THE CARE PACKAGE PURPOSE AND VISION EXPLAINED
My experience as a teacher abroad has highlighted how all teachers face similar difficulties regardless of the country they are working in. It is for this reason I decided to create a coaching program tailored to help teachers keep a positive mindset through their contract by addressing their lives:
Inside of school: engage, perform, create.
Outside of school: connect, learn, grow.
Create bridges with family and friends back home.
Furthermore, the sanitary crisis has accentuated the necessity to look after a teacher’s mental health. A teacher with a healthy outlook is more likely to reproduce a healthy and open classroom environment, thus, allowing students to engage further in their learning.
Addressing how coaching is relevant for international teachers and key points of what is going on for them.
1)How can Coaching be relevant to International teachers?
I have been a teacher for 30 years. At university while doing my PhD, in French schools (South Africa , Belgium) and in an international bilingual school (France). I have also given private lessons to support students in their learning. I never saw teaching as a job but more as a passion. I never thought I was going to work when I used to go to school to teach and I used to think I was creating stories with each piece of the curriculum for the students to engage better.
Teachers have the power to elicit vocations, change lives, create purpose. It’s an amazing job. But in order for the teacher to engage with his/her class energy is needed as well as the right mindset and the space to do so.
I know how a school works, I know about the teacher’s challenges:
Interaction or not with peers.
The Teacher’s room.
Relationship with principal and secretary/the administration.
Being in front of a classroom, delivering the curriculum, making it the most interesting possible.
Preparing lessons, assessing and marking.
Relationship with parents.
The parents’ parking lot or network where one’s reputation is made.
Teachers can feel really lonely in their journey.
Coaching is relevant in order to explore how all these different parts of their working life interact and how they feel about them. What needs to change and how can they picture that change. Coaching takes them in their now and brings them towards a desired future.
I am the ideal partner to help them in their way forward.
2) Adapting teaching in times of covid
International teachers are confronted to the uncertainty due to the pandemic. They are wondering when life will be back to normal as per teaching in class and traveling the World.
They are wondering about the future of schooling and teaching in terms of “What does it looks like“?
Homeschooling takes another dimension with students behind their screen following a virtual lesson.
Teachers teaching from their home, then back to the classroom but for how long? How does that work for them?
New rules, curriculum and ways of teaching might have to be put in place, as a necessary evolution. Evaluating school work opens up on what do we want to evaluate? Think, reflect, create, rather than force-feed students pages of content.
This means for educators, internationals or not, a whole new way to prepare their teaching material. Are they feeling up to the challenge? Does it leave them brain-stuck, frozen, unsure on how to manage that leap? Do they stress about it, wishing to go back in time? Or do they choose to embrace change and see all the potential it brings to the teaching world?
In both cases, yes it is challenging but if well prepared and supported they will thrive in this new journey.
I am here to help them transition successfully by addressing one by one all of their concerns, transforming them into welcomed challenges.
3) Recreating the magic of the classroom
A class is a special environment. Magic happens there, passions are triggered in students by an enthusiastic teacher and his love of the subject. The desire to pursue studies in that field is born. It happened to me, I was 12 years old and my biology teacher mentioned Cousteau. My path of life was set that day.
How does remote teaching impacts that magic? What can the teacher do to recreate it?
Part of the teacher’s job is to feel and react to an ambiance, to a comment. Then the lesson goes off track, and becomes even more alive.
Is the connection to the students dimmed by remote-classroom? May the difference of culture amplify the disconnection?
Pushing the reflection, do educators wonder if their role expands to more than teaching as the pandemic impacts on students’ physical social life? How to learn about relationships, differences, when there is no physical interaction with people?
How to reinvent the live social-network of the classroom? And use it to feed life into lessons and make a difference in the lives of students.
International teachers can feel overwhelmed! I am here to help through this wave of new challenges.
4) Dealing with not being able to go back and forth between home country and work country because of covid.
I get the feeling that the World is scaling down, as a result of covid, from a whole connected trading network to a puzzle of individual countries which are closing down on themselves, do you also feel this way?
With traveling affected, international-teachers might wonder if they will renew their contracts. Reconsider their choice of career and life, not fully grasping all the aspects of the situation around them, reacting on feelings, making rushed decisions which might not be in their best interest in the long term.
Living abroad when it’s a choice and you know you are a flight away and a few hours from your home country is one thing. Being forced to stay put and unable to go back is a whole different experience that our minds have to adapt to.
The question is, do they want to adapt to that situation, look for its opportunities or not? And how do they cope in both cases?
It is an important topic to address now: What is their mindset? What strategies have they found to maintain contact with family members? Are these relationships taking more space/importance in their lives? What are the associated feelings?
The key at this point is for me to look into what are the strengths each international teacher can count on to help him through and forward, in order to make the best decisions in both personal and professional areas.
International School, get in touch with me to tailor cut this package for you.