The Anchored Year
Who this is for
Who this is for
Dear School Principal,
You are the only person in your school who carries the whole picture.
Your board, your staff, your students, and your community all look to you, and most of them bring you their problem to solve. Rarely does anyone ask how you are carrying all of it. If you are a primary, intermediate or secondary school principal, deputy principal, or aspiring principal in New Zealand, and you want a confidential space that belongs entirely to you, where your own clarity, capacity, resilience and resourcefulness are the focus, this package is for you.
You are the only person in your school who carries the whole picture.
Your board, your staff, your students, and your community all look to you, and most of them bring you their problem to solve. Rarely does anyone ask how you are carrying all of it. If you are a primary, intermediate or secondary school principal, deputy principal, or aspiring principal in New Zealand, and you want a confidential space that belongs entirely to you, where your own clarity, capacity, resilience and resourcefulness are the focus, this package is for you.
Why I do this work
My own path to coaching started in the classroom, as an ESOL educator teaching in environments where staff and students came from a dozen different countries and starting points. After earning my ICF Associate Certified Coach credential, I worked with a range of clients, including Directors of Studies, coaching them through the pressure of leading teaching teams amid compliance demands, staffing pressures, and competing expectations. I am also a parent with children in different schools, and I see firsthand the range of leadership it takes to hold a school together. All of this, - teaching, coaching, and watching school leadership up close as a parent, means I am not learning your world from the outside.
What we work on
Leadership in a school is not only a thinking problem. It is a nervous system problem. You can know exactly what a calm, clear response looks like in a difficult staff meeting, a tense board conversation, or a parent complaint, and still find your body reacting before your thinking catches up. That gap between knowing and doing is where the real work happens, and it happens in the body before it happens in the mind.
Across eight sessions, spaced twice a term to match the actual rhythm of the school year, you build the internal capacity to meet pressure without being run by it. When your own nervous system settles, your decision-making sharpens, your presence in the room changes, and the steadiness you model becomes something your staff and students feel, even when nothing is said about it directly.
You can expect to notice:
- You respond to pressure rather than react to it, and the difference is visible to the people around you
- You make decisions with more clarity, and spend less time circling back to question them afterward
- You recognise when you are carrying stress that belongs to someone else, and find ways to set it down
- You become a steadier, calmer presence for your staff, because regulation moves through a school the same way as tension does
- You stop holding the entire school in your body, and start trusting your team and your systems to carry their share
- You build pockets of space across the year that belong only to you, in a role that otherwise belongs to everyone else
What's included
- 8 x 60-minute sessions, twice each term across the school year
- Zoom, or face to face within the Wellington region (travel costs may apply)
- Personalised embodiment practices and tools between sessions to use in the moment for centring, grounding, and staying calm
- Email support as needed
- Mid-year and end-of-year check-in
If you are ready to lead the year from a steadier place, click "Let's partner!" to begin.
Paid in full: NZD $3100
If a termly payment option would suit your school's budget better, reach out to Elena directly at elena.mezentseva@yahoo.com to arrange this.
If a termly payment option would suit your school's budget better, reach out to Elena directly at elena.mezentseva@yahoo.com to arrange this.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will this pace actually fit around how busy my role is?
Yes. The sessions are placed twice a term by design: in the beginning of the term and in the second half of the term, when fatigue tends to peak. Sixty minutes, eight times across the year is a modest amount of time set against everything the role demands, and most principals find that the sessions are what creates the space, not what takes it away.
Can coaching be funded through my school's professional development budget?
Many boards and principals use their PLD allocation for exactly this kind of 1:1 individually tailored leadership investment. If your school would prefer to release payment term by term rather than upfront, reach out directly to Elena, and it can be arranged outside the standard checkout.
How is coaching different from professional supervision or professional learning and development?
Supervision tends to focus on practice and professional decision-making, and professional learning and development tends to focus on skills and knowledge. Deep and transformative coaching support that I provide works underneath both: with how pressure lives in your body and your nervous system, and how that shapes the way you actually show up, day to day, in your role of the principal.
Many principals find this is the piece that supervision and PLD were never designed to reach.
Many principals find this is the piece that supervision and PLD were never designed to reach.
Is this confidential, even if my school's professional development budget is covering the cost?
Yes, entirely. What is discussed in our sessions stays between us.
If your board or school is funding this as part of your professional development, what they are funding is your access to the space, not its content. You decide what, if anything, you want to share about your own development.
If your board or school is funding this as part of your professional development, what they are funding is your access to the space, not its content. You decide what, if anything, you want to share about your own development.
What if I need more support than eight sessions across the year?
Additional sessions can be added at any point if a particular term or situation calls for more support than the package provides. We can discuss this as it comes up, rather than needing to decide everything in advance.
