Riverdale Country School
The bronx, new york, UNITED STATES
The Start
Riverdale Country School initially began its coaching journey to enhance its work in developing character strengths in students, cultivating undervalued capacities such as empathy, increasing collaboration amongst faculty and improving communication across students and faculty.
Since 2015, here’s what we’ve achieved in partnership:
110 staff, 64 parents and 6 school alumni completed The Anatomy, our foundational coaching course.
29 staff, 8 parents and 3 school alumni completed The Journey, our advanced coaching course.
5 staff completed The Art, our course designed to train coaching facilitators.
3 staff are currently Certified Start With Heart Facilitators, able to deliver our coaching courses to their staff and the wider community.
After completing these courses, 100% of staff agreed:
The tools and techniques outlined in these courses were valuable to the classroom environment.
They had more skills and tools available to them as a coach or facilitator.
They would recommend these courses.
Here’s what participating staff told us:
“I truly appreciated the personal growth and reflection of myself as an educator and now coach. I am not aiming to please when I write that my way of thinking about and asking questions has changed dramatically and there is no going back. I also really enjoyed the colleague time!”
“The course gave me great tools to be not just a better parent, but a better friend and ‘connector’.”
“I am looking forward to the development of a team of coaches at Riverdale and am eternally grateful to be a part of this work — it’s changing my life. I feel incredibly prepared because of all of the thought and care that has gone into creating Graydin. It’s a challenge being a strong woman and I celebrate your incredible gifts and talents. Rock on!”
The Transformation
In January 2019, Riverdale delivered its first in-house course to teachers and staff. Since then, it has run both The Anatomy and The Journey with the school’s own Certified Start with Heart Facilitators both in-person and online for both parents and staff. The Anatomy continues to be a valued professional learning experience for teachers, who appreciate the time to connect with colleagues through coaching conversations. From that experience, they understand the power of using the Start with Heart model with students and creating space for students to reflect on what’s important to them and how they want to show up in their social, school, and family relationships.
Many of Riverdale’s grade level deans and department chairs have participated in The Anatomy and use coaching skills when supporting students and colleagues. In addition, their parent Anatomy alumni have been using coaching skills to connect with their children at home as well as in their own relationships and work.
