Martin was trained at an experiential PCGE, Post Graduate Certificate of Education, teacher training course at Sussex University, UK, to be a Mathematics Teacher.

He taught at a Secondary School and a Primary School in the UK before he became an independent English trainer in Sweden. He was trained by CTI, the Coaches Training Institute, to be a Co-Active coach, gained the CPPC, Certified Professional Co-Active Coach certification and the ACC, Associate Certified Coach, credential.

For a time, he was a teacher at an International School where he combined teaching with coaching. As part of his volunteer work, Martin has delivered inspirational talks to teenagers called ‘Choices to be proud of”.

During the final phase of his coaching career, he coached educators in Sweden on behalf of the Swedish government.

Close to retirement, Martin wrote two books ‘Six Steps to a Coaching Classroom’ then ‘Six More Steps to a Coaching Classroom’, which were the inspiration in 2022 for the Steps Newsletter on LinkedIn.

Those newsletters have been brought together in this revised ‘12 Action Steps to a Coaching Classroom’ online course.

Martin wants to share what he has learned about teaching.

• He has taught Mathematics to teenagers and English to adults.
• He has owned an English education business for 30 years.
• He has coached executives and jobseekers.
• He has coached educators and trained them to use coaching skills.
• Martin believes that, inside every educator, beats the heart of a coach.
• He writes about coaching in the education world.

This online course allows you to communicate with me

This online course is based on the newsletter that I wrote in 2022 on LinkedIn. You can subscribe and read the newsletter here, edition by edition. There are a dozen special editions of the newsletter that have not been included in this course material.

Following the success of the newsletter, I compiled the 2022 editions into a book. You can purchase it from Amazon, if you wish. It's available in several countries and is being used to educate and train teachers in schools around the world. Choose the Amazon outlet that's nearest you to get the best price for postage.

I will be reading all the comments and am happy to answer your questions and support you or your colleagues in bringing coaching to your classroom and school. The online course will also allow you to communicate with other teachers who are bringing the benefits of coaching to their schools and classrooms. We hope that you will reach out to each other and give support as well as ask for the support you need.

Martin's Stories

All my stories are authentic. I have created composite characters and changed names and locations to protect those I have worked with.

Giving advice is not always the best way to go

Once upon a time, I was teaching an English course for Adults.

We had come to the stage where we were comparing several different past tenses in English. As part of the lesson, we had started an activity where the students were to write a short report on what they did, had done, have done, have been doing, were doing, and so forth.

To give the students an interesting context, I told them a story in the role of a policeman and asked them to write an alibi. I stood at the front of the room and in a knees-bend, hands behind my back, and theatrical policeman voice, I told them a story.

You get what I was doing, don’t you? I included a sense of silliness and seriousness in the story-telling and the students engaged with the scenario of writing an alibi and were rising to the challenge of the different past tenses. They were discussing the difference between “At 6 pm, I was working at my office” or “At 6 pm, I worked at my office”. Very productive and useful conversations about the English language.

A colleague had walked past the open door of my classroom and noticed the deep engagement of my students and, at the coffee break, asked me how I had achieved it. She had been struggling to get and hold the attention of her students and felt the need for some advice. Young as I was, I gave some advice and told my colleague exactly what I had done, but I left out the important details. I simply said, “Oh, I just arrested them and told them to write an alibi for yesterday evening”.

After the coffee break, my colleague went into her class and arrested her students, saying that some books had been stolen from the school and that everyone should write an alibi for yesterday evening.

The students responded loudly, some left her course.

I don’t give advice anymore, but I do guide teachers in making their own choices about how to become better teachers.

What made me quit school

At my first teaching employment, way back in 1978 in the UK, I encountered an impossible divide between what I wanted to do as a teacher, and what I was expected to do by the school leaders.

As a young man in my twenties, I found it easy to connect and form working relationships with teen-aged pupils. Yes, they were often cheeky and sometimes rough; but I could joke with them and there was mutual respect. Some of the older teachers had greater problems and got into slanging matches with the more verbal, less self-restrained students.

The way the school dealt with insubordination was through corporal punishment - they beat the pupils with a stick.

I was expected to witness such a beating. I refused, claiming some higher moral ground that such punishments were unethical blah, blah, blah, which got me nowhere.