As the UK General Election loomed on Wednesday evening, CoachBright came together to celebrate all that our pupils have achieved this year and to recognise the best Volunteer Coaches from our Spring Term programmes in London and Exeter! Each term there are 5 prestigious Coach Awards to be won. Below is a rundown of who the lucky 5 winners were....
The CoachBright Creativity Award
Winner - Ahsan Rashid
For Ahsan, it wasn't just about supporting a year 10 pupil with their GCSE Maths or English course. Last term he worked with a very under-confident individual who struggled particularly with making decisions and voicing opinions.
Over the course of the programme, Ahsan planned sessions that would build her confidence and improve her independent decision making skills. They talked through current decisions that she had to make and the coaching session provided her with space to explore what she really felt about things, rather than being led by the wishes of her teachers or family.
The creative activities that Ahsan used to help his coachee find her own voice are what made him a deserving winner of the CoachBright Creativity Award!
The CoachBright Extra Mile Award
Winner - Olwyn Munroe
For our Summer Party, our valuable team member Olwyn literally went the extra mile to attend, taking a coach up from Exeter to London and back again in order to come and celebrate with us. Olwyn has coached on two CoachBright programmes over the past year. Her lesson planning and attention to detail each time has been excellent, and has been reflected in the brilliant feedback from both of her coachees.
Thank you Olwyn for going the extra mile to make your coaching sessions an extremely high quality and for setting the bar on what academic coaching can achieve.
The CoachBright Commitment Award
Winner - Craig Tollerton
Craig is a PhD student at the University of Exeter. Over the past academic year he has coached on two CoachBright programmes. On both programmes he provided outstanding coaching, planning engaging and thoughtful sessions for his coachees.
In addition to this, Craig has also been a reserve coach for other programme, requiring him to step in and coach last-minute; run a Maths workshop for one of of Year 9 cohorts; and run several Physics taster workshops at our graduation events. Not only does Craig go the extra mile to help CoachBright, but he has an amazing ability to build rapport with pupils and to keep energy and team-spirit high.
The Best Coach Award
Winner - Victor Agrest
The ‘Best Coach’ Award is designed to recognise someone who combines all of the above; someone who is creative, who is committed to their coachee and the programme, and someone who will go the extra mile. After coaching in both our Autumn and Spring term programmes, at two different schools, Victor has significantly developed his coaching skills and is able to adapt to the needs of the individual coachee.
Being paired with two very different pupils over the course of the year, Victor spent time discovering the best approach to work with each of them.
With both coachees, building their confidence was a big part of it and he did this by creating activities that played to their strengths. This meant that the pupils enjoyed their sessions as well as finding them valuable academically. Victor also provided great feedback to the wider CoachBright team and often reflected on how the programme was going and what he could to improve the outcomes for his pupils.
The Best Coaching Team
Winner - St Luke’s School Team
St Luke's, lead by Head Coach Skylar Morgan, was this year's winner of the Best Team Award. The programme consisted of 19 Exeter University students doing 1-1 coaching with 19 Year 9 pupils. The programme had a particular emphasis on Maths. Each week, the Exeter University coaches would provide engaging and creative sessions, which gained regular praise from St Luke's senior staff. Furthermore, on analysing the data after the programme, St Luke's has found that the CoachBright pupil's attainment in Maths from before to after the programme has exceeded the progress of all the rest of the pupils in the year.
At their graduation event at Exeter University, a few of our St Luke's coachees recorded the lunchtime bulletin for the student radio station, Xpression FM! You can listen to their broadcast here.
After working with such a fantastic coach team this year, we can’t wait to see what the new academic year and a cohort of new coaches will bring! Come Christmas time we will be celebrating the best of our Autumn 2017 coaches so if you fancy seeing your name underneath one of these Coach Awards, jump over to our ‘Volunteer’ page and register your interest now!
Alternatively, email team@coachbright.org for a bit more info on the Coach role.