Student Workshops

Respected principal,

 

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” – Aristotle

You know that the competition in schools and colleges is getting tougher. The rules of the game are changing. The unwritten rule about survival of the fittest necessitates not just courage and determination, but also requires emotional resilience to survive in this jungle.

You also realise that now, more than ever, our children are under great pressure to prove themselves. The percentage war is never ending, identity issues are getting more complex by the day, social media is luring our children into a utopian world where they find themselves inadequate or unluckier in comparison to their peers, who seem far happier. To add to it, raging hormones and changing personalities during adolescence makes life tougher to understand and hence, manage. Inability to handle the performance pressure or worse, failure, is leading to extreme measures, such as addictions, and even suicides.

Yes, sadly, our children are not always prepared to cope with these challenges. Today, there is so much emphasis on being strong, and smart that any weakness (even a perceived one) is considered taboo. It is not easy for our children to confide their insecurities in anyone, for fear of being judged. They have questions in their minds but do not have access to a neutral, trusted aide, a friend who will not judge them through a teacher’s or a parent’s lens, and give them objective answers.

Fortunately for these children, schools and colleges like yours are waking up to the fact that EQ is as important as IQ and are investing in a child’s emotional and psychological health. Because I understand these issues all too well, being a father myself, apart from being a therapist and counselor, I endeavour to provide one such platform where all student issues can be professionally handled with sensitivity and empathy. Where I am able to communicate to them not only what they want to hear, but also what they need to hear.

I know I can use the right skills and psychological tools to help them unshackle and fight the odds. Any odds. I would like to be the catalyst which will help in their transition, their transformation.

Based upon mutual convenience, I will conduct a session with your students in a closed door workshop, which will help them shed their inhibitions and talk to me as they would to a friend. Depending upon the time made available to me, I will put together a module that will address most of their unasked questions, even without their having to ask. And at the end of the session, I shall also take up questions that may have remained unanswered. I can take up some issues like

• Effective Communication
• Time management
• Goal Setting
• Problem Solving
• Confidence Building
• Habits
• Handling Conflicts
• Any mental blocks

What this workshop will NOT be is a lecture on how they should study more to become better students. This workshop will NOT be more of what they hear from their parents anyway. This workshop will also NOT be career counselling on what they need to take up based on their aptitude. I will not tell them what they need to do. I will attempt to identify the How’s that they are struggling with and attempt to provide them with solutions that are easy to understand and simple to implement. I will endeavour to reach the lowest common denominator so that no student who is attending my workshop feel left out and unattended to. My dream is, as my motto goes, to unshackle lives, and I shall be very glad if I am able to do that for these young ones.

My dear teacher!

I know that handling difficult students can be a tough job. My wife is a teacher and I can see the stress she goes through. Making lesson plans that are at a sedate enough pace for the students to understand but rapid enough to complete the syllabus in time is a juggling act that takes its toll on the best of your lot. To top that, handling difficult children, inclusive children, tough parents, and the demands of the management is sufficient to make anyone feel inadequately placed and cause untold amounts of stress. Then there are the book / assessment / exam paper checking duties, which also consume massive amounts of time. To top it all, having to handle both work and home becomes a task in itself, because you feel so overworked that often you feel you have no time to breathe even. You are not happy, your family is not happy, no one is happy. Believe me, I know. I have seen my wife toiling through the night to ready herself for some event or some assessment or even just correcting books. And I sometimes see just how incapable she considers herself in being able to manage her time well. So I can well understand what you may be going through.

But, if you allow me to step into your life, I can perhaps show you through a workshop, specially designed for teachers, a slightly better way of handling all of this, which will allow you to have a better work-life balance, and yet be able to do your work more efficiently. You can also step out of the shadows and make your lives more enriched. I will not only tell you what to do, but also how to do it.

You have been instrumental in moulding the lives of so many children. Let me help you mould yours.

Teaching is a tough job, because it involves so much more than just teaching. But we know you still don’t want to do anything else. The gratification, the fulfillment that comes with being able to prepare our young generation for the future, is second to none. However, that does not mean that the profession is a bed of roses. No one sees the hours of extra work that you put in outside the school. No one sees the jugglery between tending to your own life and managing work. And that is bound to bring its share of ups and downs, some of which you sometimes feel unable to cope with. Just know that it is ok to feel lost sometimes, not ok to not seek the way.

So please talk to me if you think the stress is getting to be too much to bear, and you would want to speak to me on a one-on-one basis. I will help you assess your burnout, and we can plan out a coping regimen for you as well. Keep hope and hang in there. Don’t feel alone, you’ve got this. And I am here for you.

If you have the need for my services, I have the right offer for you. The sliding scale makes it possible to offer a flexible fee structure to you that will not pinch your pocket, whether it is for a workshop, or for individual counselling. I will try to never let money stand in the way of my intention to help. The fee structure that will be applicable is a dynamic structure that takes into account the number of hours, the number of students and the monthly fees they pay to the school.

I am certain that in case you engage with me, I will be able to provide immense value. Please talk to me, to know more. In case, what I am charging you is still unaffordable, do let me know. I promise to do my best to work with you despite the constraints.