HSC CoWorks is always been looking for better learning outcomes for our students. We are tremendously proud of our record in helping 1000’s of students achieve excellent or at least far better results than schools or parents have expected of them.
I (Fergus, Director of Studies) has always disputed ideas that suggest that some students are inherently “smart” whilst others will always struggle. We have always believed, based on wide reading and implementation, that given the right environment, strong mentoring and building skills, will for the majority of our students result in a great HSC result opening the door of opportunity for them.
Further, we believe that our students are not cohorts. They are individuals and given that each individual brain is radically different they must be treated as such.
During the course of this year as part of our continuing journey to achieve student success we have come across the work of Dr David Rock and his company NeuroLeadership Group. The NeuroLeadership Group(NLG) is globally recognized as a global leader in the research of Neuroscience and how this can be applied to increasing performance through coaching.
HSC CoWorks has in many ways intuitively been implementing some of the strategies that Dr Rock has developed from his research, especially the need for students to become self directed, for some time however Jesse and I felt that our team, including ourselves, needed to formalise our training in this area and become more richly committed to Brain Based Coaching.
Yesterday was day one of a two day training course run by NLG on the Neuroscience of Learning and learning the skills to apply this knowledge to improve the performance of our students through coaching skills.
We are passionate about great HSC results realizing that great HSC results will come from much more than just memorizing information. If a student is to write an A Range essay on Hamlet this will come from their ability to develop their own insights and adopting the skills to write successfully in exam environments.
We as a team are looking forward to aligning our existing approaches to student success with a more substantial knowledge of how the brain works and most importantly how this will improve student learning outcomes.
This brain based learning approach has already seen improved outcomes at our Mosman office where students have achieved great HSC trial results. These students have from the outset been encouraged to pursue independent learning outcomes. We have deliberately discouraged dependent learning, the predominant model that operates in schools.
We find that building student confidence, teaching them the skills that will cause them to more confidently deal with assessments and exams and have them understand and accept the notion that “without struggle there is no progress”.
Once we get them to this stage of Mount HSC the student is virtually assured of a vastly improved result. Last Sunday we had 70% of our students at Mosman come into the office for an optional 3 hour Study and Support session. How good is that!!