“Uncoachable” Students: let’s talk about it.

“Uncoachable” is a big label to put on a student and it's been making the rounds on social media. But it's time to retire the concept altogether - not because you should work with every student, but because there's a much deeper conversation hidden between the lines.

In this episode, we’re unpacking the idea of the “coachable” student, the assumptions we make about students who challenge us, and how labels can shape the way we teach and create less diverse spaces. We’ll talk teacher-student fit, psychological safety, confirmation bias, and why the students who are hardest for us to reach might expose some of the most important gaps in our teaching.

Not every student is the right fit for every teacher. But “this student is difficult for me to teach” and “this student is uncoachable” are two very different conclusions.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Between the Lines podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Kaiser, and in today's episode, we're going to be talking about this idea of uncoachable students. What makes this mindset problematic and how to think about it clearly and with nuance? Before I get into that, quick announcement: I have just released the wait list for my seven days to clean aerial lines challenge. This is going to be seven days of very tiny practices, micro training to help you build the movement maps your brain needs to coordinate your aerial movement. You don't need an apparatus to do this. We build this from the ground. You're going to get a lesson every single day straight to your inbox. We're going to be going deep into body awareness, and you'll walk away with a more nuanced understanding of how to organize your body, as well as a deeper relationship to how you move. These are the exact practices I use to bring myself out of my baby giraffe era and into looking like a professional. And these are the same practices that I've brought to my students over thousands of classes taught. When you join the wait list, you get a 72% discount. So you get this full program for $27. And on top of that, you get to keep it for life. The link is below. Go ahead and grab it now and then we'll dive into the episode. So this idea of uncoachable students came up for me because I saw multiple posts over the past few weeks about uncoachable students. And one of these posts was framed like, I love working with highly coachable students. They're so engaged. They ask such great questions. They're so easy to work with. And I saw another post that was outlining the difference between coachable and uncoachable students. And there were some problematic ideas woven into that that I wanted to break down here on the podcast. And as we get into this, I want you to know that I am not coming from a perspective that the student is always right. I absolutely believe that coaching is a two-way street. I have standards and expectations for my students, and I will not work with just anyone. So this episode will not be one of those conversations about doing absolutely everything, bending over backward and jumping through hoops in order to support every student, including the ones who are not respecting boundaries, who are not participating in the way that they have been asked to. I have been down that road in the world of education where I have observed how the pedagogy is leaning way too far in that direction. And it starts to position the students as these universally blameless people. This actually disempowers the student. It suggests that there's no action that they need to take in the situation, but the teacher needs to solve everything. So I just want to establish that I'm aware of that mindset and I don't agree with it and it's not what I'm promoting. So coming back to this idea about being uncoachable, I'm going to give you some ideas presented in one of the posts I saw this week. So one of the traits that is supposedly uncoachable is that the student stays quiet even when they're confused. Instead of asking for help, they pretend to understand and allow small misunderstandings to become habits that are much harder to fix later. Another example was only accepting feedback from people they personally consider qualified. And then there was this claim at the end that nobody is coachable 100% of the time. Okay, so there's a lot to unpack here. And there were a couple more reasonable claims in here, like they become defensive when feedback is offered, though there's there's some layers there we could look at, rejecting new ideas before giving them a real chance, or assumes there can only be one correct answer. Again, kind of funny to unpack because sometimes a student is actually identifying a gap in the teacher's instruction. So now, regardless of how much you agree to what extent any of those things is a problem, here's the thing. When you have those kinds of interactions with a student, you know that something's not working in your teacher-student relationship in that particular space that you're working together in. To suggest that the student is uncoachable is a massive leap. That is a huge judgment, and you simply don't have enough data to draw that conclusion. That same student could go to a different studio. Now they found a teacher who is basically a drill sergeant, and they have turned into a model student because that was the kind of leadership they needed to see and to rise to their own accountability as a student. Just because the student and you didn't work together does not mean the student is fundamentally uncoachable. Even if the student had consistent problems across different instructors, that is still too far of a leap to say uncoachable. We haven't found the scenario in which coaching works well for them. It would be a more fair assessment. I'm not saying that the student is right in their behaviors and their choices and their ways of participating. What I'm saying is it's too much of a leap to say they are uncoachable. Coachability is not an inherent personality trait in a student. Coachability is something that emerges at least partly from the relationship between the teacher and the student and the environment that they're in. It's the full system. Nothing is happening in isolation, so we need to consider each part. So for the rest of the episode, we're not even going to use the term uncoachable. We're