Coaching eats tutoring for breakfast
Today, tutoring is the go-to solution for parents who have kids struggling in a specific subject or want to get a particular exam result. But, is it the best option to help get a student through an exam? Is there a better way?
The current exam system is heavily based on having a good memory and retrieving specific information on a single day to answer a very tightly defined specification. It demonstrates little skill for what a future employer will look for. For some parents, the exam result will be the most important thing. However, for many we’ve talked to they would prefer their children to get the support that helps them through the education system's hurdles and sets them on a path for future life success.
What if there was a way of investing in a child that helped them ace an exam and also developed the skills required to prepare well for ALL exams and learn things that better set your child up for the future world of work?
With coaching, this is possible, and here’s why.
Education is changing. Learning is becoming a core skill of modern workplaces. We now know there are many aspects to a great learner and many that the current school environment does not focus on. The memory of facts and figures is only one aspect — it’s a narrow and shallow piece of the whole learning process. At Cormirus, we bring visibility to five elements of a learner. These are:
1. Motivation — this is how motivated a learner is in general. It takes into consideration school, friends, home and hobbies. It’s an indicator of the general well-being of the learner and whether they are thriving or not, and whether they will have the energy to see them through the stress and effort of exams.
2. Mindset — this includes aspects of personal responsibility, growth orientation and how they generally think about their chances and opportunities in life. It’s an indicator of how they work through challenging situations like exams.
3. Management of Self — this includes self-discipline, prioritisation, planning, goal-setting, and other skills centred around getting a learner to do the essential and important things in life. This is an indicator that helps a learner figure out how to control where they are going.
4. Meta-skills — all school subjects have a set of skills that aren’t explicitly explained. For instance, English is as much about learning how to communicate as it is reading classic books or learning grammar. History is about research, empathy, compassion and creating arguments, not just the date and place where a World War was started. These meta-skills that underpin the future of work tend to be invisible but are actually much more valuable in the workplace than emphasised in school.
5. Master of Subjects and Skills — the subjects we study and our relationship with them are connected to the four items we’ve just described. But, they can also become core parts of our identity. For instance, many people believe ‘they are not maths people’ or ‘they are arty’. We look at the relationship a learner has with each subject they are studying to see how to connect it back to a strong reason for working hard. We help a learner reflect on their interest, confidence, enjoyment, motivation and preparedness in each subject.
These five themes give a much richer picture of who the learner is, how they perceive their capabilities and their relationship with each subject they’re studying, and where they might need to develop ‘soft skills’ essential for life-long learners and performance over the long term.
Making these themes visible to a learner helps them figure out how to better manage themselves and navigate the challenges they have in front of them.
Tutoring, in a way, does nothing for motivation, mindset, management or meta-skills. In some ways, tutoring can even erode the agency and self-management required to do well in life. The tutor takes away much of the learner's planning and organisation as they construct the plan that identifies and plugs the gaps from the curriculum.
A great coach guides a learner to connect what they need to do with their own goals and their desires of where they want to go. The coaches aim is to create great learners and help them unlock their potential.
Coaching is a better and more effective approach that gets the learner to figure out how to tackle the challenges ahead using their own ideas. As agency increases so do motivation, energy and effort. This is essential for managing challenging processes like exams and other stressful moments in life. The student spends time developing motivation and addressing their mindset and turning these newfound superpowers towards doing well in exams and planning out the next steps in life to create a very different outcome. You get children who take ownership and control of their journey so they can develop the capability to solve their problems and learn to grow.
There’s no doubt, investment in a tutor helps raise the grades in a single subject. But, investment in a learning coach raises grades across all subjects and sets the student up to be a lifelong learner able to navigate their future.
