The observing counsellor

A counsellor is almost always tied up with a counselling room or a counselling cubicle.

As a counsellor, I believe that the wonders of my craft take place in the confines of a room where the counsellee can fully manifest his or her being and totally express his or her thoughts and feelings without the fear of being judged or mocked.

In my experience, though, as a school counsellor, I discovered that being out of the comforting counselling space and immersing in the students' academic world is equally important and can surface myriads of issues and experiences of and information about the counsellee which may not be accessible in the actual counselling process.

In fact, I am convinced that at the onset of or even before the actual counselling, the school counsellor has to spend significant amount of time in immersing into the student-counsellee's environment--particularly the classroom environment.

As I, the counsellor, immerse in the student's world, I have to take different lenses. At one point, I have to take the lens of a teacher and see the child from the teacher's point of view. On the other, he or she has I have to take the lens of a classmate and seek to understand the child from the point of view of a classmate. At all times, I have to wear the lens of an observer, keenly noting down behaviours as they occur. As I shift the use of these lenses, I must keep my feet on the ground and must not be separated from the reality that although I am wearing diverse lenses, I am still the counsellor and for that reason I am immersing in the student's world--my counsellee's world.

In the process of observing the student in the actual environment he or she lives, I gain more idea about the student's concerns from an objective point of view. Hence, as a school counsellor I prefer observing children unobtrusively (without making the observed aware that he or she is being observed). Sometimes, I find it necessary not to inform teachers who I am supposed to observe so even them can freely approach any student in the most natural way they do.

After the immersion and observation, I make sure to analyze the information I gathered but guard myself from imposing my observations on the student. The pitfall of conducting observations is the possibility of the counsellor having prejudice towards the counsellee. This is the struggle that the observing counsellor has to face. Nonetheless, with enough preparation and genuine openness and concern towards the student, this pitfall can be avoided.

The same way that what takes place within the walls of the counselling room should not leak out, what happenes outside the counselling room must not dictate the counsellor's relationship and process with the counsellee.

At the end of the day, all these efforts are done to help the student become the best he or she can be. If what has been done by the school counsellor does not support this goal then something in the plan has to be checked and evaluated.

Not of fear, but of respect

This maybe is the shortest blog post I have so far.

I only have three things to share today:

First, it is more satisfying as a professional to act out of mutual respect than out of fear.

Second, no threat will  ever work for a person who knows what he is doing and is clear that his actions are in good faith.

Third, it is a moral responsibility of any individual to objectively judge the action without having to judge the person.

Have a great weekend!

Herbart's Starter, Appetizer

Apart from Bloom's taxonomy, which in succeeding posts I will spend more time discussing about, Herbart's parts of a lesson is another interesting educational concept that I deem sacred as a professional teacher. Herbart's lesson plan is what I would consider as among the most basic knowledge that any teacher should be aware of and must be trained to actually put into practice.

Just to give a brief overview, Johann Herbart lived in the latter part of the 18th century, when the Age of Enlightenment in Europe emerged. He's actually a psychologist who proposed the structured lesson plan. Well, psychology and education go hand in hand. On a personal note, I attribute all my pedagogical knowledge and skills to the fact that I have a solid training in psychology. According to Herbart, a lesson can be structured into five parts: preparation, presentation, association, generalization and application. I will be talking about each of these parts in time but in today's blog I only like to focus on the "starter." Others may have their own opinion but by starter, I only would like to refer to Herbart's preparation.

Why have a starter? Most probably the word "starter" would have reminded you of eating out in a restaurant where the waiter gives you the menu and asks you, as soon as you sit on the table, how you like to begin your meal. You must have been reminded of an "appetizer" or a soup or in, several restaurants, just plainly a starter.

I bet the word "appetizer" as the most conclusive of terms as to what a starter or Herbart's preparation really aims to achieve.

Bluntly, the starter activity must serve as an appetizer. It must boost your students' appetite for learning your subject.

Say for instance, you are teaching History, which can be really textual and dull depending on how you, as a teacher approaches the subject matter then your students come to your class from a really mentally-exciting subject (e.g. Maths) OR you are teaching a logic-based subject then your students come to your class from a creativity-based subject,  how as a teacher would you ready (another word is dispose) your students for your subject.

The starter is supposed to help you do just this. It's supposed to allow a smooth transition from a large chunk of information towards another large (possibly, totally different) chunk of information.

Hence, the starter is a make-or-break situation.

You do it right, there's more probability that your entire lesson will be great.

You screw up on the starter, your entire lesson can be severely hurt.

What starter can I do? There are a lot of ways in which you can start a lesson. It can be through a BIG question or a visual stimuli or a song or a poem or a game or...it's just limitless. The options are limitless. You can basically do anything you can think of as long as it motivates the student, it catches attention and it draws interest towards your class.

HOWEVER, as a teacher, I always believe that whenever we provide any learning stimulus (that includes a starter), we have to be wise and strategic enough to figure out that this stimulus brings us closer to achieving our instructional objectives.

Thus, if I am to discuss about animals and I want a song to be my starter, I would rather opt for "Old McDonald had a Farm" and not "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". I would reserve the latter for my discussion about heavenly bodies.

Similarly, the starter should be interesting. If your class is generally auditory and/or highly musical, then a song would  be the wisest starter. On the other hand, if your class is mostly kinesthetic then a brief game that involves movement can be done.

So what's my point? Simple. Choose a starter that can help you teach the lesson and that can equally entertain and arouse the students' interest.

Where does this starter lead me? Hmmm...I think I answered this earlier. A starter is a make-or-break moment. It can be a deciding factor as to whether you will have an effective lesson or not. In short, the starter either leads you to success or to doom. This is how important the starter is. REMEMBER: Motivation has a lot to do with how we behave and respond to situations (that include learning situations). If students are motivated to learn, they will learn quite well. If they are not motivated to learn (that is if they're bored and uninterested), they will find it difficult to focus and they will find it hard to learn as well.

What if my starter's gone wild? Ooops, that, for me, is really scary (and this happens to all of us) BUT, as a teacher, you must be prepared and ready to bring your students back on track. You just started the lesson, right? The succeeding part is always an opportunity to motivate the students and draw their attention towards what you want to achieve in class.