Today we’d like to introduce you to Tina Kruse.
Tina, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
There has never been a time in my life when I wasn’t driven to help students be better learners.
I recall helping a crying classmate on our first day of school in first grade. Much later in college, I led a large nonprofit tutoring organization in South Bend, Indiana’s community centers, matching university students with elementary-aged kids. Next, my first professional experiences were in social work roles advocating for health and family support for Headstart students in a few different cities. I even worked briefly as a copywriter for a corporate training firm putting out material on learning science for adults.
This all led me to a PhD in Educational Psychology with the burning question: what makes teaching and learning most effective across settings? And why do some people love learning but hate school?
I was lucky to have a forum to explore this for 20 years as a college professor in Educational Studies at a liberal arts college (Macalester), where I also researched youth thriving in out-of-school-time spaces–those extracurriculars in which deep learning seems to happen well. This led me to write Making Change: Youth Social Entrepreneurship (2019) for Oxford University Press and a chapter for the United Nations’ 2020 World Youth Report.
It also led me to study and include “academic life coaching” to my skill set and offer independent advising to students outside of my college. This initiative grew into Student Well™ Coaching and Consulting, which continues to spread in its reach today.
So I guess you could say I have been doing basically the same thing for almost 50 years! Just in a wide variety of forms, accruing expertise along the way and hopefully helping countless students.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
My biggest challenge is cultural. It’s not easy to shift perspectives about student support services as a deficit-driven; that is, you only need “help” if something is wrong with you. But I don’t center my approach on disorders or labels. Coaching methodology is helpful for literally everyone: it moves you from your point A to point B, wherever those are for you. Our ed system was set up to be a one-size-fits-all institution that sees variety as deviant and problematic. Industrialization offered a factory model for education that doesn’t actually maximize individual learning. (In fact it often destroys it). Student coaching is one great way to contribute to improving on that. It can be an uphill battle, though, to help people understand this.
A personal challenge for me has been to apply my academic strengths and training into practical skills that help real students. It’s one thing to develop and teach theory but another to use it in the real world. I think much of our programming for education professionals struggles to marry these well. I continue to learn and grow as an education expert as well as practitioner.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Student Well Coaching & Consulting LLC?
We help students grades 9 through graduate school reach their academic goals across a few different channels.
First and foremost my Student Well™ coaching methods support students with study habits, school confidence, and academic planning including college admissions and career discernment. This approach is seeped in my expertise as an educational psychologist and grounded in my decades as an Ed professor.
Within the coaching relationship, we meet regularly to set goals, grow awareness of self and school task achievement, then co-construct effective action plans toward success. All of this is coupled with personal accountability to the coach, open-door communication by text between meetings, and a general sense of being seen and cared for as a person, not just an academic GPA.
I also speak at high schools and colleges, design and lead parent programming to help families support their students, and facilitate faculty training to guide ed professionals as they sharpen their advising and teaching skills. Some recent topics for these are: Academic Stress Management; Planning for College with C.A.L.M; Preparing for College with Mental Health in Mind; Mastering College Well for Moms; and Coaching Skills for Faculty Advisors.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Great question. I liken this work to being a personal trainer for academics: you can go to the gym and self-direct your workout or even group fitness and get a great workout. But if you want to uplevel your outcomes faster and in a meaningful, lasting way, it’s most effective to get a trainer who will personalize your workout and hold you accountable. That’s Student Well coaching too. While most high schools and universities offer extensive Student Support services, they are often not as individualized and as high-touch as we can be.
It’s also a boon for my clients that I was a professor for two decades! I have so many insights about the inner workings of higher ed and about how students can navigate their own educational institutions. Plus they love connecting with me as a caring educator who knows them well and who isn’t evaluating them (no grading from me!). We have fun in the process, because learning and growth should be enjoyable. This is more effective in the short-term and much longer-lasting too.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tinakruse.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tina_kruse_coaching/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tinakrusecoaching/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tinapkruse/
- Other: https://www.student-well.com
