ABOUT
Get to Know Me and My Approach
Justine Readings
ITS Certified Coach
Certified Trainer SynRJ
I specialise in working with international schools as this is the context I know best, understand the fullest, and care for the most. Throughout my career I have been a Teacher-Coach, school Principal, a teacher-educator and an education-policy advisor, but I have always returned to the classroom. Over the past 25 years I have taught in New Zealand, Indonesia, Japan and Germany. My recent focus on Social Emotional Learning became an urgency for me during Covid times, and I am honoured to be able to train others in Certified programmes such as Restorative and Relational Process and the Positive Discipline programme.
Teachers, throughout the globe, are my kin. Helping them grow is my privilege.
As a coach, I consider my primary role to be awareness building. I believe everyone has a wealth of wisdom and capability inside them waiting to be discovered and applied. It is my job to make what may be invisible come to light. I am in the business of creating self-reflexive awareness: I hold the space and reflect it back, so my client can see what is happening for themselves. By offering my clients space to talk, I help them reveal their deeper feelings, thoughts and experiences through their language. When we start to see challenge as opportunity, and failure as feedback, together we can use past experiences to create future solutions. I believe every behaviour is useful in some context - the key is to look at behaviours through a frame of curiosity, not judgement.
MY APPROACH
Insights, possibilities, action.
As a Coach my goal is to serve your needs. The goal of our coaching relationship is to bring about the kind of sustainable change you want for yourself. Our online conversations will help by connecting you more consciously with what you feel, what you know and what you do. While I follow the clear and structured format of the "ITS Coach Approach" (ICF affiliated programme), and employ NLP techniques , within that structure no two sessions are ever the same. Each session we start fresh on the next steps in your journey.
In our coaching sessions you will not be told what to do or how to do it. I believe that you actually have the answers within you - my job is to ask the right questions that will draw them out. You will bring me blockages to resolve, projects and plans to develop, and fears to overcome. I will not outline solutions, and I rarely give advice: instead, I will guide you through the process of developing your own solutions, and offer the kind of questions that lead you to build your own wisdom. As with any rule, there is an exception - when teachers specifically request mentoring services, I will happily provide recommendations and advice (in the form of choices) based on my extensive experience in the field of education.
My goal is to help you find your own pathway to "happy, healthy, whole" - our journey will be at an end when you independently self explore and have become your own coach. My ultimate aim is to develop your self-awareness so you can determine what needs adjusting in your life and to help you achieve your goals at work and at home. The expertise I bring to our relationship is around the process of defining and working through obstacles and towards objectives, along with the techniques of reflective questioning and active listening. The expertise you bring to our relationship is your knowledge of yourself.
