TOWARDS A HEALTHIER AND HAPPIER TOMORROW
Mayo College Girls’ School aims to give a healthier and happier life to all the students. The school believes in UNIQUENESS OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL. It is a student centered institution where the holistic development of all the students is supreme. The school has provided its students with a right kind of environment to assist them for overcoming their emotional issues. The students are surrounded by a number of staff members who are guiding them to lead a comfortable life at Mayo College Girls’ School. We have the principal who is a full time counselor, a trained and well qualified official counselor There is a separate counselling cell in the School building where students and parents can have personal sessions with the counselor . Since the school has taken this positive initiative, lets’ view and understands the term counseiling.
COUNSELLING
The scholars have exhibited variations in their viewpoints regarding defining the term ‘’COUNSELLING’’. One major cause of these variations is occurrence of historical changes in the perceptions of the persons. Various writers have tried to explain the term counseling in various ways. A consensus type of definition was put forward by Gustard. He defined counseling as ‘’ learning oriented, carried on in a one- to- one social environment. The counselor who is competent and knowledgeable assists the client to learn, understand himself and perceive realistically defined goals. At the end, the client becomes happier, healthy and a productive person in the society.’’
There is a formal accreditation for a counselor. It is mandatory for a school counselor to have a post graduate degree in psychology along with a postgraduate diploma or degree in guidance and counselling from a recognized university. The history of counselling helps us understand how it emerged as a separate discipline with a specific focus on providing assistance to persons in dealing with problems in the normal course of living. It is a systematic and scientific process with well specified goals. It is not dictating to others or telling them what to do. It is not solving another’s problem, but helping him/her to become self decisive. It is focused largely on helping students to reach intelligent decisions in all areas of life. The major goal of counseling is increased self responsibility and an increased maturity in decision-making on the part of the student. In democratic society individual differences have significance. They are perceived as being important to individual development and are considered in the field of education so that every individual becomes a happy , well developed person as well as a good citizen. In recent times, rapid social change caused by industrialization and urbanization has led to varied and perplexing problems. It creates serious problems of adjustment for most of people. This means counseling should begin early in school and should continue to enable the individuals to meet vocational and personal problems of adjustments in later life. The development of counselling profession has come about partly as a result of the sheer complexity of modern life. With the increasing complexities of life came the realisation that school and home were not in a position to provide timely assistance to growing children and youth. The important goals of counseling are facilitating behavior changes, helping client to resolve his /her problems, enhancing the client’s effectiveness and ability to cope with life’s problems, promoting the decision making process and facilitating the client to develop his/her own potential. Some of the important skills required for counselling are building a rapport with the client, attending skills, active listening, empathetic understanding, objective observation, respect or acceptance of the client without being judgmental, genuineness, sharing, confronting skills, learning detached attachment.
Counselling must take into cognizance the totality of the personality development. Individual differences should be kept in mind while dealing with the client. Counselor must try to help the client formulate worthwhile goals which are reasonable and attainable. If we discuss education and counselling together then it is an educationist’s prime responsibility to make a child literate and also inculcate attitudes for positive living. When there are problems of learning disability, under achievement, truancy, attention deficit, poor motivation,indiscipline or related behavioural problems, the teacher has to depend on counselling skills. Finally we can say that Mayo College Girls’ School is working towards a mission to give healthier and happier citizens to the society.