On Friday, the leadership and coaching classes at Pontiac High School received a day-long training seminar from an expert coach via the Instructional Coaching Group (ICG).
Teacher Matt Greer said that the workshop was financed through a grant from the Shawville Recreation Association, with the aim of training up the community’s next generation of coaches and mentors.
“Last summer, the Shawville RA raised six grand in the community which was part of a crowd funding grant that opened up 24 extra thousand on top of that, so gave us $30,000 total to train volunteers,” he said. “So last year we started targeting certain areas to help support that, and we’re continuing that this year with training, with leadership coaching, mentoring, as well as sports-specific training is on the table that we’re going to target as well.”
Greer added that the workshop was one of five sessions that they had organized with outside experts.
“Essentially the goal is to provide them space and opportunity to lead internally in the building, as well as develop partnerships externally in the community,” he said. “It’s a long-term goal, it’s not something we can snap our fingers and fix overnight. But the hope is to kind of build that collective group of people who can transition into those roles to support programming, not just at the Shawville RA, but throughout the Pontiac.”
ICG consultant Sonja Pullen explained that they typically cater their workshops to educators, but said that it was inspiring to adapt their material for students to coach each other.
“They’ve been really engaged in the learning, and yeah just taking it all in. I’m just so privileged to learn with them and alongside them today,” she said.
Grade 11 student Lily Nolan said that the course was a good way to pick up some new perspectives.
“I just think it’s a very good opportunity for us to learn new skills and just have a different point of view that we can listen to and maybe use to impact our daily lives,” she said.
“Some of the staff has taken this training, kind of in a different context, and it’s really cool to see the kids engaging in the material and connecting and coaching each other towards a goal that they have or something they want to improve on,” Greer said. “It was kind of inspiring to see them connect on that level authentically.”
