Academic Skills Coaching targets executive functioning skills, such as time management and organisation, to give students the chance to reduce avoidance and procrastination, better manage stress and anxiety, and begin to do their best work, every time.
Some questions to ask if you think your child might benefit from academic skills coaching:
Does your teen…
- Feel easily distracted?
- Know how to start but struggles to get started?
- Abandon work before finishing it?
- Feel agitated, moody or overwhelmed by your work?
- Manage anxiety, depression, perfectionism or OCD?
- Procrastinate too much?
- Deal with symptoms of ADHD?
- Struggle to relate to tutors?
Students learn how to budget their time, deal with frustration and boredom and anticipate difficulties. With coaching, students begin to set up their workspace to minimise distractions and manage multiple tasks while also improving their social lives. Reviewing assessments, teacher notes and professional evaluations is part of the intake and included in the costs. Collaboration with other relevant professionals, such as teachers, therapists, or psychiatrists via email, follow-up calls is also included.
Sometimes parents need help changing the patterns that maintain unhelpful habits at home. Encouraging new practices like ignoring task-avoiding or reassurance-seeking behaviours can help students make progress and better manage uncertainty.
Coaching is a long-term investment. Students typically need three to six months of hour-long sessions 1-2 times a week to unlearn the habits that got them behind and develop new strategies to move forward. Setbacks are an expected part of the learning process and are accounted for in coaching plans. Coaching happens in-person, at our offices, a local cafe, or at home.
Academic coaching is offered by our team member Rick Smith.