What Training Do Academic Coaches Need? Part One
Students’ academic and social/emotional skills have suffered since the months (and years) of online schooling; teachers are also suffering as they try to meet students’ needs in a context where they’re expected to be the “saviors'' of complex societal and schooling problems that are affecting students so much. Teachers are also leaving schools in droves, looking for alternative ways to live out their passion of helping students without the institutional stressors that come with schooling.
Becoming an academic coach (or adhd and executive function coach) are wonderful career alternatives for teachers (and other adults who care about kids) to consider.
Academic coaching is also a booming industry inside schools and universities, as an increasing number of institutions recognize that to help students succeed, they need to provide a wide range of support that includes both academic skills/strategies (how to learn), executive function strategies (how to get stuff done), and social/emotional/life skills (how to take care of your wellbeing).
Recently, an educator registered for my free monthly office hours asking a very relevant question -- what kind of training does a person need to become an academic coach?
I love this question because I have a controversial answer: not much!
I know this might seem surprising. Isn’t more training always good? Especially when it comes to caring for our kids? Perhaps. But let’s unpack.
The Least You Need to Know
Most of the people who ask me “what training do I need?” are middle-aged adults who are interested in shifting their careers. They already have a number of years behind them becoming experts in their originally chosen fields.
Recently, new members of the Anti-Boring Learning Lab have included:
educators (school administrators, classroom teachers, special ed teachers, content tutors, executive function and adhd coaches, etc),
parents of students with learning differences who are now ready to “pay it forward” by becoming coaches, and
upper management in corporate America who are looking for more meaningful, human-centered work.
All these folks are coming to their interest in academic coaching with so many intact skills already!
Also, these folks tend to be people with one or more marginalized identities: women, people of color, queer folks, adults with their own neurodiversities, and more. I’ve noticed that these folks tend to think they need more training than they actually need in order to be “worthy” of being paid as an academic coach.
They collect trainings as if they are stamps, thinking that the more training they get, the more confident they will be in starting their private practice. But the start date of actually getting paid (and paying themselves back for all that training) keeps on moving further and further into the future, as the trainings they collect get in the way of actually getting their baby business up on its feet!
Is this because they are afraid to actually start their business? Is it because they’ve internalized a story that they are not worthy exactly as they are? Is it because there are all kinds of institutional barriers to getting a business off the ground for folks from historically oppressed communities? A combo of all the above, and perhaps other reasons, too?
Here in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, we specialize in trying to remove as many barriers as possible to aspiring coaches who want to start their businesses. There are so many students-in-need out there! And although the field of coaching is booming, there seem to always be more students needing coaching than coaches available to do that coaching.
One way to remove barriers to learning, for both aspiring academic coaches and students, is to focus on “the least you need to know” to get started with any project, whether that’s studying effectively, getting stuff done, or starting an awesome biz as an academic coach.
Back to the question, “What training do I need to become an academic coach?” Earlier I said, “Not much.” But what exactly does that mean? What is “the least new academic coaches need to know” to get started working with students, whether in private practice or at an institution of learning?
In this two-part blog entry, we’ll share some skills that new academic coaches need, alongside the kind of training that will help you equip yourself with those skills.
Compassionate Communication Skills
First and foremost, academic coaches need to know how to communicate compassionately to the students they are guiding. Are you willing to hold space for students to have their full feelings without judgment? Are you willing to empathize with their predicaments without judging them as “lazy” or “failing to reach their potential?” Can you be a neutral, curious presence who is excellent at asking sincere questions?
The skill of compassionate communication is truly “the least you need to know” to be an academic coach.
How do you develop this skill? I venture to guess that many of the mid-career professionals reaching out to me for training already have this skill in spades. They just might need a little guidance for how to apply it to their work with students.
Coach training certifications (like those who are accredited by the International Coaching Federation) do a great job of teaching this kind of student-centered communication to adults. They teach new coaches how to listen actively, evoke awareness in the client, and to facilitate client growth. You might enjoy reading through the ICF competencies to get a better understanding of these.
However, in my experience these training programs often go overboard in regards to “student-centered” communication. Many coaches who have been ICF trained come to the Anti-Boring Learning Lab confused. They say things like, “I love that I got to ‘unlearn’ all the top-down ways I’d developed to talk to students. However, now I’m scared to teach them anything, because I’m supposed to only draw out the students’ wisdom from themselves! However, students don’t know what they don’t know. There are skills I need to teach them, but I’m worried about doing that now.”
