From teacher to coach: what the classroom gives you, and what it gets in the way of

The observer stops the timer at twenty minutes and asks Rukhsana how she thinks it went.

"Good," Rukhsana says, and then she looks at the flip chart behind her. She doesn't remember standing up. But there it is, in her own handwriting: a neat table with three columns, headed Stay, Move and Next step, and under Next step, underlined twice, "Email the head of department by Friday."

Her practice client, a fellow trainee on the same coach training, is copying the table into her notebook. She looks grateful. She also looks like someone who has just been set homework.

The observer reads from her notes. "Your first question was lovely. 'What would make this decision feel settled?' Then there was a pause, about four seconds, and you went to the board. After that, it was a very good lesson."

Rukhsana laughs, because it's true. Then she notices the marker still in her hand, its cap already off, and she can't say when she took it off.

Rukhsana and her practice client are composites. Plenty of teachers who train as coaches will know that marker.

Can a teacher become a coach?

Yes, and teaching is one of the strongest routes in. A teacher already reads a room, stays patient over months, plans a session and gives feedback people can use. What changes is who holds the answer. In coaching it stays with the client, so the hardest skill to learn is the one teaching rewarded least: not explaining.

This guide is for classroom teachers, heads of department and school leaders weighing a move into coaching, alongside teaching or after it. If that's you, the apply page offers a free call, "Approximately 20 to 40 minutes", where an RS Method Master Practitioner looks with you at whether RSCI suits you. Book the free call. Or read on.

What does a classroom career give a coach?

In our experience, more than most career changers bring. Four things stand out.

You can read a room. A teacher learns to see the pupil who's lost before a hand goes up, and the one who's bored behind the nodding. In a coaching session the room is one person, and the same eye catches the change in a client's voice when a subject gets close.

You can wait across months. A school year teaches you that change is slow, uneven and often invisible from one week to the next. Coaching runs on a similar clock. A client who looks stuck in session four may be moving in ways neither of you can see yet.

You can build a session. Lesson planning gives you a feel for beginnings, middles and ends, and for how much fits in an hour. That structure helps a new coach, as long as it serves the client rather than the plan.

You're used to an ending. Every class moves on in the summer. Teachers know work that has its finish built in, and good coaching has one too. We look at that last stretch in how to end a coaching relationship.

Teachers often bring one more thing: a sense of when something is beyond their role and belongs with someone else. In coaching that instinct is worth keeping.

Where does teaching get in the way of coaching?

In the reflexes that made you good at teaching. They don't switch off because the room has changed. In our experience, four show up most.

Explaining. A teacher's job is to make the answer reachable, so a struggling learner gets an example, a hint or a worked solution. A coaching client who's struggling is usually doing the work. Rukhsana's four-second pause was the moment her client began to think, and the table arrived to fill it.

Correcting. Teachers mark. They notice what's wrong and say so, kindly, because that's how learning moves. A client's plan doesn't need marking, even where you'd do it differently.

Praising. "Well done" is useful currency in a classroom. In a session it can turn the client's attention toward pleasing you, and away from what they actually think.

Owning the result. A teacher answers for how the class does. A coach doesn't answer for a client's choices, and a coach who acts as if they do will start to steer.

None of these are faults. They're good teaching, carried into a room that asks for something else.

For Rukhsana, the first of the four runs deepest.

Ask her about it and she'll talk about lesson observations: a colleague with a clipboard at the back of the room, and a note afterwards about pace. Over the years she's taken one rule from them, that a quiet room she's responsible for is a room going wrong. Her body knows before she does. Her hand finds a pen, the cap comes off, and the silence gets filled with something useful. In a classroom that often served the pupils. In a coaching session it takes the thinking out of the client's hands at the moment they've started doing it.

With a reflex like Rukhsana's, the work is to clear the unease a quiet room still stirs in her stomach, at the place it sits, so that a pause can be what it usually is: a person thinking. How her next practice hour goes is something nobody can promise her.