going to talk about it with a more nuanced lens. Let's go back and unpack the problem identified with a student who doesn't ask questions and allows mistakes to accumulate. This one is really interesting because there's a lot of different reasons that a student may not ask questions that may not speak up in class. And a lot of it has to do with how the teacher establishes psychological safety in their classroom. Have you, as the teacher, taken steps to make sure students know that you want them to ask questions? Do you want them to ask questions? Have you provided guidance about when and how to ask questions? Because a lot of students who come to an aerial class are already trying to be the best student they can be. And sometimes that means not interrupting the flow of class or not sidetracking the teacher. So when the student doesn't ask a question, from their perspective, it might be, I'm respecting the container. Now, the teacher is not responsible for making a student come out of their shell, but they are responsible for making it very clear that participation and questions are welcome here, and here's how to do it. So something I always say to any student who is new to me is you can ask as many questions as you want, and you can ask the same question multiple times in a row if you didn't get an answer that made sense to you. What's important to me is that we get understanding for you. And sometimes if I'm giving a demo or an explanation, I might say, if you have questions about this, hold them till the end because I might answer them in the meantime. So now my students have a lot of clarity about what I want from them and what I expect from them. They know how to participate in this space. This is part of our setup for creating a space that is psychologically space. And this is something we go in depth into the Bloom Aerial Teacher Training because it affects not only learning outcomes but also safety. Another consideration with somebody who is on the more quiet side or isn't asking questions. In order for us to have an inclusive learning environment, we need to consider that there may be differences in how our students process information. A student who is quiet and not asking questions might be watching their peers in the room very closely to better understand the movement. They might be thinking a lot about the feelings they have in their own body as they try the movement and they're not able to find the words to ask a question about it. That's why prompts from the teacher are really important to be peppered in throughout class. So the student has a structure to work with to help them articulate what their questions actually are. Another thing to consider is that a student who is not asking questions might not have established a sense of belonging in this space. There's a level of social safety, we also talk about that in the Bloom Aerial teacher training, that could be making them hesitate and hold back from speaking up. So when we make this leap from the student is quiet to they're uncoachable, we're vastly glossing over so much important data and so many important considerations for the teacher for how they are setting up their classroom and creating the conditions for students to succeed and participate fully. Now let's unpack the claim that somebody who only accepts feedback from people they personally consider qualified is a problematic student. I thought this one was really interesting because why does the student not believe the teacher is qualified? Is the teacher qualified? If they are, are they signaling confidence and competence to inspire that same confidence in the students? Because if I'm going to a class where my body is in part in somebody else's hands, my safety is in part in somebody else's hands, I am absolutely going to be discerning about who I am working with, and I am absolutely not going to be accepting feedback from somebody that I do not believe is qualified. Now, how the student arrives at the conclusion of whether their teacher is qualified or not, there could be some problems in that or not. But if there is a question on the part of the student about the teacher's qualifications, then a conversation needs to be had between the student and the teacher to establish that the qualifications are in place and this is a safe place to train. We don't want any students to be blindly trusting any teacher. And honestly, so many students are walking into classrooms with undertrained and inexperienced instructors, and there are consequences, and I hear about these every day. So if the student doesn't feel confident in the teacher, let's examine what is causing that perception. And if there's something the teacher needs to adjust, like do they genuinely need more training? Or are they signaling that they're not sure about certain things and they're not acting confident even if they are an expert? Then those things need to be addressed. It doesn't matter how much of an expert you are, if you walk into the classroom timid, your students are going to have less confidence in you and they're going to feel less safe in your classroom. So what you're probably noticing I'm getting at with this is that when we think a student is uncoachable or has problematic traits, let's make sure we're examining our contribution to the situation and not just assuming that the student has this big character flaw. Every time that we have a student that is more difficult to work with, that's really important data. And it often will reflect back where we have room to grow. With that said, I will reiterate, this does not mean that every challenging behavior is just an opportunity for the teacher to improve. We need to be able to discern the difference. If a student is genuinely disregarding safety boundaries, communication boundaries, not able to participate in the way the teacher has outlined, then that student is not compatible with that teacher's container. Sometimes a student needs a little bit of guidance. Like if the student is monopolizing the teacher's attention, they might not realize they're doing that and they just need a little nudge. You, as the instructor, are allowed to and actually must have, for the well-being and safety of everybody in your container, classroom standards. You are shaping a container, and there's this idea out there that I will die on this hill. People