Monthly Archives: May 2012

Some days are tough days!

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So there I was in a class full of young people who didin’t want to be there, and more importantly, didn’t want to be there with me!

We spent an hour with me asking questions, attempting to get some kind of rapport going, asking about their interests, wants and goals.

Needless to say today I wasn’t getting very far. The group had developed a new level of resistance, and it would seem that every new response, action or approach I took, was met at the pass. At one point I felt like a cowboy who had been sent into town only to be surrounded by the outlaws, who had no time for reasoning.

In that moment I could feel my own tension rising, my own anxiety. I wanted to get through to the group and felt that I was failing. So I decided to take a break, knowing that some of them might not come back, but a break was needed.

After 15 minutes of deep breathing, circle of excellence, bringing to mind my great teachers and mentors, and seeing it from their, the young people’s point of view, I went back into the class.

Once in the classroom, I began chatting to the young people, just about the work I do, youth coaching, teaching drama, directing, stage combat, to which a group of boys said “Can we do that sir… fight? Can you teach us that stuff” 

“Yes of course I can.”

We went through some of the safety aspects first, then spent 20 minutes putting a fight scene together, sharing it with the rest of their class and support workers.

The boys, now please with their work, decided it was time to leave, head out into the sunshine, a full hour before the end of class!

I could feel the tension returning when one of the girls asked if she could speak with me. She had been working on a monologue for a sharing and wondered if I could help her with it. For the next hour we worked on her performance, with me asking questions about the character; who, what, why, when, where, how?

At some point during this time, we moved form directing to coaching, without talking about it, without naming it, but both knowing that we were not just talking about the character. The questions became about how the character might be different from her, what she might do differently to the character?

We started to play around with the “What if’s” looking for something similar in her life to that of the character, exploring the options that the character might have. During these questions, I gave her lots of time as I could see some serious thinking going on.

And then she nodded her head, asking if she could show me one more time. She stood up and performed an amazing monologue, with an emotional journey that brought tears to the eyes, a real mature understanding of the plight of her character, a tenderness and innocents.

When she finished, she drifted into her own little world for a few moments, and came back with a smile.

“That was amazing, well done. How was it for you?” she looked at me and simply said’

“Some days are tough days, but I think I’ll get through” She then stood up thanked me and left, leaving me wondering who had been the coach and who had been the client?

Metaphor Magic

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A Monday morning, a Junior School in East London where I have been working with the class teacher exploring creative classroom tactics.

Most of the sessions have been coaching and observational, with the teacher trying out various tasks, including exploring their own creativity, bringing that into the classroom.

During one of the session the teacher asked me to do some storytelling, knowing about my drama background, and wanting to explore how she might tell stories to her students.

Working with the class, I was able to tell a story, asking them for character names, locations and activities that the character explored on her journey. The class then wrote about what they would do as the character, what powers they might have, and what they would do if they could travel back in time.

Throughout this session, the teacher was able to see how the children responded to the character, how engaged they were during the story creation, plus the ideas they come out with of what they might do.

It was clear to the teacher that the class choose activities that they were interested in, they picked events that held some meaning for them, like travelling back in time to stop poverty, or to rob all the money, to be with friends and loved ones, some even said they would like to travel back in time to fix mistakes.

After the session we spoke about the power of stories and the magic of metaphors, however the teacher was unsure how this could be used in other subjects, other than english and drama.

So a challenged was laid down, to observe a lesson and create a story that would help develop the learning within it.

Enter the Wizard, The Number Wizard, as they had just been having a maths lesson, the old Wizard who is getting forgetful, hires an apprentice to remember all the number problems in the land, however it’s too much for the apprentice, so he went to the King and Queen and together they came up with The Number Festival, where all the villagers would bring their number problems, solutions, tips and tricks, for the apprentice to place in his big book of numbers.

The class were given the role of the villagers and created their number problems, solutions, tips and tricks, and one by one they presented them to the apprentice.

After the class, the teacher shared her excitement in how the children had come up with new sums, more challenging than they were studying, with tips they had not seen in class, as well as being able to answer each others sums.

The creation of the story, the metaphor had enabled the young people to have space to explore their own ideas. The creation of character had removed the pressure off them to get it right, as it was the villagers coming up with the sums and ideas. Also the young people were so engaged that there was no space to consider that they might not be able to do it.

