“If we want to develop classrooms that reflect what children can do, not only how well they can do what we ask them to do, we need a different approach.”
— Susan Harris MacKay
coaching for education professionals
Seek connections.
Adults have a critical role to play in the creation of the world we live in. That seems obvious enough. But we often forget that the childhood an adulthood cultivates at any given time is really where the difference gets made. Childhood is where we develop our deepest understanding of our place in the world. Where do we belong? Are we worthy? Are we loved? Adults cannot offer to children what they haven’t imagined for themselves.
Nurture compassion.
Becoming the teacher and leader you want to be is just about the most challenging task there is. The work of an educator is creative, intellectual, political, and personal. It requires emotional maturity, content knowledge, risk-taking, passionate curiosity, and sustained energy. It’s easy to get lost in a tangle of “shoulds” as you seek balance between competing priorities. You can lose sight of your vision and your values. Coaching will support you to secure your footing as you find meaning in your experience and strengthen your capacity to navigate your complex work.
“Attending to what we love, what we are astonished by, what flummoxes us with beauty, is such crucial work. Such rigorous work. Likewise, studying how we care, and are cared for, how we tend and are tended to, how we give and are given, is such necessary work. It makes the world. Witnessing how we are loved and how we love makes the world.”
Ross Gay
“Break the patterns that connect the items of learning and you destroy all quality.”
Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature