Empowered Action
This new energy catalyzed Vivian into action. She crafted supportive structures by joining a Nursing Education Association, established a network of experienced educators at the School of Nursing to support her teaching & learning. She discovered what truly mattered in her career; she felt a new sense of autonomy.
What change process do you envision in this situation?
The ability to create with the client opportunities for ongoing learning, during coaching and in work life situations, and or taking new actions that will most effectively lead to agreed-upon coaching results (The International Coach Federation Code of Ethics, 2006) indicates that coaches [challenge] clients’ assumptions and perspectives to provoke new ideas and find new possibilities for actions (International Coach Academy Pty. Ltd, 2006). Communicates broader perspectives to clients and inspires commitment to shift their viewpoints.
This values clarification and perspective transformation process helps novice educators create awareness and develop a comfort level as they live within a place of transition in their careers. Using a Visual Arts process helps clients visualize their new identity by uncoupling their thinking or imaginings from real life teaching issues and responsibilities through dialogue with the coach and helps them integrate their unique vision of an effective educator and more significantly, leads to client action steps and processes.
Fruitful Outcomes
Over the next 2 semesters, Vivian worked toward her goals systematically and as a result felt more comfortable, confident and competent. Her students provided safe client care. She felt an overall sense of well-being. From a place of inner harmony and equilibrium, she began to move toward living out a more realistic vision of living the life of a professional and caring educator, grateful for the gifts she brought to her teaching – the transferable skills, knowledge, and sensibilities, supportive organisational structures and relational sensibilities into her teaching practice. She even celebrated her educator successes by attending her first nursing education conference in a country new to her. By achieving milestones throughout the semester she felt encouraged to continue teaching in the future. She knew she still had much to learn about teaching yet felt hopeful that over the next 5 years, she would succeed.
Reflection
The Coaching Tool: Realism versus Fantasy relates positively to career coaching in a highly regulated profession such as Nursing where nurse educators are responsible to clients and their families, the School of Nursing, the students and the Regulating Bodies. Integrating a Visual Arts component holds potential for multiple uses or applications because it offers a non-verbal way for clients to enter into coaching relationship, by engaging the synergistic energy embedded within overlapping and paradoxical concepts of holding fantastic or unrealistic ideas about a very real and difficult roles experienced when clients are in transition, catalyzing new insights, creating momentum to change, set new goals, learn, enact and celebrate.
Just as in moving from one area of the country to another did not change one’s nationality, moving from one career role to a different one only enriched the novice nurse educator’s uniqueness and sense of self.
References:
Beckman, B., and Paintner, C. (2010). Awakening the Creative Spirit: Bringing the Arts
to Spiritual Direction. Morehouse Publishing: New York.
Brookfield, S.D. (1990). The Skillful Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, p. 611.
The International Coach Federation, Code of Ethics, 2006. International Coach Academy Pty. Ltd.
O’Donahue, J. (1997). Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. New York: Harper Perennial, p. 184.
Palmer, P. (1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, p. 611.
Reality: Miriam Webster Canadian Dictionary
Fantasy: Miriam Webster Canadian