A teacher arriving at RSCI meets the principle every trainee meets, whatever their last career: the practitioner is transformed before the practitioner is trained. For a teacher, that often means being the one who sits in the quiet for a change, with nobody keeping an eye on the pace.

A pen that won't stay capped is fair game for the free call, where an RS Method Master Coach will go through with you whether our programmes fit where you're heading. Pick a slot for the call.

Should you coach inside a school or build a practice outside it?

Both are real coaching, and some teachers do a little of each.

Inside a school, coaching usually means colleagues: a new teacher in their first term, a head of department finding their feet, a leadership team learning to give each other clear feedback. It can be some of the most useful work a school does. It also carries the question every internal coach meets: you're rarely neutral about the outcome. A deputy head coaching a teacher they also appraise is in two roles at once, and the teacher knows it. Our guide to coaching skills for managers looks at naming that stake rather than hiding it. Coaching students is a separate field with its own consent questions, and it's outside this guide.

Outside a school, you coach adults who chose you, about whatever they bring. In our experience, former teachers often find it easiest to start where they already know the territory: other teachers, school leaders, people in education weighing a change of their own.

For school leaders, there's a third route: being coached yourself. Heads and senior leaders carry decisions few people around them can share, and an external coach is one place to think them through. In our experience, some leaders who have been coached later go on to train.

Running both while you teach is common. Practice clients can be seen in evenings and at weekends, and the coaching grows from there. Term time is demanding, so be realistic about what fits in a week, and protect the energy your classes need.

How can a teacher practise not teaching?

Try a capped-pen session. It takes one practice hour, with a fellow trainee or a practice client who knows it's practice.

1. Put one pen on the table, capped. It stays capped for the whole hour. Your notes can wait until afterwards.
2. Open with a single question. Then say nothing more until the client has spoken and stopped.
3. When a pause comes, leave it to the client. Don't time it. Let them be the one who breaks it.
4. Each time you want to explain, give an example or praise, touch the cap instead. Keep a rough count in your head.
5. If the client asks for your answer, ask for theirs first. "What would you tell someone else in this spot?" If they still want yours at the end, give it once, briefly.
6. Afterwards, write down the count. Then sort each touch into explain, example or praise, as well as you can remember.
7. Ask your client what they worked out that you hadn't said. Write their answer down word for word.
8. Note which urge was strongest, and when it peaked. Bring that note to whoever supervises your practice.

In our experience, step 7 surprises teachers most. The client often reaches something a lesson would never have covered.

It's practice for coaches, and it isn't therapy or medical care. Care you already get from a doctor or therapist carries on as before, and if you're in recovery, carry on with your programme and your people. And if leaving teaching comes with exhaustion or a low mood that hangs on, see a doctor first. A career change can wait for that.

What should a teacher look for in a coach training?

Three things, and each is part of how RSCI trains.

1. Being the learner again. On our training page, the live days come down to this: "Watch demonstrations. Practise. Get corrected. Do it again." For someone who has spent years correcting others, being corrected yourself is part of the training, and often the most useful part.
2. Your own reflexes, before anyone else's. In the training page's words, "Throughout the training you experience the methodology personally." The marker in your own hand gets attention before you're trusted with a client's pause.
3. A route you can begin while teaching, with the ICF side stated exactly. Most of the study is online and self-paced, and "Live training happens regularly in Dubai, and occasionally elsewhere by private engagement." Level 1 of the ICF education comes built into RS Method Coach, for the ACC route. Level 2 comes built into RS Method Complete, for the PCC route, and the ACC can be taken first. The ICF-accredited education inside our programmes is designed, delivered and certified by the Institute of Coaching and Mentoring (IICM), an ICF-accredited organisation. The ACC and PCC credentials are awarded only by the ICF.

This is the standard we train every coach toward, whatever they once taught. To witness. To hold. To walk them home.

Erin Kurt, in a sentence of her own: "My business literally tripled within 6 months."

Each programme's contents, module by module, are on our life coach training page.

Robert Simic, training the next generation.

P.S. Teaching has already given you half of what this work asks. The life coach training page sets out how we train the other half.