Mentoring and coaching

 

Miss Rebecca David Hillgrove Secondary School Singapore

 

Abstract: The approach on mentoring and coaching in most schools is to create a culture of an environment that infuses these two essential skills. It is a constant challenge to provide and create such an environment. However, when a school infuses these two essential skills, it will hold a firm ground of motivated and high-self esteem individuals who undergo their years of education with confidence.

 

Introduction

Mentoring and coaching highlights the move towards professional and leadership development in schools in the 21 st century. Some thinking concepts revolve around the fact of whether mentoring and coaching can co-exist together or are they seen as two different concepts. There are various factors involved for discussion to take place, based on these two concepts.

The first concept of mentoring can include factors that:

• involve identifying what mentors do;
• understanding the different types of mentoring relationships;
• identifying the types of mentoring assistance and behaviors to avoid;
• identifying benefits to mentoring;
• clarifying how mentoring is a partnership;
• developing a mentor-mentee agreement;
• using effective communication skills as a mentor;
• identifying tools to help mentoring discussions;
• using effective listening and questioning skills; dealing with difficult mentees;
• identifying blocks to successful performance.

The second concept of coaching involves factors such as:

• effectively communicating observations;
• using and communicating positive reinforcement;
• managing and guiding the performance of others; clarifying quality as it relates to goals, objectives, assignments and tasks;
• identifying and applying essential performance factors;
• developing a general coaching guideline; using different types of coaching discussions;
• solving problems of motivation;
• using listening skills;
• effectively using questions;
• identifying blocks to successful performance.

Outline of mentoring and coaching

A school is an institution of learning and developing the students' skills and talents. To have a culture of developing good habits involves effective coaching and mentoring for students, as well as for the teachers who help develop these good values and skills in students. One good example is to implement an effective programme for students to bring out their high self-esteem, the drive to pursue good academic results, a sense of belonging in school and wanting to come to school to be nurtured with education. There have been schools and community-based organisations adopting effective mentoring programmes. One such programme is the BP international student mentoring scheme.

The BP international student mentoring scheme was first implemented in 1994 for youths facing difficulties on overcoming certain obstacles along the way, as they proceed with their life of education in schools.

A survey was conducted by BP in November 1998, covering 275 mentees from 24 schools. The results collated showed that 90 per cent or more students became more interested in their school work, improved in their academic results and displayed greater self-confidence and optimism in their outlook.

The BP international student mentoring scheme has charted its own directions in promoting mentoring as a way of life in Singapore in the years to come.

Associate Professor Ho Peng Kee Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs at the True Hearts Connection and BP Singapore Appreciation ceremony announced this in his speech on 1 June 1999, at Ngee Ann Polytechnic:

'The BP mentoring scheme points to a good approach, which is that youths can help other youths … More importantly, our mentors can be inspiring role models. After all, they have walked similar paths as those of their mentees not too long before. They can thus provide relevant life experience and guidance.

Riding on the success of mentoring schemes, such as the BP mentoring scheme, our local mentoring movement gained much momentum in the last few years. More community-based organisations and schools have adopted youth mentoring as a key strategy to nurture youth potential. One main motivation is because mentoring has been found to be effective in improving academic and life-skills of socially disadvantaged children and youth.'

Associate Professor Ho Peng Kee stated clearly in his speech that mentors can be inspiring role models. To further emphasise this, some young people lack a variety of adult role models. It can be hard for them to form a realistic view of life ahead from just their peers. Therefore, there is an essential need for a mentor to display characteristics of good leadership towards these youths.

Mentoring as an approach in school

‘The leader as a mentor' emphasises that, in the fast changing world of the new organisations such as schools, mentoring has become essential for preserving and passing down the history, culture and experience that senior managers have accumulated, to the future generation.

Whether you are currently running a mentoring process in your organisation or are considering one, there has to be an outline mentoring solution for everyone. Training tools are required to support an effective business mentoring process. The lack of mentoring skills and training can be a barrier to achieving positive mentoring outcomes.

Evidence collected from the ASTD (www.astd.org/astd) reports shows that over 75 per cent of the executives' surveyed viewed mentoring as one of the key factors in their business successes. Business Finance Magazine reports that 77 per cent of companies credited mentoring with increasing employee retention and performance.

This evidence shows how an organisation, such as one in the business sector, targets mentoring as a key factor in the retention of their employees an increasing their level of performance at work.

The key idea here clearly indicates that motivation is a powerful tool that results from mentoring, bringing about these two positive outcomes. Through motivation from a mentor, an employee will display attitudes of achievement, responsibility, growth and advancement towards their job.

More evidence from Harvard Business Review on motivating people cites a distinguished professor of management at the University of Utah, Mr. Fredrick Herberg. ‘One More Time: How do you motivate your employees?' states that communication is an important underlying factor beneath motivation. He indicates that most of the two-way communication involving management and an employee in organizations is that they can communicate and listen to each other more than ever, but without much improvement in motivation.

With reference to what Mr Fredrick Herzberg has quoted, there is one example that needs to be highlighted here on what could be happening in any organisation today in Singapore. The organisation that is used in this example refers to a school.

