CSM Directory

Biography:

I am currently an assistant head teacher at a large Kent secondary school. In school I am AHT with responsibility for CPD, ECT and ITT, as well as induction of new staff. I examine for GCSE English language at AQA, and also take part in coaching, mentoring and running masterclasses at GCSE and A Level. I am also a secondary area lead for Canterbury Christchurch University, supporting 15 schools to develop their professional mentors and subject mentors so that ITT students can be ECT ready. Finally, I am a fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching, so also take part in research and development activity there.

I became a professional mentor in school 15 years ago. That has involved running and quality assuring a team of mentors who consistently strive to be the best listeners that they can be. As the professional mentor in school, my own coaching and listening skills need to be first rate and up to date so that I am able to support and challenge the team effectively. In more recent times, coaching is, of course, a very valuable resource to develop teachers. It is something that permeates the school CPD programme. An example might be working as triads this year with middle leaders and senior leaders to have coaching conversations about curriculum changes and development; this has been a very powerful tool for leadership development in school, as well as a very effective and "low stakes" way of quality assuring what is happening in departments. Senior leaders now have a deep understanding of those departments they were coaching.. In my SAL role, I train professional mentors in coaching and mentoring but also spend all of my time coaching and mentoring those people so that they can understand the needs, requirements and expectations of the university and the student teacher, and can come to terms with how to apply that effectively in their own context. For over a decade I ran the ITT section of the local teaching school, and as a result came into contact with over 40 schools during that time. As the ITT lead in that role, I trained and coached a series of professional mentors so that they too could quality assure, coach and mentor their own staff in their own schools. For two years, I was chair of the Kent and Medway Teaching Schools Network, and again my mentoring skills came into play; I managed a team of disparate teaching school leads to work in partnership on recruitment across Kent and Medway - no mean feat when they were also in competition for candidates!

Coaching is a powerful tool for change. It is also very difficult! To coach well, the coach must listen intently so that they can ask the right kinds of questions to develop the coached person's thinking., whilst not inflicting their own bias or opinion on them. Such a difficult skill is often under-rated, but I see it as a real opportunity to work with people to develop a real systems change or improvement in a collegiate manner. Ultimately, all coaching in education is to develop teachers who understand education and teaching effectively enough to deliver quality first teaching to the students in their care. As someone who, perhaps, in an old fashioned way has a moral imperative to her career, coaching is a way to ensure that every teacher has the skills and opportunities to develop every student in their care.