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Guest Post by Laura Megaw

Laura Megaw is currently on maternity leave from her role as Assistant Headteacher and Head of Sixth Form at St George’s International School in Rome.

At the end of last summer, I delivered St George’s first ever in-house BE Programme for students, followed by the BE Remix series online this summer. Both the BE Programme and BE Remix provide students with a toolkit of coaching to be more resilient and adaptable, increasing their wellbeing and autonomy.

After completing Graydin’s Foundational and Advanced Coaching Courses, my role as Head of Sixth Form provided the perfect opportunity to run these programmes, and share what I had learnt about coaching with my students.

I was delighted with both the uptake and participation from our Sixth Form students, with both programmes being over-subscribed with a waiting list for places.

Here are my top tips for launching a student coaching programme.

Create time in a student schedule

Students are as strapped for time as we are as adults, so they need to be given the opportunity of time to engage in coaching without any conflicting demands. This is why we embedded the BE Remix into our Wednesday afternoon schedule, running it on alternate weeks between sports and extra-curricular pursuits, such as creativity and service programmes. Building coaching into existing activities such as tutorials, PSHE or self-study programmes can also be highly effective.

Deliver a polished pitch

My students are very savvy and will easily separate the wheat from the chaff. When pitching the BE Programme to them in an assembly, I made sure to utilise the branded materials provided by Graydin to introduce the course and its content. The BE Programme handbook, for example, has been lovingly designed, and the BE Remix contains videos to enthuse and engage students. Students knew that a professional pitch would carry through into a professional, well-designed and delivered course which was worth their time and commitment.

Graydin’s learning materials can be shared with students to generate excitement and engagement.

Share your passion for the content

We all remember the teachers who inspired us, and those who didn’t. Mostly what we remember is their passion; passion for their subject, for their students, or for a project. I made sure that when encouraging students to take part in the BE Remix, that I shared how passionate I was about its content, and what a difference the tools and techniques had made to me as both a professional and an individual. This also made them intrigued to learn more about the it and what it offered.

Allow student choice and competition

In the same way that adults cannot be coerced into enjoying a “compulsory networking event” or “mandatory working lunch”, students want to feel like they have opted into a coaching programme by choice. It was therefore offered as an option alongside other extra-curricular pursuits in areas such as art, drama and music. We asked students to sign up for their first, second and third choices, and assigned based on availability of spaces. This created a healthy competition for places and increased the perceived value of their place on the course.

Ask for feedback

I was delighted with both the uptake and participation from students for the BE Remix, and their engagement with the content was genuinely exemplar. Along with the BE Programme, it was by far the most rewarding project I have ever engaged in with my students across my teaching career. At the end of the series, I collected feedback from students and their recommendations, to utilise in my pitch to future cohorts. The power of student voices and their stamp of approval was better marketing than anything I could have said, and I was delighted to read the impact it had in student applications to universities and jobs at the end of their school career.

The BE Programme and the BE Remix were fantastic wellbeing tools to offer my students alongside their academic curriculum. I believe the skills and tools they learnt will be with them for their lifetime, and enabled them to unearth their personal values, goals and aspirations for the future.

The opportunity to provide students with resilience and adaptability is absolutely invaluable in supporting them through times of change and uncertainty.

IN This POST...

Our self-directed wellbeing series enables young people to foster connection, increase confidence and create positive change. Through a combination of reading, audio, videos and worksheets, the BE Remix supports the social-emotional learning of students in schools and universities.

How I Engaged My Students in Coaching