Final Reflections...

Final Reflections…

After a semester of learning about and thinking of what Counseling and Guidance mean in a School context, I have to say that it is not only the counselors’ responsibility, he/she should be the one in charge of managing the situation, but it is us, the whole Educative Community, the ones that have to observe, help, guide, integrate, etc. those in need. I find it a ‘human responsibility’.

Laws and Theoretical Methods should help and guide us, but we are the ones that have to feel engaged with the project of accompanying in all senses our students through their lives as students. Sometimes is not written in our tasks as teachers, but it should be in our hearts and sense of professional development. It may not be well rewarded in economical terms but there is nothing worthiest than the feeling of a well-done-job, and being so recognized by your students.

While developing our Guidance Plan today, I could feel both, how important for a child in any case, but even more if in special needs, the whole Educative Community is. And, as a student performing a presentation, how comforting is when your work is recognized by the teacher and your classmates.

What is for today?

It was a very practical and useful class today. We had the opportunity to know the main points in order to run a parent-teacher conference successfully. In general terms we could summarize the whole idea in 4 points:

First, have time to prepare the interview for both, teacher and parent. This could easily be done when an appointment exists.

Second, have a positive attitude towards the student and clear goals to be achieved.

Third, commitment should be established between the parts: teacher, parents and student.

Fourth, it is necessary follow up students and parents. There has to be continuity in the process of achieving the goals.

One of the main skills a teacher should have to ensure success on these conferences is assertiveness.

Both, assertiveness information and a more detailed description of how to run a parent-teacher conference, is available in their correspondent pages (‘Skills’ and ‘How to run a parent-teacher conference’).

A practical lesson of Attention to Diversity

Last class, on Wednesday, May 16^th, Pilar Alonso, responsible for the Counseling and Innovation department of the Gaudem School, visited us.

She told us about how Diversity is understood in this school, what her opinion about it is and how they work on it.

Gaudem School is a charter one located in Madrid.  Their peculiarity is that they have many children with special needs or learning disorders. In this sense they have chosen to work with both ‘kind’ of kids, those needing special attention and those that do not all together since they are very little.

As far as I could understand, they have two kinds of children with special needs, one being those suffering from deafness and those with learning disorders such as TDAH. Children from the first group are integrated in a regular and permanent class since they start their schooling life. In this way, all kids learn sign language at the same time. This school also offers a bilingual education, so children with no special needs will end up with a trilingual education.

As for the other group, the one with learning disorders are also integrated in regular classes but not mixed with deaf children. These classes will not learn the sign language. This is my main objection or critic. But I can understand that it is very expensive to afford al the human and material resources needed for such project.

They do not belief on curricular adaptation but on curricular accessibility, on breaking down the barriers that may exist. In this sense, and according to Pilar, is the class that has to adapt to the child not the other way around. Hence, there has to be a personal educative plan.

Their three key points are Permanence, Participation and Learning. This is what should guide the educative process of every student.

Pilar gave us some steps that they follow to identify and deal with children that may need special attention.  First, the counselor should enter in the classroom in order to see the child in its own environment. In this sense, direct observation is rather important at this point. Then, if needed, the counselor may have to take the kid out of the class in order to carry out some psycho-pedagogical tests. If we get to this stage, parents will have to be aware of the situation and medical assessment may be also needed.

What characteristics should a teacher have in order to develop his/her work in a successful way? Pilar provide us with some hints: Ethics, Techniques and Empathy.  In my opinion, these three are the guidelines we all should have in mind our entire career long.

I really appreciate this visit because it gets you in touch with real life, real situations and that makes you feel like you are working for a very important objective. I found it rather useful.