Guidance and the past year
These last twelve months have been an overwhelming adventure for most of us and this pandemic has hit us all in different ways. As Guidance department, we still recall that faithful day on the 12th of March of 2020 when schools closed for an indefinite period. It took us by surprise and no one was prepared for its effect.
Online sessions on a personal level with our students proved to be more difficult than expected. With help coming from other teachers and SLT we set up a Facebook page to make us more accessible to our students. Although we had a number of students and ex-students who made use of it, we still felt we needed more contact. In fact, most of the Guidance Team were offering their services online together with other teachers and Career Advisors on a national level.
However, this pandemic has surely affected us also on a personal level. On the first few days of your return to school this scholastic year, we tried to be there for our students by giving them the opportunity to talk about how all the situation had affected them personally.
Although we are getting used to this new normal, we are now adjusting to making sessions online with those who need so and one to one sessions with students who attend school. We have discovered that this pandemic has shone a spotlight on inequality, poverty, domestic violence and family dynamics. All these factors many times indirectly affected our students. If there is one thing that most of us have learnt during this past year, is the re-discovery of values and their importance in our daily lives. In this perspective, we may ask:
How can we help each other during this stressful period?
1. Being there for each other, whether we are teachers, students or SLT.
2. Focus more on the relationship rather than the academic. It is important that we feel worthy as persons.
3. Give time, we need time to adjust to this sudden change in our lives.
If we manage to put each other first and understand that we all have experienced this pandemic in a different way, we would be helping each other adjust better. As Guidance Team, together with the rest of the school staff, we promise to put our students first on our agenda always.
