Are you curious whether you have what it takes to become an academic coach? Maybe you’re a school-based educator hoping to start a side business, or perhaps you want to get one of the new “academic coaching” positions that are popping up in schools and universities around the country?

In Part One of this series, we discussed the least you need to know to be a successful academic coach helping students thrive in school and in life:

Compassionate communication skills, and

Some basic learning theory and a few strategies to put that theory into practice (both study strategies and time management/organization for students)

In the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, we truly believe that these two skills are the minimum necessary for new academic coaches to get started working with students. As a result, we’ve structured all our courses and community calls to help new academic coaches get up and running on those skills as fast as possible.

However, most educators seeking out training as an academic (or ADHD, executive function, or student success coach) want to be more than just decent coaches. They want to deliver great services to students! And serve their students well.

To that end, there are two more skillsets that help new coaches get up and running as fast as possible -- and set themselves up to offer amazing services to help de-stressify school for students.

Before you pay tons of money for in-depth coach training, and after you’ve equipped yourself with the two toolkits listed above, here’s what you need to know next….

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!

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.