In the fifteen years that I’ve trained coaches, I’ve heard this concern hundreds of times. Enough so that I developed a communication tool to support all adults in teaching students’ respectfully, compassionately. I call it “The Consent Burger” and it’s transformative once you learn to use it regularly -- with students, but also with your partner, friends, and your own children.
If you’d like a free introduction to the Consent Burger, simply download this resource in our free learning library. If you love it and you want to learn more specifics about how to communicate compassionately with students, I recommend you work through the Academic Coaching 101 micro-credential inside the Learning Lab. You’ll learn:
An in-depth understanding of how to apply the Consent Burger in a number of teaching and coaching contexts with students.
How to ask “empowering questions” that support a student growing their autonomy and competence with regard to academic and executive function skill development.
The Consent Burger and an Intro to Empowering Questions are truly “the least you need to know” to get started academic coaching. Students these days are so used to having adults tell them what to do, whether it’s their teachers or their parents, that it is truly enough to show up, hold space for them to have all their feelings, and then support them in figuring out the next baby steps that might get them where they want to go, and then hold them compassionately accountable for taking those baby steps.
That Truly. Is. Enough.
2. Some Basic Learning Theory and a Few Practical Strategies
Being an intentional listener is enough to get started as an academic coach. However, it also helps to have a little learning theory, and some corresponding study and time management strategies, up your sleeve.
You do NOT need to have a full-to-overflowing toolkit to start academic coaching. But it’s helpful to have a few more tools than your students have. In other words, please please please have more strategies than just “highlighting,” “re-reading your text and/or notes,” and “fill out your daily planner.”
I recommend all coaches of students equip themselves with:
Some basic theory about what the brain needs to learn, according to neuro and learning science,
A few study strategies for how to put that learning into practice that are more than just “highlighting” and “re-reading your textbook and notes,”
A few time management and organization strategies to help students battle procrastination and get productive.
The market these days is flooded with an increasing number of books about effective brain theory and study strategies. You might want to seek those out! (I can’t believe that I haven’t published my book yet. I need to get on that).
However, the problem with reading up from a bunch of books is that you can then feel overwhelmed about all the incredible strategies out there, and consequently, you can overwhelm your students with too much information.
This is when I remind you that we are focused on the least you need to know to get started coaching, which means you need to focus on the least students need to know to be able to make effective changes to their habits and routines (or lack thereof).
Because of my focus on the least you need to know, I figured out how to summarize the complexities of the science of learning into three simple steps which I call the “The Anti-Boring Study Cycle.” Most students respond to this information favorably. “Why didn’t anyone teach me this before I started having tests?!” they will ask, incredulously. Probably because the educators around them didn’t know it either, I think.
If you haven’t yet learned the Study Cycle, I’ve got good news for you. A short video and downloadable is available for you right now in our free learning library. Sign up here. Conveniently, you learn the Study Cycle in the same mini-course in which you learn the Consent Burger.
What’s Next?
Above I’ve outlined what I truly believe is the least a new academic coach needs to know to provide good support to struggling students. To summarize: be a compassionate communicator and know some learning theory with corresponding study and time management strategies.
If you start here, you’re ready to start working with real students. There are many out there struggling, and they need you. If you haven’t already, please check out my free mini-course in the learning library -- Unlock Student Learning. That will get you started on your path towards excellent academic coaching services!
In the next blog entry, we’ll cover two more kinds of training you might also want to consider to take your coaching of students to the next level. Hang tight for that.
Finally, if you’re ready to get started building your academic coaching skill set, please consider joining the Anti-Boring Learning Lab! We’re a one stop professional development shop for educators obsessed with learning the study skills and executive function strategies that help students thrive.
In our Learning Lab, you’ll learn everything you need to know to be a great coach, which includes:
The 40+ science-based strategies in the Anti-Boring Toolkit broken into easily understood and actionable micro-credentials, teaching you everything from Academic Coaching basics to Study and Anti-Procrastination Skills, and more!
A robust community chat in which you can ask any question and share the latest tools and tricks with your fellow educators
Multiple live calls each month, troubleshooting challenges with student clients, practicing how to deliver the anti-boring mini-lectures, and more
An opportunity to get certified as an Anti-Boring Coach (which includes getting access to the student course the Anti-Boring Approach to Powerful Studying to give to your clients)
And so much more!!
We open the doors every few months for a new cohort of educators. Click here to join the waitlist and be the first to find out when the doors open again.