At the end, the end arrives

After having been teaching during one semester about Counseling and Guidance at Schools, I want to say that it is a very important part of the School. However, the role and action of School Guidance and Counseling is not only its responsability, for making this action effective it is necessary a good communication and relationship between Counselor, teachers and parents. But we do not have to forget that Counselor is the head of this guide, if we take into account the cooperation aforementioned, Counselor is a supportive agent, the one who guides teachers and parents into attention to diversity process.

From my point of view, this subject has been important because it treats real problems to which we will have to deal in a not so far future. It is not a subject in which just theory is given, in which you feel bored and you ask yourself: why am I studying this for?

School Guidance Plan Presentation

Today we have done our School Guidance Plan Presentation. Regrettably  it was not as good as we expected so we will repeted in few days. We will do it perfect then !

The rest of the presentation were good ones, everyone has been working hard to achieve this work.

Tutoring

Today we have learnt how to deal and success in an interview with parents. I found it interesting because it is something that we will have to do in our future job, and it is good to know how to deal with it and succeed in it.

Good examples

Last two sessions had been spent in real examples of Guidance. The first one is a talk about Mentoring between equals, you can know about it in the part of this blog called "Mentoring between equals". The second one is a School Counselor talk, you can know about ir in the part of this blog called "A good example to be guided by".
Hope you enjoy it !

Let's start School Guidance Plan

Today we have started to work in our next and final groupal work: to elaborate a school School Guidance Plan. I hope that this one will be as successful as the previous ones. The main information to develop this activity is the following one, although teacher has made us able to look at some examples of real School Guidance Plans.

Attention to diversity and collaborative debate

Today in class we have done a debate as a way of closing attention to diversity activities. We stated putting on common its meaning and the things we have learnt by doing these activities. As I have said before, attention to diversity is a very important factor in our future role as teachers.

After it, we have talked about collaborative learning, a topic which came to the topic because the most of the activities happened in a collaborative learning context, with the rest of the students cooperating among them. Here we deal with two concepts: collaborative learning and teams work. The following video is going to show us what exactly collaboration and teams work is.

Diversity activities

The last three sessions were the exposition of our groupal works. All the groups explain the contents they had and they completed the information with an activity in which the rest of the class took part. They have been great presentations and I personally enjoyed a lot doing the activities, especially with one in which we made a contest and for each good answer we received a sweet. As children, we tried to answer the most of them in the correct way. In this example we see that motivation is the best way to get what you want from your audience, whether children or adults.

Don't disturb ! Diversity in process...

The last two sessions we have been working in our groups in order to prepare the work about diversity. Today was the last day for doing it at class, it is almost ready but we have to keep on doing some things. Let’s see how it goes… Hopefully as well as the last one or even better !

Next groupal work: Attention to diversity

Today we have spoken about our next groupal work. This one is about diversity. The concept of diversity encompasses acceptance and respect. It means understanding that each individual is unique, and recognizing our individual differences.  These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies.  It is the exploration of these differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing environment. It is about understanding each other and moving beyond simple tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of diversity contained within each individual.

Each group is going to focus his work in a specific group of people who needs diversity and in its measures. For doing it, we are going to think how we will give a class to these kinds of children.

 The groups are the following ones:

1. Special Education Needs provision within Mainstream Education (Students with specific need of ed. support)
2. Separate Special Education Needs provision in Early Childhood and School Education (Students with specific need of ed. support)
3. Support Measures for learners in Early Childhood and School Education (Students in disadvantaged situation)

Exam day ! But do not panic

Today we have done an exam in order to know if we get the knowledge about School Guidance and Counselling; both from the presentations and from the “Group of Experts” activity. But it was a quite peculiar exam because we are going to correct our exam. I think that is a good activity because we have to learn to be critical and how to value an exam. It was also a good activity in order to know what we really know about this topic and what points do we have to reinforce.

Group of experts

Today we have done an activity called “Group of experts”. In this activity we have put ourselves in groups. Each group were experts of one topic and, with some information that the teacher gave us, we had to prepare it to explain it later to others groups. The difference between a presentation and this activity is that after doing this, a person of each group went to another group to explain them the contents that he or she got. By doing this, we made new groups composed by people from all the first groups, so they could share information.

The aim of this activity was to focus in the Spanish context what we have learned in general about School Guidance and Counselling in our previous presentations.

The topics we had to become experts of were the following ones:

            1. Spain: Guidance and Counselling in Early Childhood.

            2. Spain: Guidance and Counselling in Higher Education

            3. Spain: Guidance and Counselling in a Lifelong Learning Approach.

            4. Spain: Support Measures for Learners in Adult Education and Training.

As we have seen, it was a collaborative activity. It was a very good activity because it is a dynamic way of learning new things. I find it also interesting because it is a way of giving responsibility to the student and this make him feels good and important, he feels that he has a role in the class and that he are someone in it even being a student. The responsibility in this case was telling the information of his first group to other people that did not know anything about it.

Presentations are already finished

The last two sessions the rest of the class was presenting their work. They were also good presentations. In going to put them in the part of “Others S.G.&C. presentations” so you can see the different views of our class. Today I have realised that there are not a global view of a concept. Even for a thing that seems to be clear and common for everyone, there are a lot of points of view. As far as I am concerned, this fact is a good education for us. I think this because since we are going to be teachers, we have to be open-minded people to be able to work with other people as a group and, also, to be able to deal with all the different children we will upbring.

