Teacher as Life Coach - Measure, Monitor & Improve Your Students Emotional State & Behavior   by Kelly Burris

Would Columbine have been prevented if there was a means of monitoring the student’s emotional state? Would you be able to influence the rate of childhood obesity and eating disorders if there was a class on how an emotional state comes about and how to take control of it? Would you be able to reduce teen suicide if students understood how to take control of their subconscious? Would you have more control over your students and reduce disciplinary problems by empowering them to become independent thinkers? Would test scores improve if students were emotionally in control?

The answer to all of these questions is a definitive yes. Everything a human being does in life is emotionally driven. How you feel about everything in your life will determine whether you move toward it or not. If you agree this is true then how much sense does it make to at minimum measure the emotional state of your students? It makes perfect sense to Greg Marth a Special Education teacher who specializes in students with Behavioral Disorders and is now a Certified Life Coach and Lisa Watford who has been using a Clinically Proven Life Coach process with her students since 1992. Lisa wrote the following comments after implementing a couple of the basic principles of a Life Coach program on her own.

Discipline is the most difficult issue educators and students face in today’s classroom. An enriching learning environment cannot take place without it. If a child does not feel secure within the confines of the classroom then long term learning will not take place. As an educator, I use the THE Life Coach process to teach fifth grade students how to deal with life and its complexities. Our classroom has gone from a virtual minefield of aggressive behavior, peppered with verbal confrontations, into a safe haven from which all to pass, parent and teachers included. I have been told there is something very different about the way my students treat and respect each other, themselves, and authority. Students learn their own personal tools to change any negative behavior. Issues are confronted and turned into positive questioning skills. We use the Burris questions as our daily Journal topics. If someone is talking negatively about them self or anyone else we stop and deal with how to turn that negative statement into a positive question. The questioning techniques of THE Life Coach process are phenomenal and the results are immediate. Students learn they do not have any control over an adult’s behavior, but they do have control over how they respond to the adults. When children are allowed to take control of their behavior, they react appropriately; not because they want to please the teacher, but because they have internalized the correct decisions and choose to act positively. We use positive questions for students with conduct marks. THE Life Coach process teaches students life skills to find the best solutions. Grades and conduct have improved beyond even what I could have imagined. - Lisa Watford

At the time Lisa wrote this letter there was not a program specific to this age group as there is now. Lisa simply understood that what worked well for her could be applied to her students. Everyone at any age needs to understand that everything they do produces results and the question here is…”Do you want to benefit from the results you produce?” There is now a complete Life Coach program specifically designed for Ages 7-17 with the complete infrastructure for data collection and study.

Right now the best that psychologist’s psychiatrists and school counselors can offer is a reasonable guess as how to address all of these problems. The question that arises in regard to any issue involving human behavior is…”Can you fix it if you do not know how it works?” The answer of course is an emphatic no. It is like pounding on the top of your radio or TV when it goes on the blink and it suddenly comes back on. You say to yourself I guess I fixed it and this is where the problem is. Right now everyone is guessing. Does it make any sense to guess what works in regard to something as frail as the human mind? The resounding answer is of course once again No.

The first question that must be answered if you truly want to address the full spectrum of your student’s behavior is…”What determines human behavior?” You simply have nowhere to go without first answering this question. You need a clear definitive single word answer to this question. The fact that no one is even bringing this up as a question that must be answered is an indication of how big the problem is. A resolution to all disciplinary and behavioral problems on campus are dependent upon at a very minimum answering the question…”What determines human behavior?”

After you understand what determines your behavior, you need a program that will guide you through the process of how to recognize access and change your subconscious programming. This of course brings up another question and that is…”Why is it important to take control of your subconscious?”

It is important to take control of your subconscious because your subconscious runs approximately 4 times faster than you can speak. This is why you can type while talking on the phone or drive while talking on the phone because the subconscious is programmed to do the other tasks. If the subconscious was not programmed to do the other tasks you would have to focus all your conscious attention on the task at hand. The bottom line in regard to the subconscious is if you are not running it, it is running you and if you do not know how it works it is most certainly running you.

The ramifications of learning how to take control of your subconscious go far beyond disciplinary problems, suicide prevention and school shootings. By giving your students these tools you are creating independent thinkers. One hundred percent of what a child learns from an adult is not going to be beneficial to them and the ability to unlearn is as important as learning. In other words you will never be able to stop adults from abusing children but you can empower the child to have full control of the information from those events so that it does not negatively affect the rest of their lives.

Implementation of Life Coaching into the Classroom

A Life Coaching program is easily integrated into the classroom at the beginning of every semester in any class with a Certified Life Coach. The complete program process can be done in two, hour and a half classes within a five day period. Any teacher could use the program and see the benefits without it interfering with their regular curriculum. The program would set a dialogue and a way of speaking and thinking that has already been proven effective since 1992 when Lisa Watford introduced it into her classroom of fifth graders.

