Selling it to students – A guest blog from Martin Brockman

Before moving into education, I was a coach at an ‘elite’ sports academy. I’d moved into coaching after retiring from my own athletics career but I’d also been coaching as a hobby, putting me in the unique situation of being a recently retired athlete with over a decade of coaching experience.

On moving into coaching full-time, I was young enough and still relevant enough to connect with students on an interpersonal level, while still having the knowledge to write a leading program with the potential to take my students where they wanted go.

It’s no surprise then that I quickly moved through the ranks. From working with kids, fresh into the academy, to working with senior athletes, and eventually becoming in charge of the whole department to develop the delivery strategy.

Over that decade as both a coach and an athlete, my journey was really about noticing what works and what doesn’t. Coaching is all about trial and error (mostly error) whilst working with people you care about.

But it’s the caring that’s the most important part. This is what true teaching is all about. People. With so many great tips, tricks, and shortcuts out there from experts in their field, it’s not easy to embrace this philosophy, because it involves patience and empathy, and it’s fundamentally about them, not us.

So, what does? If we can learn to see the dreams of our students, we can start to predict how they will make their decisions. And if you can help them to take just one more step towards their vision, then you’re a teacher.