So next time you are exploring learning in the classroom, what story might you tell the help develop the young people’s learning?

Group Coaching and Forum Theatre

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It’s late Sunday night and I’ve just finished preparing for tomorrows presentation. In fact I’m not presenting, it’s my third year drama students. They will be sharing their Theatre and Education plays and related workshops. Some of them will be using the style of Forum Theatre, this style enables the audience to make changes in the characters actions, enabling the characters to explore different options and outcomes, in order to create the desired result. I trained in this style when I was at drama school, back then I thought it was a great way to explore issues with a group, as the shows were performed in schools and youth centres. The plays were designed to explore the challenges of a group, and by exploring the options that the group put forward, the group would create the choices that they could take when faced with the situation themselves.

Now, years later, after becoming a coach, I see how closely these styles are linked. The main aim of forum theatre is for the audience to give the characters as many options as possible, with the show reflecting similar issues to that of the audience. With coaching you are exploring the same, the client has an issue or challenge and you the coach, facilitate their exploration of choices. As a coach you might future pace or visualise with your client, with forum theatre they act out the choice in front of you, exploring the hurdles that might occur. This is a great way to work with a group, and as a youth coach it’s a great tool to explore. Using characters to explore a challenge that the group might face, getting the group to offer options, points of views and ideas. In the past, I have told the story of the characters challenge to a group of young people, then through discussion, we have explored what might be possible, and as the coach I am able to support and question what the young people offer, checking in with their own values and challenging their ideas in order to create deeper thinking, as well as managing the groups input, making sure everyone has the option to put their ideas forward and to question the possibilities put forward by others.

Once you develop a strong positive rapport with a group, you can even ask them to act out/role play their ideas. This enables you to work with a group on their challenges through stories and characters that they explore, sometimes able to relate to the challenges as their own, and at the same time they are free to work with the challenges without having to publicly own them. Giving the young people the freedom to explore and challenge in a safe environment.

So next time you are coaching a group of young people, you could give this a go and see how you get on. You might go for the story, the characters with a challenge or create a drama that they act out in order to explore possible choices. Let me know how you get on or if you want some more details in how to set up the work.

Confidence Coaching with Young People

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Recently I have been working for Mousetrap Theatre Project, with a group of young people based in Southall. The young people are all taking part in the Duke of Edinburgh Awards, and at the end they have to do a presentation. This group is made up of young people who haven’t had lots of positive experience in making presentations, in putting themselves out there, in talking to large groups of people about their achievements. With this in mind I was asked to help the group develop their confidence, which is something I come across quite often when working with young people. They often put up this front of ‘I’m ok’ and ‘I don’t care about anything’. However in my experience this is not always the case, in fact there are a lot of young people who do care and are will to work with you to develop their skills and confidence, so that they are able to make the best of their lives. With this particular group, we spent lots of time exploring what confidence meant to them, who they saw as having it, what it looked liked, getting all our ideas down.

After a while I asked; ‘How would you feel if I asked you to stand up and make up a story in front of the whole group?‘ The question was meet with silence and blank faces. After a while they began to tell me all the reasons why they wouldn’t be able to do this. Now I know all you coaches out there will be thinking about reframing, turning the negative statements around and exploring what they would need in order to tell the stories, one of the things being confidence.

On another sheet of paper we explored what might be in a story; beginning, middle, end, characters, locations, etc, and with their help I demonstrated how it might be done. Then, one by one, the young people stood up and had a go at telling a story. The first thing they did was to look at the sheet of paper with the ideas about confidence on it, they read them out to themselves, then stood on it, taking on all the attributes and told their story. Each one amazed that they were able to do it, and proud of each other for taking part. Each young persons story was met with lots of positive support and enjoyment, from myself and the group, giving each one the experience of stepping out of their comfort zone, being confident and presenting in front of an audience successfully.

At the end, they all spoke about how they would hold onto this experience, and how they would use it when presenting the story of their achievements for their Duke of Edinburgh Awards. The exercise was simple, and similar to the NLP Circle of Excellence. Now I’m not saying that the process was simple or easy, it took time to develop the trust, to engage each young person, to talk ideas through and develop their levels of participation. But we got there in the end and they left the room standing taller than when they came in. This for me is one of the reasons I do what I do. The opportunity to make a difference in the life of a young person, enabling them to move forward and be the best they can be.