Tender loving care

As coaches they were keen to develop new skills, to gain new insights and to take away impactful strategies with a deeper understanding that could influence their practise. 

 The TLC conference is hosted by the Instructional Coaching Group led by Dr Jim knight. TLC stands for teaching learning coaching but of course it also intimates tender loving care. This may seem sentimental or even out of place but of course it is deliberate. The emphasis here is on creating learning environments infused with compassion and dignity. It was refreshing to hear the word engagement used with optimism and realism. It is an acknowledgement that learners learn best when they feel a sense of belonging and engagement, whether they are children, young people or their teachers.

It was also refreshing to find the room full of professionals who embraced the opportunity to learn, and who also willingly shared their uncertainties and vulnerabilities. They expressed the dilemmas they faced as coaches and articulated their ambitions.

The model of instructional coaching underpinning this community and this event has evolved over decades. Like all coaching approaches it offers structures and principles, tools, protocols and guidelines. But it is also work in progress, ready to be attuned to different contexts, merged with different practises and to be problematised as well as celebrated for its impact.

My role at the conference was to bring a little bit of CollectivED to a new audience. In a session on the final afternoon I lead a workshop based on the emerging practises of both narrative coaching and dilemma-based coaching. As such I contributed additional and adaptable coaching approaches which were well received by a range of people. Conversations with participants revealed that they could see the value of both approaches in helping to build relationships through coaching conversations and in exploring some of the more messy, complicated aspects of the work of teachers and school leaders and indeed of coaches themselves.

The event was also a chance to talk to instructional coaches and coach leaders about their own research, allowing me to make sense of what they are finding out about the affordances and constraints of coaching in contemporary education contexts.

There were occasions when the bustle of over a thousand passionate professionals forced me to retreat to quieter spaces at the conference venue where I could reflect. Here I could start to draw out the connections between what I was hearing and the school and coaching contexts that I am more familiar with.

As I did so I noticed some of the conference delegates similarly taking quiet moments, watching conference workshops and keynotes live or recorded online and in doing so joining the other thousand delegates who were attending the event remotely.

The TLC conference is both branded and energetic, but most importantly it is full of hope and heart and reminds me that coaching is a creative space from which new ideas, new practises and new capacities emerge. It is also a relational space in which trust and solidarity can be forged. I want to say thank you to Jim Knight for the invitation to be part of the event and offer my tender, loving care to the coaches and the school communities that they serve.