Teachers can be many figures inside one, we all know that today they are required to be multi-sectorial, transversal and super skilled. But at the base, the vocation to be a teacher coincides with the vocation to be a Mentor. The main difference is to be either a “professional mentor” or just a person taking care of some difficult situation of specific students and overcoming the border of “just teaching at school”. 

On the other hand, Coaching is similar but at the same time, a different approach, with its own techniques. 

Nowadays being a teacher doesn’t only mean to teach but it also means helping, supporting, motivating, being an active listener and a guide for students and colleagues. And that’s the reason why it is very important to be prepared to face any kind of situation that can arise in school environments. Schools are the mirror of society, sometimes of the small and the big context where the school is based, sometimes of the wider framework.

Most of the time teachers replace the figure of a coach or have to be more of a mentor than an expert in the subject. They enter students’ lives and constitute the biggest support together with families, becoming also an adult point of reference to be inspired from.

This course has the purpose to give the basic tools to help teachers be more aware of the variety of valuable roles they may have  – apart from being subject teachers – and gain key competences to play a more active role in helping and motivating students. 

The course starts making clear what the differences are between these two figures (the coach and the mentor) and also to understand which one can better fit each situation, in order to be able to use one or the other depending on the needs of the person we want to support, learning how to take care, guide and how to build a relationship of trust. 

 A coach can help a student to set goals, and give them the tools to achieve them only by using their own capabilities. A mentor is also a guide, a trustworthy point of reference or a model that can last for a longer time. 

This course helps you to find ways to hand difficult issues back to the person (coachee/mentee) and to encourage them to find the solutions for themselves, through a process of empowerment. We aren’t aiming to teach you how to become a fully accredited coach or mentor, we are aiming to provide you with some highly effective coaching skills you will be able to put into practice in your life and daily work. It’s always very important to contextualize and each person can be a different kind of mentor depending on each specific situation. 

In some contexts coaching and mentoring are used almost as interchangeable terms. Without a doubt, they are both valuable processes. It is true that the boundary between them is somewhat permeable and that often the same individuals in schools carry out or participate in both processes.

Active listening and asking powerful questions are at the base of these two supportive interventions, that is why the teacher will get to know how to ask effective questions, make beliefs become visible and support an empowering mindset, including the use of the Grow Model to support a pathway of self awareness and growth.