Data Collection and the Emotional Checklist

Every student would be given two Emotional Checklists with the same number for a before and after comparison. The only information the student would put on the Checklist is their age and gender. After the second session the Emotional Checklists would be collected and the numbers would be matched up for individual and group comparison. If the students need to be identified a Client Agreement would be taken home for the parent to sign. This two session Workshop can be done at the beginning of every semester and the Emotional State of every Student could be tracked over the entire duration of the time they are in school. Every teacher would have the option of implementing the program more often should the need arise.

Parental Involvement

Getting parents involved is a significant issue. This is why the version that is specific for the 7-17 age groups has integrated guidelines. A Certified Life Coach would be able to hold separate Workshops for adults which would allow for full understanding of the program process between child and parent. With the integration of THE Life Coach into the classroom there will now be a means by which to Measure, Monitor, Improve and Teach Your Students How to Take Control of Their Emotional State & Behavior.
About the Author

To become a Life Coach with the only clinically proven Life Coach Training and Life Coach Certification for the Corporate, EQ, Spiritual or Personal Life Coach visit http://www.KellyBurris.com or http://www.kellyburris.com/certification.html .

Home Schooling On the Rise in Virginia Schools   by Patricia Hawke

Over the years, the Virginia schools (like many school systems across the nation) have been losing their public school students to home schooling. Henry County, for example, has seen an increase in home-schooled students from eight to 99 over the past 11 years.

In April 1999, the nation watched in horror the news reports on Colorado’s Columbine High School shootings, where 12 students and one teacher were fatally shot and 24 others were wounded by two teens who then killed themselves. Afterwards, the Virginia schools saw a steady increase of applications from parents who wished to home school their children.

Though the number of children who are home schooled has continued to increase within the Virginia schools, the reasons have changed. Though school violence and security remains to be a primary concern of Virginia schools’ parents, they now have a variety of other reasons, including:

* Too much emphasis on the standardized testing now required within the Virginia schools, fearing their children are being taught only to pass tests rather than a focus on actual learning that is retained and useful later in life; home-schooled children are not required to take the Standards of Learning (SOL) tests; * The ability of Virginia schools’ children to adjust to the middle and high school environments; many parents home school their children during the middle school years and place them back into the Virginia schools for high school; * Virginia schools’ parents’ perception of negative influences within the traditional school environment; this is especially true for families with strong religious beliefs; and * Some Virginia schools’ parents simply want to keep their children at home for a longer period, placing them back within the Virginia schools for high school.

Religious Exemption. If a parent applies for release of their child from the Virginia schools for religious reasons, they are exempt from enrolling their child in any other form of education through age 18. They may wish to do so and can, but they are not required to do so by the Virginia schools. If they do enroll the child elsewhere or home schooling, they also are not required to keep the Virginia schools apprised of the child’s progress.

Other Exceptions. In order for parents to home school their children, other than under the religious exemption, they must meet one of four requirements developed by the Virginia schools:

* Requirement 1 — Effective July 1, 2006, the parent, who will be teaching the child, must have a high school diploma and provide to the Virginia schools a description of the curriculum he/she plans to use for the child. The child does not have to meet Virginia schools’ graduation requirements and receives no diploma; however, progress must be shown to the Virginia schools at the end of each year. * Requirement 2 — The parent, who will be teaching the child, must have a current teacher certification and provide to the Virginia schools a description of the curriculum he/she plans to use for the child. The child does not have to meet Virginia schools’ graduation requirements and receives no diploma; however, here too progress must be shown to the Virginia schools at the end of each year. * Requirement 3 — Parent enrolls child into a Virginia schools’ recognized correspondence home school. There are approximately 19 such schools across the nation. A list may be obtained from the Virginia schools. Correspondence schools are private businesses that operate as schools, charging for their services. They usually cost $800 to $1,200 annually per student, though some charge as much as $4,000 a year. The more you pay, the more services you get, including report cards, transcripts and diplomas. Though coursework is administered by the parent, he/she has no educational level requirement. The child meets the graduation requirements of the correspondence school; however, progress must be shown to the Virginia schools at the end of each year. * Requirement 4 — No educational level must be met by the parent teaching the child. They must provide to the Virginia schools a description of the curriculum he/she plans to use for the child, which must include the Virginia schools’ SOL in language arts and mathematics. The child does not have to meet Virginia schools’ graduation requirements and receives no diploma; however, progress must be shown to the Virginia schools at the end of each year.

Description of the curriculum in requirements one, two and four above includes a list of the subjects that will be taught and the textbooks that will be used for language arts and mathematics.

In all four requirements above, the child’s academic progress must be proved to the Virginia schools either with SOL test scores (the child would have to submit to testing by the Virginia schools and score above the 23rd percentile) or through a provided a portfolio of the child’s work.
About the Author

Patricia Hawke is a staff writer for Schools K-12, providing free, in-depth reports on all U.S. public and private K-12 schools. Patricia has a nose for research and writes stimulating news and views on school issues. For more information on Virginia schools visit http://www.schoolsk-12.com/virginia/index.html

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