Not always the model student
I loved learning. I wanted to please my teachers and my parents, and in class I was keen and bright.
But left on my own, I fell apart. I was often off sick when I wasn't really sick. I fell behind on coursework and homework and just... didn't revise, because I couldn't get myself to start. When things got hard, I buried my head in the sand and tried not to think about it.
Nobody could have told from the outside that I was in a constant state of panic and avoidance. I had no faith in myself at all. That's exactly the problem I now see in so many of the teenagers I coach.
From the classroom to coaching
I spent ten years teaching, including five as Head of Sixth Form where I was proud to introduce several radical programmes: a transition programme; an independence programme; an enrichment award and tutor led coaching. Then I worked for a Devon charity creating a schools programme on diversity and anti-bullying before joining the the University of Bristol's widening participation and undergraduate recruitment team.
What all of it had in common: watching capable, caring students struggle with exactly the thing school never actually teaches — how to manage yourself when no one's watching.
I spent years figuring out how to help myself with this. Then I spent years figuring out how to help my students with it too.
Thusky itself started in lockdown, when every student in the country was suddenly, unavoidably on their own — and it turned out the tools I so badly lacked as a stressed sixth-former, and later developed as a teacher, mattered more than ever.
This year, my role at Bristol ended in redundancy. It's given me the push to do properly, full-time, the thing I'd been building for years on the side: turn what I've learned into something that can help far more students than I ever could one classroom at a time.
What Glenn bring to this
- MA (Hons) in English and French, University of Edinburgh
- PGCE in Secondary English, Goldsmiths, University of London
- 10 years teaching, including 5 years as Head of Sixth Form
- A coaching background built on Devon County Council training and a decade of applying it directly in schools and at university level
- A pioneering study coaching programme trialled at the University of Bristol
- Current DBS check
Does it actually work?
Over three years at Bristol, I coached more than 100 students in 3 trial cohorts. Using a self-efficacy questionnaire based on the Chen, Gully and Eden (2001) scale, every single cohort showed an average increase in positive self-confidence and self-belief of over 60% after just 6 to 8 sessions. A comparable control cohort who weren't coached were assessed at the same and their positive responses only grew by 7%.
Some of the first cohort are in a small video linked in the testimonials page, please do have a look.
Students I've coached privately have given an average Net Promoter Score of 9 out of 10; their words are also on the Testimonials page.
Outside coaching
When I'm not working, I'm usually out walking with my dogs, or with a hook and yarn in hand — I find crochet has a lot in common with what I teach: the trick is to take it one stitch at a time.