Cesar Ramirez

Coaching aligns with my values

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For Success Coach Cesar Ramirez, having an impact on learners is a huge motivation and connects him to his passion. Prior to joining InsideTrack, Cesar spent six years as a high school English teacher. “I feel like in work that I've done, both coaching and teaching, I've had the luxury of helping students find their way out of tight situations, helping get them a little closer to their goals. Being even the tiniest speck of that journey for them really inspires me.” Not surprisingly, he finds having an impact on learners connects him to his passion.

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As a teacher, active listening was always part of Cesar’s repertoire. Now as a coach for the past four years, it’s a skill he continues to value. He describes it like providing a driver’s lesson to someone. “The learner is in the driver’s seat and it’s my role as a coach to gently put my hands on the wheel as needed to help steer the conversation.” But, as he notes, he keeps the focus firmly on the learner, using active listening to find opportunities to ask deeper follow-up questions — questions that make them think about why they feel a certain way or why they're interested in certain things. “At the end of the day it’s their life,” he says, “and it’s not my role to be the one making important decisions for them.”

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Cesar remembers his time coaching on a re-enrollment team during the height of the pandemic. There were a lot of unknowns and a lot of fluctuation with the transition from in-person to online classes, for both the students and the school. He said he was happy to be a part of the learners’ lives at that time. “We were a constant for them,” he acknowledges. And given the roadblocks students were facing and the challenges they had communicating with their campuses, “It was eye-opening to understand the direct impact coaching can have on people’s lives.”

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One of the aspects of coaching Cesar enjoys most is having that connection with each learner and being able to help others. “I worked with one non-traditional student for a year,” he says. “She was coming back to school with a lot of self-doubt and a little voice that said things like, ‘You can't do it because you're not tech-savvy’ and ‘Everybody in your class is younger than you.’” When they talked, Cesar made sure to not only focus on motivation but also on being reassuring — including rephrasing some of the negative thoughts she was having. Over time, he could reflect all the hard work she put in over the course of a year. “I looked forward to our meetings. It was so nice to see her progress toward the goal she was striving for and passionate about become more achievable and realized over time.”

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The reality is that everything doesn’t always work out the way students want. And for Cesar, that’s a golden opportunity. “Being able to talk things through and still find that drive, that motivation to move forward is always really inspiring.” One tool Cesar keeps in his back pocket is to ask about an ideal scenario. “If there’s an ideal scenario that they can envision of what they want their week to look like, their study habits to be, or their next career steps, then I can ask them, ‘How do we get there? How do we bridge the gap from where you feel like you are right now into this ideal scenario that you see for yourself?’” Responses vary, he notes. Sometimes it can look like an easy fix, and sometimes it’s just a beginning to build on.

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Looking back at his own college experience, Cesar calls it a bit unusual. “I knew the sorts of things I was interested in, but I was very much like a jack-of-all-trades when it came to choosing a major. I could see myself doing all these things, and because of that, I probably changed my major 10 times.” It wasn’t until he took a couple of English classes with some great professors that he realized he loved literature — and found a way to make that the focus of his path. “Literature that shows the humanity in someone is something I’ve always valued. I understood what it meant when someone sort of stripped you of your humanity a little bit by making judgments. I always wanted to combat that and create those spaces for that type of visibility. In a way, that informs what I do as a coach today.”

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“A learner might say that they feel good about their classes. But if you ask another question or two, you can crack that open a little bit. Even if they have a good grade, for example, you might find out that they’re stressed about an upcoming project— and this pressure could be affecting other areas. Asking additional questions can lead to unexpected opportunities to help.”