about coaching and education. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ruth. So you've been listening to The Coaching In. I'm Ruth Bennett. I've been talking to Sarah Clark from Hope Learning Trust up in York. It's been lovely to be with you today. Thank you very much and goodbye. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, please share the podcast with a friend who might also be interested.
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