Supporting student well-being with new coaching techniques  

Our Academic and Pastoral staff at The Royal Ballet School are dedicated to student well-being, continuously learning and implementing new tools and approaches to empower and support students holistically.

Imogen Hunte, Assistant Lead House Parent and Head of Year 7, and Pascale Fasbender, French Teacher and Head of Year 8, recently completed an accredited Education and Wellbeing Coaching training course, Empowering Educators to Coach for Growth by Kate Boyd Williams. The course equipped them with new tools and techniques for supporting students and colleagues in boarding school-specific environments.

We sat down with Imogen and Pascale to discuss how the training has enhanced their roles, helping them to better support students’ mental health, emotional literacy and overall well-being at the School.

What does your role of Head of Year involve?

Pascale: It involves registration and teaching PSHRE to students. It also means that you’re the first port of call for anything related to student wellbeing, academic-related matters, communication with parents, and organising timetables. It’s a really great role as we get to start each day with the students.

Imogen: The role encompasses both the academic and pastoral sides of the School. Pascale and I work closely together on behaviour management, which can often be related to overall happiness at school. As Head of Years, we wanted to take a holistic approach to dealing with behaviour and be informed about where it comes from, which is why we wanted to take the course.

Can you tell me about the Education and Wellbeing Coaching training you recently completed?

Pascale: It was a six-month course divided between online modules, group calls, and an in-person weekend where you put everything into practice, act out scenarios, and use the different tools from the toolkit that you’ve been acquiring over the past six months. You have to log hours of coaching before receiving an accredited coaching qualification.

What does the course cover?

Imogen: The course started with a self-coaching module which encouraged us to reflect on how we show up at work and what we are teaching the children from a role-modelling perspective. The children are our priority, and we spend our days giving a lot of our energy to the students, and it can be easy to forget about looking after yourself too.

Pascale: It also covered physical and mental exercises for managing stress, anxiety, and fatigue, all common challenges we and students face. We now have a mind-body toolkit and different tools and techniques, such as meditations, breathing exercises, and visualisations, to help us and others mentally and physically ground ourselves. We found it especially useful because the students are very in touch with their bodies, and they don’t find that to be strange.

Imogen: The toolkit is especially helpful to have in your back pocket in boarding, for instance if you are supporting a student who is anxious or upset. The training and tools have taught us how to get someone from a  heightened emotional state back down to a place where they are able to have a meaningful conversation.

Can you tell me about the coaching approach?

Imogen: The coaching concept is that you’re not the expert. The idea is that the person you’re speaking to, the person who’s being coached, already knows or has the capacity to solve the problem themselves, and you’re there to facilitate that.

Pascale: Often, as an educator, you’re expected to give instructions and directions, which is absolutely part of the role. Equally, part of our role is helping children become more independent, autonomous, and confident in making decisions themselves.

Imogen: This approach not only eases the pressure on us to solve problems, but also builds the students’ confidence in their own ability to solve problems, which is hugely beneficial for their personal development. We have found that if someone is involved in the process of finding the solution themselves, they are much more likely to action that solution in a meaningful way.

How do you plan to use the lessons and tools in your roles at the School going forward?

Pascale: We aim to integrate our mind-body toolkit during PSHRE and registration time to help students familiarise themselves with these techniques. This will also be useful in the boarding house, especially during times of high stress, such as performances or exams, to prepare students before they experience high stress and anxiety.

 Day-to-day interactions, whether with students or colleagues, are opportunities also to apply what we’ve learned to feel prepared in any given situation and respond adequately in a way that will both support the person in front of us and help us feel confident that we are doing the right thing.

What do you hope these learnings and tools bring to the School?

Pascale: I think it’s an issue in many workplaces and educational settings that people feel pressure to prioritise work above their mental health. We want to encourage a mindset shift towards having the right priorities. When you prioritise your mental wellbeing, you’re going to show up as a better version of yourself, and truly be able to engage in activities that you value in a meaningful way.

Imogen: We want students to develop emotional literacy so they can better understand themselves, communicate and advocate for themselves, and feel confident that we’ll listen. When students can recognise and articulate their thoughts, feelings or needs, we are better equipped to offer the most impactful support in any given situation.