The management involves the relevant heads of authority in the school and the employees here would be the normal teaching staff. Two-way communication can effectively take place when the relevant heads of the school display good organisation and listening skills and demonstrate fair decision making. Hearing what your teachers have to say is crucial and critical - making ‘self- decided' decisions showcases authority in the wrong light. The teachers that represent the employees show little or no motivation because management has failed to hear what they were saying. The decision to go with ‘self-decided' decisions has brought about an ineffective management system, with low teacher motivation.

Coaching as an approach in schools

An efficient and effective head of authority in a school is a good mentor and coach. A coach's key role is to help individuals improve what they are doing. In any business or organisation, coaching is generally connected with professional development. However, a coach must possess an effective profile with empathising ability, listening skills, the capacity to confront and challenge in a positive manner, problem-solving ability, effective feedback skills, the capacity to empower and, certainly, mentoring skills.

Coaching and mentoring can co-exist together to bring about an effective environment, resulting in development of the powerful tool called motivation.

In Hillgrove Secondary School, a motivational and empowering programme was launched for the Secondary Two Normal Technical students who have difficulty coping and managing their academic results. Often, these students feel demoralised, rebellious, exhibit various discipline problems, refuse to come to school and play truant. Some experience financial problems. These students were demoralised and they lacked the seriousness and interest in education.

There is a point of reflection in every teacher's life. The conclusion drawn from my reflection was that these students in Hillgrove Secondary School lacked more ‘hands-on skills' in their learning programme. They also lacked motivational mentors who could inspire them to learn something new everyday. Upon realizing this problem, the need for innovation and enterprise came to my mind, to design and create an effective programme for these students to enhance their learning and to shift their focus towards achieving good grades for their subjects.

Together with the innovation and enterprising committee, there was room for discussion and implementation of a new programme at the school.

The first step involved using Home Economics as the main subject to implement the programme. The lesson plans were drawn out and an interesting topic had to be selected that could be related to an everyday lifestyle. The topic selected was ‘convenience foods'. The learning outcomes, assessment components and scoring rubrics had to be drawn up, especially in relation to making this topic with fun and involving 'hands-on' skills.

Based on Home Economics, students will learn how to prepare a healthy and attractive one-dish meal and drink for a teenager. The ‘hands-on' skills involved when they had to prepare and cook, different styles of food relating to various ethnic groups in Singapore, and the use of convenience foods.

However, there was a need to see to the fact that, apart from Home Economics, the students also needed to enjoy learning other subjects. There was again room for discussion with the Innovation and Enterprise Committee members.

A final decision was reached by my committee, and it was agreed that we would include three other subjects to tie in with Home Economics. They were CPA, Mathematics and Visual Art. CPA was selected as the students could experience hands-on skills using IT-related programmes to design a brochure based on convenience foods. Mathematics was selected because their form teacher was teaching them the subject and the class had a good rapport with him. Their form teacher, Mr Daniel Wong, displayed good mentoring and coaching skills, as he was a Physical Education teacher as well, and he practiced effective classroom management skills to deliver his lesson. Apart from these reasons, the students could also learn about simple analytical skills related to budgeting, which was also taught in Home Economics. Visual Art was selected so that students could express their creativity by designing a menu card to display as part of their table-setting skills.

The students were kept busy all the time and they had the constant drive to complete their task assigned, as it was a new way of learning their subjects rather than using the old teaching approach of just using the text books.

The students were motivated, as they were learning how to prepare new dishes every day. Professional table setting was also taught, to gauge their attention from a boring class to an innovative and exciting classroom setting.

There were many good and positive outcomes that resulted out of this programme. The students' attitude and performance was more receptive and responsive during my lesson. The most important change that was observed was that these students wanted to come to school to attend classes, as they look forward to a new lesson every week.

They saw a purpose and a reason for coming to school. The good mentoring and coaching skills that the teachers empowered them with made a big difference in their education life, in their learning journey with the school. There was a system that had personalised their learning agenda and the impact on the students introduced two of Professor David Hargreave's most important concepts: deep learning and deep support. Deep learning was seen from the student's consistent work that they displayed, by designing a brochure, creating a menu card, analysing a budget form, and performing their practical examination and evaluation. Deep support was given from the teachers in charge, who help solve many of the difficulties the students faced along the way with the new programme.

Conclusion

In conclusion, all networks must find a suitable and effective programme and culture to reach out to as many youths as possible. Many students will benefit from having a mentor, who takes a positive interest in his or her development and progress in life. This is an adventurous University of Life concept. All networks must find the need to explore nurturing and mentoring relationships across the generations.

 

Miss Rebecca David is the Innovation and Committee in charge and has been also on the discipline council for two-and-a- half years. She is a subject teacher for Home Economics for the lower secondary level and a food and nutrition teacher for the upper secondary level. Miss David has taught at various levels and has been featured in Channel News Asia and News 5 tonight for the successful programme implemented by the school. She also represented Hillgrove Secondary School in West Zone Two Cluster Schools in 2005, at South View Primary School, and is actively involved in the innovation and enterprise committee. She is a form teacher of a lovable class 2E4 and will always be fond of her form class of 2E5 in 2005. Miss David is also a house mistress and has the passion to train athletes for the annual track and field championships in school.

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