Management Skills Coaching
Management Skills Coaching
Project details
What we need
- Initial assessment of areas of strength, targets for improvement and specific areas of focus desired for the coaching sessions
- Up to 6 coaching sessions exploring areas such as motivation, empowerment, collaboration, communication, giving / receiving feedback & conflict management
- Wrap-up session with actionable steps and advice moving forward as a manager
Additional details
I am the Programs Manager for a small non profit. We all work remotely, so management is done over the phone or through documents/emails. I currently oversee five Garden Educators at 8 different schools. I would love to refine my management skills and ensure that my employees and myself are getting what they need out of it.
What we have in place
- I currently have notes from all check-ins along with regularly scheduled check-ins in the future.
How this will help
This project will save us $10,298 , allowing us to provide 6 garden based science and nutritional cooking classes to 200 students.
Since we are a small nonprofit who all mostly work remotely, it is important that we have a strong connection with our employees to ensure that they are happy, our school sites are happy, and that everything is efficient. We also have a history of keeping our employees for a long period of time, which helps our relationships with schools.
Project plan
Our mission
Garden School Foundation provides in-depth garden-based education to youth at Title I schools in Los Angeles, strengthening connections between food justice, environmental awareness, and community health in historically underserved neighborhoods. By using the full transformative potential of school gardens as teaching sites, we nurture a healthy and mindful generation of children that care for their bodies, their communities, and the earth. We currently serve eight Title I elementary schools, reaching over 3,000 students and their families each year.
What we do
Recognizing that education, poverty, food justice, and health are deeply linked, our Seed to Table program of hands-on, garden-based education is designed to maximize the transformative potential of school gardens. We serve students from Kinder through 5th grade in a year-round program that is much more in-depth than most school garden offerings. Designed to engage a child over the entire course of six years of elementary school, our Standards-aligned lessons bring academic concepts to life through real-world, outdoor experiences. The program encourages exploration, critical thinking, and teamwork as children learn how to collaboratively grow, harvest, cook, and eat their own healthy foods, as well as how they can impact both the broader environment and their own communities.
Students visit the garden during the school day every other week, alternating between science-based gardening and nutritional cooking classes. These learning experiences extend to students' families and the surrounding community through monthly Community Garden Days and other events. At each school site, classes are led by a trained GSF Garden Educator who maintains the garden as a living laboratory, works with classroom teachers to complement their instruction, conducts outreach to the school community and broader neighborhood, coordinates garden volunteers, and facilitates extended learning opportunities, including after school clubs and weekend community garden workdays.
Testimonials
Jim was truly a delight to work with. He really personalized each session- focusing on topics that were not only timely, but also helped build my broader management skills. He set aside time each week to talk through real world experiences that I was struggling with and really helped me make progress with my supervisees. I also really appreciated that Jim focused on long term goals not only for myself but for the organization. I feel confident not only in my personal skills but continuing to develop those skills in the near future. Jim shared a lot of great management training resources but also has extensive experience with a wide range of clients, which allows him to draw on many different examples and concepts. I would recommend Jim to anyone looking to better their management skills with a very experienced trainer who invests in his clients.
GSF is a wonderful organization with bright, earnest, conscientious and hardworking leadership and members committed to their mission. An absolute pleasure to work with.