100 Posts in 100 Days
In yesterday’s post, I shared how my first experience with Cognitive CoachingSM was the blessing of having a trained coach as my mentor teacher during my teaching internship. And, that I didn’t fully recognize it for the gift that it was until I started comparing notes with college classmates who were having a different experience.
Over the next several years, I had many experiences where I ultimately compared and contrasted “life with a coach” and “life without a coach.” My teaching life was sprinkled with moments of coaching, but nothing that was consistent. In those moments where coaching was an accessible resource, I looked forward to every session. I anticipated entering conversations with a problem or sense of uncertainty and exiting with a possible solution and sense of direction.
As I was finishing my 8th year as a classroom teacher, an opportunity arose. The district I worked in was starting a literacy coaching program in several of the elementary schools. They were also funding a Teacher On Special Assignment (TOSA) to work from the central office, helping to coordinate training and support for those schools and coaches. I didn’t think I had the qualifications or experience for the TOSA position, but with some encouragement, I found the courage to apply and was selected for the position.
So, in my 9th year as an educator, I was a student in Cognitive CoachingSM alongside the 15 newly appointed literacy coaches I would be supporting. Our 8 days of training were scheduled in chunks over a few weeks. Completing the course together was an incredible community building and bonding experience, helping our group develop relationships while learning specific skills that we could use with teachers and students. We laughed, we practiced, we learned.
I reflected on all the times I had been coached by my mentor teacher during my internship and thought to myself, “Oh. That’s what she was doing. That’s why she asked that question.” All those positive feelings I had experienced as a “coachee”, and the sense of isolation from the time without a coach, were being explained. Each new piece of learning was an “ah ha”, a revelation that named and described an emotion or event I had experienced. I knew I had been mentored by a trained coach. Learning specific tools and techniques, though, gave me a new level of appreciation for what I had received.
As the name implies, Cognitive CoachingSM is based in cognition and human development. Our learning included concepts such as states of mind, behavioral manifestations of internal responses, and filters of perception. A master coach would lead a live conversation with one of us and then we would all immediately turn to each other to approximate those same skills. We learned new ways to observe and listen to others, language for well-crafted paraphrases and questions, and conversation “maps” for different kinds of conversations. We learned skills and strategies backed by neuroscience and psychology.
In the days, months, and years after I took my initial Cognitive CoachingSM course (I’ve now taken it more than once), I knew it was a seminal learning experience. What I had once only experienced, I could now create and offer for others. It changed my professional conversations. (Heck, It changed my personal conversations. I will never forget the first time I used a really well crafted reflective question on my mom or being told by my partner, “and don’t do any of that coaching stuff on me”. 😝 )
It turns out it wasn’t just a seminal learning experience then. It continues to be a seminal learning experience now. My school is steeped in the science of learning, a field that draws upon many others to understand human learning. Our lexicon these days includes things like metacognition, social metacognition, mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, affective states, neural pathways, mirror neurons, decreasing oxytocin, increasing dopamine, belonging, rapport, trust, conceptual understanding, and identity. Just like learning to coach provided me a new appreciation of what it had meant to be coached, learning daily about the science of learning is giving me a new appreciation of what I continue to learn and practice in the realms of coaching and adult learning. I know that I am a better educator and school leader for having had the Cognitive CoachingSM experience.