Teacher’s training on art of counselling students underway

Rev Fr Paul Raj SDB, Director, Niraivagam, Don Bosco Institute of Psychological Services, Chennai interacting with participants during the training programme for teachers in the 'Art of Counselling Students.'

DIMAPUR, FEBRUARY 26 (MExN): Six days training programme for teachers from February 25 till March 3 in the ‘Art of Counselling Students’ organized by the Don Bosco Board Education at DBIDL, Dimapur is currently underway. 

The workshop is being conducted in three batches with forty four teachers hailing from 17 schools from the North East participating in the first batch of the workshop. 

Rev Fr Paul Raj SDB, Director, Niraivagam, Don Bosco Institute of Psychological Services, Chennai is the resource person, a press statement issued by the DBBE informed. 

Rev Fr Joseph TT, head of the Education Commission of Dimapur Province, while welcoming the participants, exhorted them to listen with an open and empathetic heart. 

Rev Fr Nazarius Lakra, Vice Provincial, Dimapur province in his key note, stressed on the urgency of having counsellors in all the educational institutions. 

The training programme has been organized while keeping in mind that today’s students grow up coping with academic, personal, relationship and social issues, the press statement said. While most of them learn to cope with these problems with little help, a sizeable number of youngsters become helpless and lead themselves into unhealthy behaviour and purposeless life, it stated. 

In this context, a caring, sensitive and empathetic teacher can act as a guide and counsellor to help such students to gain right perspectives and find solutions to the issues, the press statement suggested. 

To this end, this counselling training workshop has been designed to equip and train teachers to become barefoot counsellors in school and classroom settings, it further added. 

The training program will have the mode of ‘Instructor- led interactive presentation,’ using case studies, audio-visuals, practice demos, group work, dyad trainings, discussions and activities. 

The press statement also claimed that the training workshop will guarantee following outcomes among the participants- Understanding about the fundamentals of student counselling, Comprehensive knowledge of problems of student community and possible ways of handling them, Basic training in applying the counselling skills, Self-introspection on qualities that qualify a person to be a counsellor, Knowledge of the process of counselling etc.