Introduction

This is the first of a series of blogs that examines the strategies an independent coach-educator can use to handle the external and internal struggles that arise when taking on a challenging education assignment in a less-than-optimal setting.

My name is Martin, I have worked as a teacher for many years, especially with so-called challenging students, from whom I realize, I have learned the most about teaching.

Over the past decades, I have gradually adopted a more coach-like approach in my teaching. My focus has increasingly been on strengthening the supportive relationship between myself as 'teacher' and the student as 'learner', as well as enriching the learners' experience of their own learning process. The purpose is to (re-)empower the student to take charge of their own learning.

As a professional, certified coach, I have spent the past four years coaching teachers in Sweden. I am an immigrant to this country, and I initially had some difficulty finding the right kind of work that would suit my talents and life purpose. In order to avoid unemployment, I started my own language training company. Managing the challenges of integrating into a new society, and making a living through self-employment, turned out to be an invaluable asset for when I worked with coaching people who were returning to work after a prolonged period of unemployment, many of them were also immigrants.

Those are the themes that run through my stories.

Reflective writing process

I write about my lifetime of experiences in education. The writing process has been cathartic because I have been able to revisit actual events, reflect on and learn from them. More importantly, the writing process allows me to cry out tensions that had built up and been stored for years. It gives me great relief to re-present my life events in their best versions as stories that aim to educate as well as entertain the reader.

 Like the process of handling a grain of sand in an oyster shell, I manage to produce pearls of wisdom when I undertake to solve educational problems and bring out the best from all concerned, whilst dealing with my fears and limitations, hopes and aspirations. Martin Richards

As you read my series:

• In this first part, you are invited to enter a problematic situation as an opportunity for you to reflect on how you might go about solving the puzzle that the story sets.

• In the next blog, I will share my strategies for solving the puzzle,

• And then, in the upcoming blogs, I will take you deeper into the problems that follow, for you to ponder upon, and solve.

By all means send me your suggestions, reflections and comments. I am open to learning.

You will note that, aside from problem-setting, I also write in a mixture of rhymes/poetry and narrative/story to suggest my different levels of awareness. Sometimes you hear how I speak, sometimes you hear how I think, and sometimes you hear how I speak about my thinking.

Although firmly based on personally lived experience, the characters in this story are fictional. The company Ikon does not exist, although many similar ones do.

The story begins, in 'Mission Impossible' style, with a message

Through the window, you can see into my office. It has been my bedroom for the night. The arrangement of furniture is simple, a writing desk built into a bookshelf, with two hinged doors like wings, one on either side to allow this space be closed like a safe. The rest of the office shows signs of my overnight stay. On the bright red carpet, there are empty teacups and open books. Sheaves of papers are strewn in fallen piles among notebooks some stacked; some open, with pencils as bookmarks, like the scene of a bloodless battle with no clear victor.

As I dozed among my journals strewn

There pinged an e-mail across the room.

The ringing cut through my morning gloom

and woke this hero, an hour too soon.

My fingers rattled across the keys

The login typed with practised ease.

The challenge I read between the lines

described my task to be, this time.

I was jolted from my slumbers. Had I been sleeping more soundly, the e-mail ping might not have woken me so abruptly. But now, I cannot help but read it, through eyes half-open and blurred by sleep.

There was good information to be gained by reading between the lines of the e-mail.

“Helen calls them 'an interesting group',” I noted.

“That means she's been having trouble dealing with them,” my business-self decoded, “enough trouble to call for help and invest money in solving it.”

My heart was touched, “I wonder who's hurting the most?” I asked, looking for where the client was experiencing pain.

I read the e-mail again, “'Government-funded' what's that about? Why would the government be giving Ikon money?”

My business-self warned, “Government contracts can be tricky. I need to know the conditions around that before we get too involved.”

“And they have run these courses before 'with great success',” I continued, reading the e-mail.

“That means they have made money from them and want to continue doing so.”

“So, what we do know,” I reviewed for both of us, bringing the impromptu meeting of my minds to a close, “They want to keep their government funding for something that is currently hurting some influential person, enough for Helen to call on me for a 'good solution'.”

