By Aliya Nabil
As the blog editor, I regularly browse the website to see what the blog posts look like when they are online. I also look at how many likes they have – liking posts more than once – not to inflate the number of likes (doesn’t work anyway) but to entertain myself with the floating animated heart bubbles that float around (you can see them by liking this post).
Evidently, we all need some sort of gratification – whether it is receiving a quick thank you, or through virtual likes. We are human beings and we like to see the impacts of our efforts. But that isn’t always possible because change takes time.
However, the other day I was looking through the CoachBright website and found myself on the 'Impact' page. I’ve always found the impact that CoachBright has on student performance incredible but I had never seen the individual programme reviews before. I clicked on the programme review of the school I had previously coached at and scrolled down the document. BAM! There it was.
According to the report, the student I had previously coached had gone up a grade in the subject I had coached them in. Despite London actually being sunny and 17 degrees after a week of unpredictable snow and rain, the weather could not compete with this! This was truly the highlight of my week! Don’t get me wrong, seeing bits of progress throughout the seven sessions itself was a joy, but knowing that there was an eventual cumulative benefit was just the icing on the cake!
I’d like to acknowledge that obviously this achievement was not a result of my sole effort and must be attributed to the hard work of the student (shout-out to Eunice!). This is a testament to the learning strategies that the coachees themselves come up with, and implement, with the encouragement of their coach.
From my experience, the approach that CoachBright takes - which encourages a growth mindset and independently motivated decisions –is sustainable and empowering. I have tried using it in other settings (such as a university peer mentor group) and I think it is such an effective method to maximise people’s potentials.
At the end of the day, I think it’s important for coaches not only to help their coachees believe in themselves, but for them to believe that they are truly creating change. As I had found out, coaches are making a real difference!
This post is a shout-out to all the wonderful coaches who sacrifice their time and energy to help make education fairer! Know that everything you do has an impact!