Less Fearful, More Active: The School Counsellors
The gesture dance at the last session of CBI at Bahçecik Körfez Primary School, Kocaeli. Photograph by Yakut Temiroğlu-Sundur © UNICEF Turkey 2000
The School Counsellors
In particular, the Guidance and Research Centres (GRC) counsellors have found a new role in the school system and in the communities which they serve, becoming active as helpers and facilitators, perceived by all concerned as relevant and important to the future of their communities.
Direct contact with the professionals of the NET team gave us comfort and the strength to reach the children.
The school counsellors have been the primary facilitators of the Psycho-social School Project at the community level. Reports of improved moral, high degrees of professional satisfaction, feelings of usefulness and increased productivity have been forthcoming. Their opinions of the project are that it was a timely and important step towards communal recovery when so many felt overwhelmed by the extent of the disaster, lost in the confusion of it’s aftermath, and that the project gave them professional direction in order to contribute to recovery.
I’m very happy to have been a part of this programme. Although the working conditions were very hard, I enjoyed the experience of working with the children. On the final day of the CBI, they didn’t want us to go. I was very moved by their tears.
Counsellors said that the spirit of co-operation within the community and throughout the school system on a local and inter-provincial level was enlightening and liberating in the face of their own difficulties with the disaster. Many found the opportunities to meet with other counsellors throughout the region, discussing the practical details of implementation and sharing responses to personal problems to be a natural, confidence-building experience. Improvements in trauma-counselling and communication skills have been cited as the most important professional advantage of the programme. Counsellors feel that, in professional and personal terms, the project was successful in its aim of reaching the children in need. Furthermore, many felt that their guiding role had been enhanced beyond the exigencies of the disaster, becoming more relevant to the children’s everyday needs.
The school counsellors enjoyed working with, and training other teachers and adults as well as with the children. Working with NET, counsellors are optimistic that the extra dimension of study and research will improve their professional skills in the future. In terms of improvements and adjustments to project structure, it has been said that there should be more support -- to ‘help the helpers’ -- since the demands of the project are heavy on all concerned.
The fully illustrated text of Less Fearful, More Active is also available for download in print-ready pdf format. [PDF 1.25MB]
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