“That gives me some idea of what we can charge for my solution. We have some idea of who is affected by this.”

“I wonder what else we can find out.”

 I clicked on the link to the Ikon website, at the bottom of the e-mail. In the business world, Ikon was doing several things:

 
As I read the note about the Government funding, I recalled having had similar employment office contracts. As a Job Coach, I had been sent wonderful people who had, for some reason or another, not been employed for three years or more. People whose identity risked becoming 'unemployee', or 'unemployable', at least in their own minds. They had been drowning in self-imposed guilt and shame about their employment situation. Guiding them in stepping out of that, focusing on instead their true identity and moving ahead in their lives, had been one of the most rewarding experiences of my professional life. 

I began to realise what some of the problems might be for Ikon. Training employees is not the same as training unemployees. The management team won't see the problem, the trainers will. 

“That's probably the connection. The trainers,” I told myself. 

My creative-self woke up and began to sing: 

A group of people, or so it seems,

say the local government, needs

assistance from drowning, and to be

saved from the unemployment sea.
 

Skill set training, a hill to climb.

Hope recovered, and clearer minds.

And bring together in moving rhyme

a disparate group, by next lunchtime.
 

An improbable task, you may think,

But there it was, written in e-ink.

Said the instructions, “To act not think.

Just bring these people from their brink.”

“So they want my HELP,” I heard myself say aloud, “to save the unemployed from the unemployment sea.”

My rebel-self awoke and demanded, “And do you want to work with the patronizing employment system? Do you want to be part of retraining the unemployed to fit into existing jobs?”

“It would be awful, to be pushed, by anyone, government or not, into an employment that I didn't truly want!” I agreed.

“So why are you doing this?” my rebel-self challenged.

“Being pushed into employment is more my problem than anyone else's. The unemployees will probably feel relieved to get back into the employment system, to have a job and an income as well as a place in society, lose their sense of guilt at being not-useful, contribute as useful members of society.”

“Challenging yourself again?” my rebel-self mocked.

“And proving that what's needed here, is a change of focus, from problems to solutions, from 'what is' to 'what can be'. For me, and for them.”

So I made this resolution:

Trust the purposeful institution

 
No need to focus on their problems

Put it all on their solutions.

A group of strangers, all tense with fear

run in panic, a herd of deer.

 
Needs must they find their courage and steer

their hopes and dreams to better years.

See them always at their utmost best

Support them. Let them do the rest.

 
So clear was my thinking,as I read

the e-mail from beside my bed.

If this assignment is true for me

Now all remains, is go and see.

 
Check for details and reality

But first, I need my cup of tea.

Checking the details: Meeting the organizer

I met Helen in her office.

Inside the Ikon building, everything was grey. Silver grey, and white. And black. Where the grey ended, it was white or black. The paint on the walls made the optical illusion. The colour you saw depended which way you looked. The corridor in which I was standing, was an animated illusion. Like a high-tech surgery, doors appeared only when needed, melting back into the surface of the walls with a hiss and a click, once people had walked through. The doors and walls were ultra-clean, they revealed no sign of touch from human hands or shoulders. The floors showed they were immune to the many feet and shoes that must have trodden them from the Ikon Entrance to the Reception desk.

The only warmth here was Helen’s smile. At the Reception desk, Helen greeted me.

“I am glad you could come at such short notice. We start the course next week. Follow me to my office and let me bring you up to speed.” Helen turned briskly away and moved off at a pace, leaving me to walk two steps behind her.

“Coffee?” she asked as we walked past the coffee machine without slowing down.

“I am glad that I had my morning tea,” I thought.

Once in her office, Helen waved a finger at the Excel sheet on her computer screen and rapidly described the situation for me. She delivered her words like she was having trouble breathing, "We have a government-funded course. Like before. There will be 20 to 24 participants. All of them have been unemployed. Three years or more. Their ages range from mid 20’s to late 50’s. There are quite a few immigrants in this group. About half of them. We have interviewed them. Their Swedish is good.”

"Well, that's good to know." The joke rolled off my tongue, "My Swedish is now excellent."  The joke only made sense if Helen remembered that I too was an immigrant. She gave no sign that she had made the connection. Probably my immigrant background was more important to me than it was to her. I returned my attention to the task in hand.

