COACHING AND TUTORING

 

Academic Behaviour Coaching is called coaching rather than tutoring for two important reasons. 

 

The first reason is based on the content, we want to distinguish the executive function and other skill types that we promote from academic content knowledge.  While we may provide content support, especially in the application of EF skills, it is not the core of this ABC’s purpose. 

 

The second reason is based on the relationship between the coach and the student.  Tutors and teachers are often viewed by students as outside sources of information and expectations (assignments, rote knowledge, etc,).  This can create a sense of a one-directional relationship in which thes student feels like a passive  vessel rather than an active participant.  We want our student clients to identify their coaches as someone on the same side of the education dynamic as them. 

 

A coach’s ultimate goal is not to impart information (although this can be a necessary step), it is to develop skills.  Our coaches do not provide demands from outside the student, they provide skills and strategies for succeeding in the face of those demands.  

 

Executive Function skills, like other skills, can be developed, improved, and supported through the appropriate techniques.  ABC coaches introduce students to these techniques by applying them at school and at home.  Content support may help for this day or week or term in school, but the skills developed through ABC will help students every day, for life.

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In a very real sense, these students are learning to learn.