ABC: The Added Bonus of Coaching
“Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life” (Amy Poehler, American comedian, actress, writer, producer and director).
When volunteers rally around a common goal it creates a sense of community, unique to that group. As coaches we have come to Writing Coaches of Montana (WCM) with a diverse collection of backgrounds: lawyers, nurses, teachers, accountants and therapists, to name a few. The commonality you will find is our shared love of the written word and a belief that writing is a valuable tool for self-expression. There are many coaching communities within WCM, designated because of location. Montana is a big state. As WCM grows, the common bond between every coach, that will keep us united and inspired, is not only our rewarding connections with students but with each other. This is especially true for two of the Bitterroot writing coaches, Denise Mahrer and Donna Lambiase.
Having moved to the Bitterroot Valley in late 2013, by fall 2016 Denise was looking for a volunteering opportunity. As a retired English teacher she knew it had, in some way, to involve stepping back into the classroom:
“In the late summer of 2016, I was leaving Clark Fork Farmers Market when I was approached by the former director of WCM. The program was hoping to expand into the Bitterroot and was in need of additional coaches. Her brief overview of the WCM philosophy was all it took for me to sign up for the next training session. Here was an organization that wanted to work with every student in the class, foster their love of writing and help move their ideas forward. From the very first meeting with the new coaches the sense of camaraderie was infectious. Knowing there were others, akin to myself, who valued education and wanted to show student writers that folk in the community cared was heartening. Working one on one with the student writers, listening to their thoughts and guiding them in articulating their ideas is rewarding. Spending time before and after coaching sessions with fellow coaches, discussing the assignments the students are working on, learning about each others’ lives, careers, and literary tastes has been equally rewarding. It has been through these “after hour” interactions that friendships have blossomed.”
Donna came to WCM after reading an article in the February 2018 edition of the The Falcon View about coaches working one-on-one with Florence-Carlton High school students:
“My fond memories of after-school library hours spent working with student writers bubbled to the surface when I read the article about Writing Coaches of Montana. With experience as a fiction writer and reader for a publisher, I felt confident as I hurriedly applied to WCM in 2018. I believe when a person takes on a new endeavor they enter with expectations limited to their past experiences. I was so eager to relive the joy of working with students I believe I was blind to other possible benefits. My eyes were opened during my first WCM training class. Unexpectedly, I was welcomed into an entire community of volunteers who shared my strong personal commitment to spreading the value of the written word. Not only would I be engaging with students in a rewarding setting but I made connections at this first training which became the foundation of my own community of coaches. Over the years I have worked alongside many coaches, teachers and administrators and I highly value the history behind each of these brief, but enriching, encounters. It seems there is another unexpected benefit of belonging to a group of like-minded individuals, the development of friendships.
One never knows where or when a chance encounter may spark a friendship. While we have mutual friends, if it weren’t for WCM, we may never have met. As C. S. Lewis once said, “Friendship is born at the moment when one man says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself...’” The initial commonality, in our case, the love of the written word and the desire for the younger generation to be as enthused as we are, is what led us to WCM in the first place and to the ever-evolving friendship we have today. What started as rereading and chatting about the works students were analyzing, such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Fahrenheit 451, transitioned into discussions regarding best coaching practices. How best to approach the reluctant student who either hasn’t read the work and has no intention of doing so? Or the student who hasn’t even begun his/her essay and doesn’t know where to start?
In our case, it didn’t take long before we began talking about the books and authors we enjoy reading. Soon we were meeting to discuss new literary gems, or aspects of the students’ writing assignments prior to coaching sessions. We discovered we have other interests in common; baking, gardening and quilting as well as our passion for writing. When we aren’t helping students within the valley with their writing assignments, we use each other as sounding boards for our own work. We, and our families, frequently celebrated the quintessential American and British holidays, July 4th and December 26th, Boxing Day, in each other’s company. Five years ago, we met as strangers, today we ride to coaching sessions together as friends.
WCM Executive Director, Cassie Sheets, ends her communications with the following quotation, “It’s easy to say, ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes” (Fred Rogers). Neither of us expected to find heroes or fast friends when first volunteering for WCM, however we are fortunate to have found both. Those who coach alongside us have chosen to make the child, the community, their world, their problem. They have seen the need and responded. We feel privileged to be a part of the WCM organization as a whole and specifically, here in our “Bitterroot Valley” neighborhood, where our coaching “neighbors” have become friends too. Mr. Rogers would be proud.