River Brown

This is a writing activity that will help my day job. Let’s see… how to describe coaching in one word with a brief description beneath…

Anxiety
You start to doubt yourself, you wonder if you really know what you are talking about. Your colleagues resent you because they think you know everything since you have the title of “coach.”

Headache
Prompting and probing all day long in an effort to get reflective thoughts will leave you with a pounding headache that does not compare to the worst days of your class going wild.

Twitch
The body is amazing and if ever you want to see it perform at its peak, take up coaching. The never-ending surprises, constant last minute changes, ceaseless running all over campus, out of control teachers will leave you with a twitch in your eye, odd eating habits, and many sleepless nights.

Candy
The surge in anxiety along with reckless eating means bad food is your new best friend. Welcome chocolate, lots of chocolate.

Carrousel
Coach this then coach that. Meet with this teacher, now with that one. Go to this meeting, now go to that one. Plan this and plan that. Don’t know where your head is? That’s ok, no one will notice.

Joy
You know how good it feels when you see lightbulbs in children? It is five times better when you see the candles begin to flicker in colleagues.

Relief
Don’t know what you will see when you walk in? Imagine your colleague implementing that one strategy you modeled and seeing the impact on all 30 minds…

Change
You can do it one student at a time or 30 students at once.

Storytelling
After a year of coaching, you bet you will have some damn good stories to tell!

Not what I was aiming for, but it is a start.