Experiential Training of Teachers for Guidance Counceling in Schools

Alifragi - Sakka M., Sigalas I.M., Kalyva C., Karagiannis D.

Child Mental Health Center, Social Security Institute, Greece

IV^th European Conference of the European Family Therapy Association, Budapest, 2001.
 

An experiential training course for teachers, who work as guidance counselors in public high schools, is described here. It lasted 120 hours and was a part of a wider program held by the University of Athens. It aimed to help teachers enhance their self-knowledge and develop skills of effective communication with students and their families. The themes of the course were communication, family - group and classroom dynamics. They were processed according to the Dialectic - Systemic Approach, which has been developed at the Athenian Institute of Anthropos, by George and Vasso Vassiliou. According to this approach Anthropos is an autonomous, biopsychosicial system, which forms wider systems in levels of progressively higher organized complexity, the social groups. Those groups serve their members' functioning, only if they follow co-operative directions. On the contrary, when the relations between the members of a social group are antagonistic and exploitative, entropic developments are manifested resulting in malfunctioning of their members.
 

Teachers' work in Counseling and Guidance is to train adolescents to make decisions for Life Orientation that is for a meaningful living. Their basic means to achieve that purpose is awareness of their own feelings and activation of their experiences. Those skills can be obtained only through relating. Thus we had to train teachers experientially to communicate in many levels: with members of their families, with peers, with their students etc. Our major concern was creating a supportive emotional climate within the teachers' group, treating everybody equally. We respected human value, focusing on the inner self of the person and not to the appearance.

Τrainees participated actively during the training program by:

• talking about their feelings and personal experiences
• role playing as members of a family or a classroom
• discussing in small groups and in the whole group.

During the course, the grouping process of the trainees was activated and special emphasis was given to the evolution of cooperative relations between the group members. Furthermore its process was influenced by the interaction between the groups of trainees and trainers, according to the principle of coevolution. Consequently trainers had to evolve their grouping process towards collective and cooperative directions, so as to give a functional model to the trainees.

The teaching content of the course was based to a general plan, held by trainers, but it was modified according to the process analysis of each meeting.

One has to put new life into peer relationships, in order to reverse the existing atmosphere of mistrust (ατμόσφαιρα δυσπιστίας). You wonder how this process can help you in your teaching and parenting roles. And especially how you can confront the loneliness and isolation, in which you have been led by your social and professional contexts.

It is very difficult to put in order the complicated stimuli you receive. You want to learn to work out your feelings, because that way you may find a way to communicate. But how persons with different codes of communication can communicate?

You find care, approach, warmth, participation, and safety in this place. You feel sympathy for the difficult role of the leader, who has to synthesize personal needs, peer relationships, develops a functional context and provide care and training. But you do not let yourself to live the experience. Also, while you feel positive feelings for your fellow, you wonder how you can approach him, if he cannot understand your words. So you don't experience completely the phase of your own training, but you try to answer to what is asked logically (not experientially), interpreting and leaning to stereotypes.

But the effort is not yet lost. And, in order to finish with the less possible loss, you need more guidance. Does the development of a deeper relationship between the leaders and of creative dialogue in the group have an importance? The change of the (training) context affects the psychology of the trainees. But one begins with tension in order to reach a solution.

You want to develop ways of better communication, so that to understand better those for whom you are responsible (your students). However the communication and cooperation with peers is more difficult.

By observing the leaders you feel that they are not different from you, as they have the same problems, the same goals and worries. And, by experiencing them, you feel moved and you turn inwards to find the human being hiding inside yourself. Despite the difficulties you are convinced that by participating in this process you may function more sufficiently.

Eventually you feel satisfaction, completion and sadness. Any new opportunity to widen the context is for you a pleasant surprise. That way you understand that, even if it seems difficult, you may open new horizons in your life, exist in other contexts and find solutions of new difficult problems. From now on you will communicate better with your own trainees, because: You have learned to control yourself better, to work out your feelings, to express yourself and listen carefully the others. you learned the value of silence. you experienced the group dynamic with its difficulties. you have the difficulty to accept the others' uniqueness. you expanded your horizons. You have communicated substantially with the other members of the group. Now you need to redefine yourself in your own area of responsibility. But you feel inadequate to apply what you've learned in your area of responsibility. You wonder "for how long will this change last without feedback?".

At the end of the program we asked the participants to describe their experience with one word or phrase. Here are some of their answers:

• Grouping process is a very difficult, but also a very meaningful matter.
• I learned to accept the frame of reference of the other.
• It should be repeated.
• It was only a beginning.

Teachers, who participated in this program having cognitive goals, gradually understood the need for personal differentiation and activation of their feelings, as well as those of their students, in order to help them.