This page is devoted to topics related to guidance counselling and student emotional and social support. Please post discussion topics, links and resources that you think will be valuable to others working in the field.
Technology/Cyber Addiction
As a beginning...
For a Health Education course I finished recently, I completed on a Technology Addiction Teaching Project. Here is a teaching resource I compiled to support several teaching sessions I ran for two students that raised some concern. I am not sure if it will be useful for others or not but in the interest of sharing resources please have a look. This is a topic I think will become an even bigger issue in the future so am working on developing some expertise in this area. Any feedback welcome! - Adam YIS
Student Time Commitment
Another KPISCA Member school has been discussing the topic of student time commitment and over-commitment over the course of this year. A working group was formed who then put forth recommendations for the Admin to consider as policy decisions are made for next year. This topic is not unique to this school alone. When I went to a TOK workshop in Hong Kong in February the topic came up informally there with other IB teachers from a variety of schools. It has apparently been discussed among recruiters away at the job fairs, as well, so this is a topic that seems to be on a lot of people's minds.
- Is student time comittment an issue at your school?
- Do you have an ideas on how to manage this aspect of student life?
Below are the recommendations that came out of the that working group for the admin team to look over.
Proposal Summary
Rationale
- Students are under significant and often competing time demands.
- Homework and deadlines ebb and flow between extremes resulting in periods of noteworthy stress.
- Many students appear to lack effective time management skills.
- It appears that we could be teaching the wrong lessons to our students. We encourage them to participate in a wide variety of activities but see them dropping activities they have "commited" to when other commitments become pressing or to become over-stressed trying to do it all.
Process
The working group met weekly or bi-weekly to discuss various aspects of student schedule demands. We conducted informal research into student time concerns by survey and conversational poling. Other topics of meeting discussions included various methods for organizing the school day (additional periods, half-days for sport, rotating time tables), and coordinating extra-curricular commitments including the inclusion of extra-curricular activities into the timetable. Despite the relevance of these options to the concerns at hand, many of these decisions were beyond the scope of the working group. The recommendations were developed by an interdepartmental committee, presented to the MS/HS faculty on two occasions to receive feedback and posted on an on-line discussion forum for 3 weeks for additional comment. To the best of our ability we believe they represent the general consensus of the faculty as a whole.
Recommendations
- Introduce Activity Management Structure for Grades 9-12 with:
- a) Extra-curricular activities should be divided into 3 time periods corresponding with Fall, Winter and Spring.
- b) Students limited to a maximum of extra-curricular involvement. (16 hours per week or 8 Units is a number we have been considering.)
- c) Student activity profiles could be monitored by tutors.
- Create greater consistency and coordination of assignment deadlines and homework. We already have a G9-10 homework schedule that may not be as effective as desired. Day to day mechanisms for ensuring better coordination of deadlines and should come from HOD’s since they will presumably be the ones to put this into effect.
- Provide Formal Time Management Training - Possible venues: Activity Supervisors(coaches etc), during PSHE (G9), during tutor periods. Content and approach would vary depending on context.
- Additional Considerations
The working group requests that the SLT look into:
a) The quantity of school related activities that fall outside the time-table with the aim of bringing more into the regular school day.
b) Repeating Friday schedules to gain back lost time.
Please post comments or ideas below
Comments (1)
A. Clark said
at 9:13 am on May 15, 2008
This issue is a concern for us as well. Our adviser/tutor program includes a goal setting exercise at the beginning of each year. One idea I had for the start of next year is to include a interview template that all advisers would go through with their tutees. That interview could include the goal setting content we have used in past years but explicitly ask questions like what activities the student plans on doing this year and how many hours they think that will take per week. There has been room for that information in the current activity but not consistently reported. That change would provide the adviser with the information to help the student negotiate time commitment more effectively than I think we are able to now.
In a study I read recently about after school employment, the researchers reported that part time employment of students up to 20 hours does not have a significant impact on student performance or other risk indicators such as substance abuse, risk taking behaviors, lower self-esteem. More than 20 hours was found to be associated with increased substance abuse, lower academic performance, aggression, and a number of other indicators. While the study was about part-time employment it is interesting to consider that study as we look at extra-curricular involvement as well. The 16 hours mentioned above would be within the "safety margin" of that study. I'll see if I can track that down and post it as a pdf somehow.
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