"So what's the ‘something different’ you want to add?"

Helen pulled up the schedule for the 3-month course, an IT course for unemployed people returning to work. She paused for a moment and revealed, in one long breath, “The management team wants to strengthen Ikon's position as a 'good' company by supporting the social work of reintegrating unemployed people into the IT-workforce.”

I grinned as I agreed. I understood the value of being seen as a good company.

Helen continued, “We have entered into an agreement with the Employment Office to retrain people who qualify for special support, mainly people who are looking for ways back into employment. It's a win-win for all concerned,” Helen beamed as she spoke, obviously proud of Ikon's position. She indicated where she wanted me to fit in, “Prior to the IT training,” she said, tapping on the computer screen again, “we are running a 3-day introduction. You will be working with them for at least 16 hours spread over three days.”

My business-self noted that 16 hours would mean I would get paid for only two working days, yet it did sound advantageous to spread out those hours. I asked, “And what would you like me to be doing with them?"

“What we want from you is an intensive course in social skills.”

I imagined balancing the 3-month IT course in my left hand and the 3-day social skills course in my right hand, and wondered if enough attention was being given to the social skills? “Why?”, I asked, “What makes you want to give them social skills?”

Helen showed me the overall plan again. “Here, in these first three months, they will be tested, given tailored on-line self-studies to follow, then tested again. They have one meeting every week with the teachers, where they will receive common core instruction in the IT-theories they all need to know. They can also book meetings with tutors if they need support along the way.”

Helen grimaced as she approached the reason for the social skills course. “The tutor’s time is limited and that’s been a problem before. The participants on these courses…” she paused for emphasis to bring me on board with the problem, “… they take up a lot of time.”

Still unsure of what Helen, and Ikon, wanted of me, I waited.

“We hear that you have a way of getting people engaged with learning. We hope that you will be able to get them to collaborate,” Helen continued, giving the background with increasing ease and clarity.

She rattled off more of the description, “Then, the second three months of their time here, there are the employer projects, where they prove that they are able to collaborate with each other, finding a solution to a problem within a given time-frame, and then presenting it to their potential employers for approval.”

Now speaking almost as if to a customer, Helen rounded off her presentation with, “This training course aims to prepare them for employment, and in the end, they will be competing with each other regarding potential employment-based assignments.”

Wondering what the source of the problem was, whether it was the collaboration, the independent work or the competition for employment that posed the greatest challenge, I asked, “So what makes you want to have an intensive course in social skills?"

Helen pursed her lips, “Perhaps you should have a word with the trainers about that? It was their idea to bring you in for the three days. They're having a coffee break now perhaps you would like to join them?” It wasn't a question.

Checking the reality: Meeting the trainers

We joined the trainers in the coffee area, which was denoted by the tone of the colour on the walls, Helen pointed out. Five people were gathered around the coffee machine drinking espresso and latte, and enjoying the cake that Helen had especially provided in order to hold them a little while longer than their usual five minutes. As we approached, I noted that painted illusion turned from dark chocolate to cream as we moved further into the area around the coffee machine. Nice.

Helen's arrival in the coffee area brought us to the trainers’ attention. Daryl was first to acknowledge me, approaching with outstretched hand, smiling and saying, “Hello. We met at the Coach Conference a couple of years ago.”

I feigned recognition whilst my brain raced through half-forgotten faces and names, trying to make a connection.

“Daryl,” said Daryl, catching my feigned smile as the connection failed to happen. “You gave a talk about Coaching in Education. I was in the audience.”

I felt momentarily embarrassed about not having remembered him, and recalled that he would have been one of a hundred faces. “What do you remember of that talk?” I enquired.

“You said you had a way of getting students to take charge of their own learning.”

“That sounds like me,” I quipped, suddenly aware that I was at Ikon on business, I added my practised description, “My focus is on strengthening the supportive relationship between teachers and students, as well as enriching the learners' experience of their learning process.”

“That's something we need here.” Daryl confided. “Let me introduce you to the others. This is Elaine Seaman, Marlo Adler, Hal Maki and Cory Da Silva,” he said as he presented each of his colleagues.

