One thing many coaches say is: “Self coaching does not lead to academic success.” The logic is that self coaching students to write an academic essay and then publish it on their own is not going to create an academic record—but, again, what if the students are already successful at writing academics?
What does that say about teachers and what they look for within that student?
Self coaching scholars need to have one goal in mind when they decide to do a workshop, and that is:
What will the workshop accomplish? What do I value so highly in a student?
If a student’s most valuable skill is the ability to write, then it’s not self driving that’s so important: it’s the ability to write. If students already possess the skills to write, then this workshop should be used to get them to develop those talents.
The workshop should be about the academic process as much as it is about the student’s progress towards success.
You should be teaching students to write essays so that they understand how to do it right, not to get them to do it wrong.
You should be teaching a student how to get feedback from their advisor, including how to set goals for themselves and their projects, how to collaborate, and how to follow up on their accomplishments.
That’s why we want to build workshops about the intellectual process—so that our students are learning how to build the academic records that the world knows them for.
Is there something we can do to avoid getting a self coaching scholar into self publishing?
We could try to make it clear in the requirements that our students are expected to know the fundamentals of literary theory, which is an incredibly complex field.
Or we could try to make our workshop into an academic program within the academic program with the curriculum and standards that we are trying to build.
Or maybe even more important, we could not let self coaching scholars become so self-centered that it’s more important to develop their social skills because that might enable them to meet with more professors and get a better job, right?
Instead we should use our time to empower scholars to think critically about their education, how to get feedback from their mentor, how to approach research, but more importantly how to develop the intellectual curiosity and intellectual curiosity that makes our students successful.
What can you do to improve self coaching academics?
If the self coaching scholar is not thinking critically about his or her education, then they