Presentation has arrived !

Today my group has done the Powerpoint presentation. I think that it went quite well and I am satisfied with the work we have done. However, we were a little bit nervous and this made us looked insecure I think… This was the negative aspect that I observe. Although this, in general, it was a good presentation. Some other groups exposed their presentations today, they were also good presentations although nerves played a trick on much of them as a consequence of being the first presentation I think. If I am able to get them I will uploaded in the blog so the most possible information will be available.

As a personal evaluation I have to say that I have found this project absolutelly interesting and useful. I say this because I think that without doing it, we will be learning a subject which do not even know what it means. In addition, and more related with our future job, if we are going to be teachers and we do not know nothing about guidance or counselling, what kind of teachers are we going to be?

Presentations in process...

We have been working in our presentations the last three sessions… It has been a really hard work because it is a new subject about we have not much idea but I think that we already can say that we got it ! Let’s see how the presentation goes… Well I hope !

WebQuest

Today we have talked about what a WebQuest is. A WebQuest are activities, using Internet resources, which encourage students to use higher order thinking skills to solve a real messy problem. WebQuests are a sub-set of Problem-Based Learning (PBL).

WebQuest main advantages are:

            - Teachers around the world are making WebQuests for their own classes as well as to share.

            - Students of all ages and grades can use WebQuests.

            - Most, if not all, of the information used in WebQuests is drawn from the Internet.

            - Students are provided with online resources and are asked to use this information constructively to solve the presented problem rather than just cutting and pasting material into an assignment or project.

            - By eliminating the need to search or hunt for information the student is given more time to analyse, criticise and assess the information they find.

            - WebQuests are inquiry-oriented activities designed to make the most of the student's time.

            - Most schools cannot afford the time or resources required to allow students to search the Internet without a clear purpose in mind, and there is doubtful educational benefit in doing so. WebQuests allow students to use the Internet without the arduous task of filtering through the mountains of information contained within it. Teachers have done this work already!

            - Great WebQuests direct students to not only search for information but to debate, discuss or defend a particular stance with classmates.

WebQuests are designed:

            - From the perspective of student/learner

            - As coherent and relevant units - either as short term lessons (a few days/lessons) to long term projects

            - With a whole to part organisation

            - With the teacher as facilitator

            - With learning through the active construction of meaning

            - For flexible environments

            - To support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

WebQuest essential components are:

            - Introduction

            An introduction that draws the learners attention to the topic and inspires them into action. It should contain a hook.

            - Task

A task that is drawn from the introduction and sets out the goal. It is the most important aspect of the WebQuest. There is often a Focus Question that defines the task. The task needs to be based on Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and contain a messy problem to solve.

            - Resources

Resources that are necessary for the task, most of which will be Internet links.

            - Process

A description of the process the learners should go through in solving the messy problem. The process is broken up into clearly described steps and may designate roles or perspectives to the learners. Giving students roles helps them use their emotional intelligence and demonstrates how different people have different views within the community. 

            - Evaluation

An evaluation is the guidelines for how students will be assessed. It is usually in a Rubric. Evaluation rubrics come in many forms and rubrics designed by the teacher are the most authentic.

            - Conclusion

A conclusion brings closure to the quest, addresses the answering of the Focus Question, and should challenge the learner to act upon what they have achieved within their local environment.

Teacher's Guide

Not regarded, by most, as an Essential Component, the Teacher's Guide allows other teachers to quickly see if the WebQuest meets their requirements.

It should contain the following:

            - Learners: a description of the grade level and students

            - Curriculum Standards: at least a link to the Standards that this WebQuest complies with.

            - Duration: the amount of time needed to complete this WebQuest.

            - Implementation strategies

For finishing, I am going to show you the WebQuest which is going to serve us as guidance tool in our first work. Here you got it: http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=130058

FIRST DAY, FIRST SESSION

Today it was the presentation of the subject. In it, we have done some icebreakers to present ourselves. After it, we tried to give a definition or an idea of what School Guidance and Counselling is. We first tried to do it individually, and all the answers were in the same way: “Guiding children in their academical learning and their personal problems”. After, we tried to do it in couples, and the result was nearly the same: “Putting children in the correct way, help them to take the right decision in both academical and personal life”. And finally, we tried to do it in groups, and the answer was amplified: “Advising children in their academical life taking into account their individual context and, at the same time, helping them to go through their personal problems”. 

After doing all these things, we noticed that we are using always the same words, which are the key words of it: Counselling, context, academical and personal problems, identify and solve problems, tools, guidance, diversity, tutorship... 

For finishing, I would like to share my personal definition, which is the following one: “Trying to show the correct way to the student, in both academical and personal ways, by helping him with the troubles he could find in them, but always being aware of his personal context and his personal conditions and characteristics”. A personal explanation that I would like to say is that Counselors are not superheroes. They are common people which are formed to give the best advice in each situation and they will try to do their best; but, sometimes, troubles get unsolved even with this help. In these cases, when troubles get unsolved, Counselors have to spend more time with this child in order to help them in other ways.