I presented myself and was met with eyes wide open curiosity. They put their coffee cups down and turned to face me. I returned the curiosity and asked, "What made you ask me to come here?"

Daryl took the lead, stepped in front of his colleagues and launched into his reasons, waving his hands to indicate the other people who were in the building, “It's the participants that we get these days. It's really hard to motivate them. The study material is online, they are expected to reach a certain level each week so we can have a group meeting. The first two or three weeks is usually okay, they keep up with the pace of the course but then it gets harder and they lose interest. They come to the group meetings unprepared. We only get one full day every week with them and it's a waste of time spending hours arguing about why they haven’t done what they are supposed to have done.”

Hal added his perspective, "There’s nearly always one or two who do really well, they are well aligned with the plan. But actually that creates problems for everybody else when they have to collaborate because they will be competing for the work assignments coming up later. If they successfully complete their work assignment they might be offered employment. And that's the whole point of them being here.”

Daryl added, "We tell them at the beginning of the course that they have to collaborate in order to cope with the pressures of studying here. It's not like school, we aren't teachers, we are not here to motivate them. We are experts in IT, we lead courses and we are available for individual meetings and one group meeting per week. We don't do social skills training." He paused and took a moment, slowed down and concluded, "That's why I wanted you to come here.”

Marlo stood up, empty coffee cup in hand, and gave his perspective, "We know what they need to know in order to pass the course, in order to get  a certificate and get a job within IT. Competition is fierce! I wish they would take their studies seriously and make the most of the opportunity that's been given to them. Normally our participants come from companies that send their employees for a skills upgrade, and it costs a month’s wages per person.”

Cory put down his coffee cup with a clatter and turned to leave the gathering. Over his shoulder he confided in a stage whisper, "I don't know if it's a cultural thing, but they smile a lot and work very little. They seem to think it's my job to get them to do the work. And with that attitude you're not going to get employment anywhere, are you? It's no surprise to me that they've been out of work for more than three years. If you ask me, I wouldn't employ any of them.” He left.

Daryl raised one eyebrow and suppressed a one-sided smile.

Elaine, Marlo and Hal finished off their cake and coffee in near silence, then mumbled their excuses, indicating at the clock on the wall, "Lessons going to start soon," They followed Cory’s lead and left the meeting.

Daryl turned and with great warmth said to me, “I am glad that you are here.”

Throughout this exchange, Helen had stood still and remained completely silent whilst Daryl and his colleagues revealed their attitudes towards the participants on Ikon' s socially-motivated project. Now she clucked and took one step forward and caught Daryl's eye.

Before she could speak, Daryl gave her his thanks, “Well, thanks for the lovely cake. Now I must return to my duties. The students are waiting.” He moved hurriedly towards his lessons and awaiting students.

In silence, I finished off the remainder of my cake, and my cup of latte. I needed time to consider this assignment, what kind of social skills would be needed and by whom, how I would work with the participants, and whether or not sixteen hours would give sufficient time to have any beneficial effect. I turned to thank Helen for her confidence in my ability to come up with something new and effective.

"I need a couple of days before I can get back to you on this. Is that okay?"

"I look forward to it," said Helen effectively ending the meeting, turning her attention to clearing away the coffee cups and cake plate.

I put on my hat, and left the building.

What happens next?

The next blog in the series will describe two of the strategies I use in order to arrive at the outline for the social skills course. I will also take you through the events that followed when the participants arrived for the course and where we ended up on the first day.

I invite you to ponder upon, and find your solution for the contents and design of the social skills course. By all means send me your suggestions, reflections and comments.

My main points of this blog are:

• Story-telling is a cathartic experience

• Problems and challenges are sources of inspiration and professional growth

  
  

Connect with Martin Richards at Linkedin

An author and inspirational speaker in secondary schools, Martin Richards, is an experienced educator and facilitator who began teaching Mathematics over 30 years ago where he applied a 'coach approach' to teaching. He is currently a coach and mentor for teachers, course leaders and coaches in Scandinavia and is passionate about connecting teacher’s purpose with the greater Educational Aims.