Teaching students today involves teachers understanding their students in a more comprehensive way. In order to get the most from their children, many parents have now asked for the help of a life coach. This isn’t because students today are lazy, but actually because students today are faced with many options for extracurricular activities as well as social media distractions. Thus, a student who has the support of a life coach in addition to a helpful, cooperative teacher can reach his or her potential much easier.

Although receiving the support of a life coach can prove extremely helpful for a student, having the student’s teacher on board is of vital importance for student confidence and achievement in school. Coaches who collaborate with teachers on a regular basis will help the student reach high levels of achievement (Sweeney, 2015). The coaching model must also be communicated throughout the entire school staff by a principal who acts as a partner to the life coach (Sweeney, 2015). In this way, the teachers will know what a life coach does and what they can expect when working with a life coach. Conversations must be held between the teacher/coach as well as with the student, and should be considered of utmost importance because the teacher/coach partnership is a very humanistic approach to teaching (Sweeney, 2015).

Alongside of taking time out to speak with the coach on a regular basis, and use what the coach has said to implement in the teacher’s methods with the student; it’s important to take time to set milestones, schedule homework and test due dates, and progress suggested deadlines as a team. As stated by Italie, coaches ‘don’t dictate what the client should be doing and how they should be progressing, but simply give them tools to help them better help themselves (Italie, 2011).

The coaches use ‘practical aspects’ such as setting ‘up a highly structured schedule broken down into color-coded blocks of 30 minutes,’ as well as ‘scheduling specific times to check email and social media to avoid the constant distraction (Italie, 2011). The teacher should ensure that the schedules the life coach uses work well with the teacher’s suggestions and work together to ensure minimal distractions are present within the classroom. In addition, teachers should work with the life coaches to keep the students accountable for what they do or don’t do by observing their ‘class syllabuses and test schedules [and advising] young clients [to] break down project deadlines into smaller tasks, assigning due dates for reporting’ back to both the life coach and teacher. In this way, the teacher and life coach work together to keep the student in line, minimizing the he/said, she, said common trait in students, because both the teacher/life coach act as one unit (Italie, 2011).

Another important strategy for teachers is to communicate with the life coach the methods the students likes to best take notes, so only one method is assigned and expected from the student (Sturtevant). Even though some methods are deemed better for certain tasks by teachers, a student may learn better, for example, using the KWL method than by simply jotting down any notes (Sturtevant). Teachers should also communicated with the life coach on the student’s ability to ‘recall and recognize,’ ‘use procedures,’ ‘explain and conclude,’ and ‘make connect[ions], extend and justify.’ (Foster, 2006, p. 38). By combining ‘cognitive, moral and practical’ knowledge into teaching the student, both the life coach and teacher can gain better access into how the student best learns ( Foster, 2006).