Yes, a wedding reception. So often the talk is about coaching or education, but we don’t often see them truly united. What if there would be more talk around marrying the two? What would open up if we professional coaches joined our superpowers and lined up behind this common cause? If I carried on with the metaphor used, what would the reception look like if we were the designers? These were the questions that recently inspired the formation of a Linkedin group called Raise Awareness of Coaching in Education (RACE)

My own journey started in education as a teacher, lecturer, lead teacher, and many other roles. It continued with me stepping into the world of coaching just to realize what a huge transformation we educators could create, if only we could adopt coaching as a way of being and leading. It became clear that I want to create and be part of projects that Raise Awareness of Coaching in Education (RACE).

Since RACE began three months ago, over 100 educators and coaches have joined the conversation in Linkedin.  Here are some of the activities we have organized recently. As one of the first steps, we invited teachers, the ‘Heroes of the Hour’, to share their challenges and learn more about coaching tools. We expanded the range and started collaborating with Speed Coaching Mondays; that is a community initiative that unites certified coaches and offers experience coaching sessions to anybody showing up on the first Monday every month.

Our Wednesday evenings continued with having roundtable discussions where we explored topics relevant to us (e.g.: What does this new situation call us to do differently? How do we inspire?). It allowed us to spend some of our time in the lockdown with having meaningful and deep conversations where the focus was on curiosity and open-mindedness. We used some other occasions just to brainstorm ideas as for how to motivate educators to explore coaching for themselves. After these discussions, we started taking steps and creating opportunities for making things happen.

And this is one of the special features of each of our conversations is that at the end of the call everybody shares one thing learnt and one commitment that s/he is going to be accountable for after the call. And in fact, this exercise helped all of us leave with an action step and put plans that came up during the conversation into action and start a ripple effect of a kind.

RACE came together through powerful and meaningful human connections. We joined forces and invited educators and coaches who inspire to join the group. We also invited people who want to become changemakers and bring in a fresh energy into education. You can do the same; start your own RACE initiative or join us and let’s go global. We are curious, open-minded and empathetic and we are determined to make it happen.   So, this is my invitation for you to join me in this venture, share your thoughts and let us design the wedding experience together. Here’s your invitation to join the wedding and join the RACE where you can be the bride, the bridegroom, the unity or something else. What do you say?

Dr. Beatrix Henkel—Visionary Leadership & Communication Coach; Studying the language of educational institutions in a multitude of contexts since 2003. I believe in the power of human relationships and love working with inspiring people who are passionate about co-creating existing realities. Here is my website address: https://www.beatrixhenkel.com