During the 90’s, I was invited to teach at the University of Iowa’s Annual Summer School For Helping Professionals. This school was designed to help social workers, psychiatrists, nurses, psychologists, counselors and a variety of other helping professions to get all of their continuing education credits in one five day period, plus get university credits along the way.
My class was focused on how to teach stress management skills to patients and clients in clinical settings. Over the course of the week, we were going to learn a wide variety of stress management techniques and different ways to teach them.
When I first got approached to do this, I was told that my class size would be 20-30 students max. Most professors had 15-20 people in their class for the five days.
So on a Monday morning in August, I went to the student union at the University of Iowa for the new teacher orientation and to fill out the appropriate paperwork to get paid for what I was going to do over the course of the week. After a rousing speech about the importance of continued education by one of the deans and a very nice lunch, each professor was handed a single sheet of paper with the names of their students and told which room they were going to teach.
When they came around to me, I was handed a stack of papers. I remember holding the stack of paper and inquiring to the woman who handed them to me, “How many students do I have?”
She replied, “Currently, you have 60 people and more are signing up right now. I think you will end up with 75 students. And, by the way, you will be meeting your class in the second floor ballroom. There are no classrooms in the Union to handle this size of a class. Good luck!”
Now, there is a huge difference between teaching 20-30 people something and teaching 75 people something. I had planned on the smaller number and now had 30 minutes to recreate my lesson plans for the larger number. When I walked into the second floor ballroom, the place was packed to the gills with people. They kept coming and the organizers kept bringing in more chairs and tables.
Over the course of the week, I had to practice all the techniques I was teaching so I was not too stretched. I also had a fabulous time working with such engaged people who understood the importance of helping people in a holistic manner.
On the last day as people came up to thank me for a good week, one of the oldest participants hung back until she was the last one to say good-bye. Then, she came up to me, shook my hand, and said, “Not bad. You worked hard up there and you have figured out a couple of things that were interesting too. Still, you did forget one thing. Never go to a counselor who doesn’t have a counselor. The burden of confidentiality is real, and we all have stuff we need to work on along the way. Otherwise, good work this week young man.”
I smiled and she continued with a wink, “Next year when you do this, you will have even more students.” The following year when I repeated the class I had nearly had 100 students!
This week, remember that one of the challenges of coaching and mentoring is the burden of confidentiality. Therefore, make sure you have ample allies and confidants to help you do this level of work.
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