Conclusions and Recommendations
Group interventions are very empowering forces. For teachers, they are a tool for breaking down barriers toward life-changing opportunities. For children, they build confidence to open doors to better lives.
The Group-Facilitator Training Program, based on a humanistic philosophy and values, guides teachers’ practices through the inclusive Synchronous Growth Model toward personalization, the core principle of Future-Oriented Pedagogy.
Trainees achieved competence and emotional literacy through group interventions that employed the supportive-expressive group counseling approach.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic forced program administrators to integrate between Future-Oriented Pedagogy and facing the demands of “here and now.” Although not predicted, the COVID-19 outbreak gave administrators the opportunity to shift to “emergency education mode” and observe, in real time, the ramifications on groups undergoing interventions.
Despite the lack of preparation and the need to modify goals, blended learning triggered changes in teacher and student emotions and behaviors that were meaningful and successful (see: Trainee’s Testimonial: Insights into the Group Process and the Process of Change: The Story of C.).
This article does not attempt to distinguish between or compare online learning to face-to-face instruction. Yet, this particular experience of shifting to emergency remote teaching was proven feasible and challenges the stigma that online learning is lower quality than face-to-face learning (Hodges et al., 2020). This debate will likely rage on in the 2020-2021 school year.
The challenges of the pandemic, including VUCA, for families and children worldwide will continue; therefore, its force cannot be ignored. The WHO predicts that the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to have psychological impact, with mental health crises caused by increasing depression and anxiety if substantial investments in mental health services are not made (Substantial investment needed to avert mental health crisis, 2020). Households will continue to be deeply affected, and due to their vulnerability to emotional and behavioral disorders, children and adolescents will be at risk and deserving of special attention and care on a daily basis. Therefore, educational counselors are making targeted recommendations to psychology and education policymakers, teachers and parents. Together, children’s primary caregivers – both teachers and parents – should monitor children’s well-being carefully and intensively. Both are expected to take joint responsibility and collaborate in raising their own self-awareness to emotions and behaviors, managing stress and anxiety, establishing and maintaining healthy and rewarding relationships (including empathizing with others) and making wise and productive decisions (What is SEL?, 2020). For this purpose, based on teacher input and feedback, the program’s educational counselor (who is the course developer and instructor) is currently developing “Better Together,” the Teacher-Parent Partnership Course, to be taught in the future.
