An Orientation Session: Understanding our Students

“Outer space may represent the ultimate frontier, but the most critical challenge confronting us now is ‘Inner space’ — understanding the basic nature and behavior of people.”

The counseling unit of OIS, Newton, held an orientation session on  ‘Collaborating with the Student Advisors’ for junior school teachers on the 6^th of January, 2014 by Dr. Shakila Naidu, Pooja Rajkumar, and Kavya Kaza (Student Advisors). The counseling unit aims to ensure the overall social and emotional well-being of students. The orientation session provided insights into the workings of the unit such as referral guidelines including identification, intake and recording procedures, classroom interactions, counseling intervention and awareness sessions being conducted for students and parents.  

The session started off with Dr. Shakila Naidu introducing the teachers to the counseling unit. Dr. Naidu provided the teachers with the basic concepts in child psychology. The case vignettes discussed by the group provided insights into the various challenges that the children may encounter such as developmental issues, emotional and behavioral concerns of teachers. The same case study was given to two different groups but with different questions. While one group was asked to speak about 5 challenges that they would face with that particular case, the other was asked to provide 5 strategies they would use to deal with the child.

This activity allowed the teachers to view situations from the child’s point of view which is essential to dealing with problematic children; it also helped the counseling unit and the teachers to share their experiences and get a better understanding of the techniques to be used. The teachers were able to clarify doubts on how to deal with students whom they have to help and the activity equipped them to deal with the problematic situations effectively on their own. To briefly describe this session, it could be called a sharing – learning session with equal emphasis on both.

The session ended with feedback and suggestions which will aid the counseling unit’s continuing efforts to streamline the collaborative process and provide effective intervention.