The Teacher as Coach

A 3 month Training the Trainer for Teachers by The Rizal Academy for Innovation and Leadership

The work of reforming unjust social structures is a continuing process. In the 1880’s during the time of our National Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, it was the quest for independence from Spanish rule. In the present time, it is about reforming the ineffective structures of Business, Government and Civil Society that perpetuate the gaps in society resulting in poverty, a “victim” mindset of blaming and feeling of helplessness, inefficiency, corruption as well as the destruction of the environment in a developing country like the Philippines.

However, implementing systemic change is not without its difficulties. This is because systemic change is deeply personal. In other words, we are asking individuals to accept the possibility that they may be wrong and to shift their mental models or change the way they perceive the reality they were born into and grew up in.

That would entail a lot of life-review to discern which beliefs and influences one would still want to espouse and which ones to let go of in order to create better results in their lives. Behavioural psychologists, for purposes of self-transformation, advise to have a “peg” of someone who we can aspire to become. That is the reason why we have Saints and Heroes, so that we can look up to them as an example to follow.

For the “Teacher as Coach” initiative, we are hoping that by shining a brighter light on Dr. Jose Rizal as a model to exemplify will provide a unifying effect for the Filipino. It can also set the context for urgent action, specially during these challenging times of great disruption, not only for the country but for the whole world. Perhaps, by changing the narrative of Dr. Rizal as one who not only fought for freedom through his writings and died for his country, but also seeing Rizal as a precursor of the 21st century Eco-system leader during his exile in Dapitan, would make Rizal more relevant today and have the power to shift the Filipino paradigm to take more responsibility in co-creating a better future for all. That is the rationale for this Action learning program.

He was teaching them the concept of the “whole man,” one, courageous and fit to stand up to the unpredictable worlds outside the classroom where intelligence was needed most.

Dr. Pablo S. Trillana III, Author,
“ Rizal and the Wide Road of Progress” 1

Who, What, How?

The Rizal Academy for Innovation and Leadership (TRAIL) was founded in 2011 as an initiative of three Filipino participants in the first batch of the Presencing Institute’s Masterclass for Theory U practitioners – Godofredo Eala, Juan Kanapi and myself. With four other like-minded friends, the founders named the consultancy after Dr. Rizal, inspired by his life and works.

TRAIL hopes to continue the work of Rizal by promoting and practicing the Art of the Learning Organization and Theory U. These two methodologies by Dr. Peter Senge and Dr. Otto Scharmer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. USA, advocate and teach the methodology for Awareness-based Systems Change, or how to transform from an Egoistic to an Eco-system Leader. Eco-system leadership is about seeing that we are all part and parcel of the Whole, People co-existing with each other and the Planet in harmony and compassion, doing our part for a more sustainable future.

The three Masterclass graduates designed a 3-5 month learning journey that combines the five disciplines of the Learning Organization, namely, Personal Mastery, Shared Vision, Mental Models, Team Learning, and Systems Thinking, together with the five movements of Theory U consisting of Co-initiating, Co-sensing, Co-presencing, Co-prototyping and Co-creating in an innovation lab platform. By joining the learning journey, participants are able to transform their judgements, cynicism and fear of Change, into becoming open-minded, compassionate and courageous leaders making a positive difference in the world. This is TRAIL’s flagship program to support its Massive Transformative Purpose of “transforming Leadership for an inclusive and sustainable world”.

Much has happened in the last ten years, and TRAIL has since them become a member of several global learning communities like SoL, Presencing Institute, World Institute for Acton Learning, Exponential Organizations and the Purpose Alliance communities. In the local scene, TRAIL has produced several learning events that brought in Dr. Senge, Dr. Scharmer, and other PI Facilitators, at the same time serving as the holding space for the Phil. U.lab community. It is also currently affiliated with the Entrepreneurship Organization of the Philippines (EO), Order of the Knights of Rizal (OKOR) and has facilitated change interventions for Government, Business and Civil Society. Clients include the Office of the Vice-President, the Supreme Court Department of Budget and Management, Abenson, St. Joseph Group of Companies, Concepcion Industries, and a number of schools like the Benedictine International School in Metro Manila and the Santiago Trillana Academy in Bulacan. In a way, TRAIL is following the example of Rizal who studied abroad and shared what he learned to his countrymen.

LEARNING STRUCTURE

As conducted for its corporate clients the last 10 years, TRAIL’s Executive Coaching Program is a 3-5 month learning journey for a class of 20-50 participants. The class is then grouped into learning councils composed of 6 members to be assigned a certified TRAIL Executive Coach. During pre-covid, there were eight whole day classroom sessions which included a 2 hour coaching session at the end of the class. As a requirement to graduate, program participants are to think up of initiatives that they will prototype applying project-based learning.

In 2021, as the world continues to navigate the new normal, attempting to make sense of the unprecedented disruptions brought about by Covid-19 in all aspects of our lives, as well as learning to live with fast changing technology and Artificial Intelligence pervading our day to day activities. To help more of our countrymen, TRAIL is offering “The Teacher as Coach” program with the goal of “rebooting” our Educational system. Using teachers as leverage, TRAIL hopes to transform mindsets to be more open and more trusting, less resistant to change, so as to adapt more readily in the VUCA (volatile-uncertain-complex-ambiguous) world. TRAIL has re-designed its flagship Executive Coaching Program as a Training the Trainer, to be offered to up-skill and retool our Teachers applying inquiry and project based learning together with the coaching methodology that it has successfully applied in its corporate trainings through the years.

Classroom sessions will be online, 2.0 hours conducted as a webinar, and a 1- hour coaching session with a TRAIL Coach to be scheduled the week following. Field assignments are given weekly for immediate application of learnings in real life and work situations. Five teacher representatives/school will be accepted to the program coming from the various educational segments – State and Private Universities, Private and Public Colleges, Private and Public High School, Technical and Vocational Schools, Community Schools. The mix will further emphasize the need for collaboration, cooperation among various sectors of society, creating a safe space for a more harmonious educational eco-system. To further deepen their learnings, participants to the program will also be asked to join the Rizal SDG Heroes Challenge as part of the course requirement. And, to sustain their learnings, teachers will be invited to join the TRAIL learning community that will give regular refresher courses on tools for Awareness-based systems change.

In 2019, TRAIL launched the Philippine s.lab (societal lab) participating in the Presencing Institute’s Global Activation in Action or GAIA lab, that brought together more than 100 organisations worldwide.

Here in the Philippines, TRAIL journeyed with 30 change leaders coming from about 10 organisations to go thru a 4-month learning journey with the intention of creating initiatives that can shift society to become more inclusive and sustainable. Now on its third year, the GAIA journey of TRAIL will be slightly different. While still participating in the PI global program, this year’s s.lab journey for TRAIL will focus primarily on Education. It intends to bring together stakeholders of the Philippine Educational System to scale up and democratize the application of Systems Thinking and Theory U for schools. It plans to do this through the “Teacher as Coach” program designed to teach Teachers to be Trainors of Systems Thinking and Theory U in their respective schools. To attract participation and scale up the initiative, TRAIL plans to “gamify” the training through the Rizal SDG Heroes Challenge in partnership with the OKOR, Department of Education (DepEd) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). This will either be online or in-person in the future.