say, well, the student paid to be there, they can do whatever they want. I have yet to find a single transaction in life that entitles me to do literally whatever I want. Money is not a free pass to any kind of behavior. And when we are in a setting with high risk and very complex instructions, and the instructor has a difficult job, then we absolutely should be enforcing a particular way of participating in the space. And if the student doesn't like that, they can go look for a different space that lets them participate in that way. You as a teacher are entitled to hold your boundaries, to change your boundaries, to stop teaching someone and to say no. When you do this, you are preserving the integrity of your learning environment. This affects everybody who trains with you. And so the whole thesis of this conversation today is really there can be challenging behaviors, there can be problematic behaviors, but we don't need to make a leap to this person is uncoachable. Be careful about labeling students. When you have ideas like the student is difficult or resistant or timid or uncoachable, you will then start looking for evidence that confirms that. That's called confirmation bias. And I do want you to be able to quickly identify patterns and problems. So you don't need to stay away from labels entirely, but be very mindful about them. And if the behavior is emergent, then we need to hold on to curiosity and investigate a little bit more what is actually at the root here. Is this a behavioral problem in the student that isn't going to go away? Or is this a dynamic that has emerged because they need a little bit more guidance from me to feel safe or to know how to participate? Have I given them a reason to respect me? Have I given them a reason to be confident in me? When we see these quote, problematic student behaviors arise, then we do want to check in. Have I contributed something here? Is there something I'm missing? Is there something I need to adjust? And this is so important. When you have challenges with your students or students aren't getting something, this is some of the most important data you could possibly ever get as an instructor. Our role as the instructor is to go into problem-solving mode, not shut down, not dismiss, but gain a better understanding for why this thing is happening in our classroom and what we can possibly shift to get a different result. There's another problem nested into this whole conversation, and that is this praise for highly coachable students. This publicly stated preference. I love working with students like this. It is so understandable to have a preference for certain kinds of students. We all have preferences, but when we go around broadcasting what our favorite kind of student is like, then the student who doesn't see themselves in that is going to feel excluded. This often targets disproportionately shy students or students who don't feel a sense of belonging or safety in the class. That starts to be an equity problem. And when I see these posts cherishing the coachable student, I'm just kind of thinking to myself, I'm like, congratulations. You like students that are easier to coach. I'm over here being like, send me your hardest students. I'm really curious. I want to find out if they are truly being an asshole in your classroom and not taking accountability for anything, or if you've missed something. And I want to understand that better. And the other thing is, no matter what our quote favorite students might be, there's no denying that what makes a strong community and a beautiful classroom environment is diversity among students. I want extroverted students and I want shy students. I want students who ask a lot of questions and I want students who are more internally processing the task that I've assigned. I want differences in students because peer-reviewed scientific research shows us that more diverse classrooms have better learning outcomes. Also, it's just what makes life beautiful. I've seen it, I've lived it. The best classroom environments are the ones with people from different backgrounds, with different personalities, different body types, and different perspectives on what this whole aerial thing means. So consider this episode a formal request for us to throw out this unnuanced, outdated conversation about uncoachable students. Let's challenge ourselves to have a more sophisticated conversation about what is taking place in our classroom environments. You don't have to love coaching every type of student. You don't have to keep every student who walks through your doors. You have every right to make decisions about what is best for your learning environment. But what you don't have is the data you need to make a claim that that student was uncoachable. And creating this dichotomy between coachable and uncoachable only makes our disciplines, only makes our learning environments feel less inclusive, less fun, and less interesting. This is one of many reasons that my Bloom Arial Teacher training takes place over four months. There is no shortcut to becoming a great teacher. And learning skill progressions and learning technical cues is only the tip of the iceberg. We have so much potential in the aerial community specifically to push ourselves to be better and better teachers and to learn how to accommodate a greater variety of students. Because if we can only progress a certain type of student, then our spaces become less and less diverse. Next week's conversation is going to be directed to students. And this is going to be a conversation about how to advocate for yourself in aerial classes, how to determine if the aerial space is safe, if the instructor is competent, and how to get the most out of your class, how to participate fully, how to engage and help the teacher understand how you best learn. And if you want to be the kind of instructor who can support a great diversity of students and has the training and the tools to respond to these different kinds of scenarios that can emerge, then check out the link below to learn more about my Bloom Aerial Teacher training. It's completely online and it includes direct one-on-one mentorship with me. I hope you've enjoyed today's conversation about quote uncoachable students. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you on the next episode of Between the Lives.