Teacher as Life Coach – Measure, Monitor & Improve Your Students Emotional State & Behavior

If you are a teacher how important is the emotional state of your students? As a teacher would you be able to influence the rate of childhood obesity and eating disorders if there was a class on how an emotional state comes about and how to take control of it? Would you be able to reduce teen suicide if students understood how to take control of their subconscious?  Would you have more control over your students and reduce disciplinary problems by empowering them to become independent thinkers? Would test scores improve if students were more emotionally in control?

The answer to all of these questions is a definitive yes. Everything a human being does in life is emotionally driven. How you feel about everything in your life will determine weather you move toward it or not. If you agree this is true then how much sense does it make to at minimum measure the emotional state of your students? It makes perfect sense to Greg Marth a Special Education teacher who specializes in students with Behavioral Disorders and Lisa Watford who has been using the program process of THE Burris Life Coach with her students since the first clinical studies in 1992. Lisa sent the following comments after implementing a couple of the basic principals of the program on her own.

Dear Mr. Burris,
Discipline is the most difficult issue educators and students face in today’s classroom. An enriching learning environment can not take place without it. If a child does not feel secure within the confines of the classroom then long term learning will not take place. As an educator, I use the Burris program to teach fifth grade students how to deal with life and its complexities. Our classroom has gone from a virtual minefield of aggressive behavior, peppered with verbal confrontations, into a safe haven from which all to pass, parent and teachers included.

I have been told there is something very different about the way my students treat and respect each other, themselves, and authority. Students learn their own personal tools to change any negative behavior. Issues are confronted and turned into positive questioning skills. We use the Burris questions from the Heart of THE Burris Life Coach as our daily Journal topics. If someone is talking negatively about them self or anyone else we stop and deal with how to turn that negative statement into a positive question.

The questioning techniques of the Burris program are phenomenal and the results are immediate. Students learn they do not have any control over an adult’s behavior, but they do have control over how they respond to the adults. When children are allowed to take control of their behavior, they react appropriately; not because they want to please the teacher, but because they have internalized the correct decisions and choose to act positively. We use positive questions for students with conduct marks. The Burris program teaches students life skills to find the best solutions. Grades and conduct have improved beyond even what I could have imagined. I recommend the Burris program highly.

Very Truly Yours, Lisa Watford

At the time Lisa wrote this letter there was not a program specific to this age group as there is now. Lisa simply understood that what worked well for her could be applied to her students. Everyone at any age needs to understand that everything they do produces results and the question here is…“Do you want to benefit from the results you produce?” There is now a complete program specifically designed for Ages 7-17 with the complete infrastructure for data collection and study.

The ramifications of learning how to take control of your subconscious go far beyond disciplinary problems, suicide prevention and school shootings. By giving your students these tools you are creating independent thinkers. One hundred percent of what a child learns from an adult is not going to be beneficial to them and the ability to unlearn is as important as learning. In other words you will never be able to stop adults from abusing children but you can empower the child to have full control of the information from those events so that it does not negatively affect the rest of their lives.

Implementation of THE Burris Life Coach into the Classroom

The program process of THE Burris Life Coach is easily integrated into the classroom at the beginning of every semester in any class with a Certified Burris Life Coach. The complete program process can be done in two, hour and a half classes within a five day period. Any teacher could use the program and see the benefits without it interfering with their regular curriculum. This program would set a dialogue and a way of speaking and thinking that has already been proven effective since 1992 when Lisa Watford introduced it into her classroom of fifth graders.

Data Collection and the Emotional Checklist

Every student would be given two Emotional Checklists with the same number for a before and after comparison. The only information the student would put on the Checklist is their age and gender. After the second session the Emotional Checklists would be collected and the numbers would be matched up for individual and group comparison. If the students need to be identified.

THE Burris Life Coach Client Agreement would be taken home for the parent to sign. This two session Workshop can be done at the beginning of every semester and the Emotional State of every Student could be tracked over the entire duration of the time they are in school. Every teacher would have the option of implementing the program more often should the need arise.

Parental Involvement

Getting parents involved is a significant issue. A Certified Burris Life Coach would be able to hold separate Workshops for adults which would allow for full understanding of the program process between child and parent. With the integration of THE Burris Life Coach into the classroom there will now be a means by which to Measure, Monitor, and Control the Emotional State & Behavior of Your Students.