Moreover, the pandemic and its far-reaching consequences forced a sudden shift to online group interventions, providing an opportunity to practice them without preparation, gather information and reflect about what happened during the intervention meetings and analyze their outcomes.
Group Interventions in Schools
“Group therapy interventions refer to a format of several individuals taking part in a psychological intervention aimed at helping them change or deal with a long-lasting problem they are encountering, guided by a therapist or counselor.” (Gidron, 2013).
Background, Model and Programs
The innovative Synchronous Growth Model: Addressing Students’ Developmental Needs while Broadening Teachers’ Educational Skills (Yaniv, 2019) was developed using a theoretical framework constructed of four pillars:
- Humanistic education as the guiding philosophy
- Pedagogy and practices
- The biopsychosocial approach
- Bio-behavioral synchrony and social and emotional learning (SEL)
The model consists of two modules: a student-centered module and teacher-focused module.
Integrating SEL into everyday class activities can broaden teachers’ educational skills and effectiveness. Therefore, the first course teaching this approach titled: Group-Facilitator Certification Course in the Israeli Education System was offered to experienced teachers in their sabbatical year by the Israeli Ministry of Education’s Central Teacher Training School in school year 2019-2020.
Article objectives
The objectives of this article are:
- To recommend that education systems redefine teaching strategies and methods to include a psychoeducational approach that empowers teachers to integrate social emotional learning (SEL) into their routine instruction
- To share the experiences of teaching the course and supervising twenty-two teachers in conducting group intervention meetings for students across sixteen groups
- To describe the changes that the program underwent due to the need to shift to blended learning, which combines online and face-to-face methods (Hodges et al., 2020) because of the need to social distance and to obtain teacher and student feedback on the process
Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, program administrators expected that the outcomes of implementing the program would be reflected in student and teacher well-being. The anticipation was that both students and teachers would better understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships and make smart, practical decisions. The administrators decided to continue the program online during lockdown in order to maintain the routine, but did not expect to achieve the program’s goals.
