Counselors’ role in students’ learning
What is learning?
Learning is a continuous process and a life time experience which results in the change of an individual’s behavior. As learning is a life time experience, it takes place at every stage of development. But childhood and adolescence is the most important and crucial stage of learning in terms of Social skills such as Interacting with people, working in a team, Guiding each other, cooperating and developing leadership qualities.
The role of Social Agent in students with learning difficulties
To nurture these skills among students in a school setting parents, teachers and counselors has a great role to play. Parents may nurture a child with love affection, taking care about their health and fulfilling all their basic needs, but they may not know the reasons behind a child’s learning difficulties. On the other hand Teachers concentrate more on the performance of a student in their respective subjects rather than the overall performance whereas a counselor observes the overall performance and other activities of the student.
For instance If a student is poor in studies, the teacher will call the parents and complain about the student’s poor performance in a particular subjects and in response to which parents put the child to a tuition thinking as the only solution to the child’s learning difficulties but that’s not an exact solution to the problem and this is the stage where the counselor has an important role to play. Counselors act as a bridge between a student, teacher and even parent.
4 categories of students found in a school setting
- 1. Students with learning difficulties.
2. Students who are very intelligent,Bright,and clever.
3. Tensed and Anxious Students.
4. Students having inferiority complex and low self confidence and so on.
The role of a counselor in all these categories of students
1.Students with learning difficulties can be dealt by a counselor through getting the feedback from the teacher to know the performance level of the student in the respective subjects and then talk to the student about his/her problem. Administer some learning tests to see his/her grasping ability, understanding and the level of concentration then draw a personal timetable keeping difficult subjects in mind and motivate the student work on the loopholes.
2. Students who are very intelligent, bright, and clever does not require special teaching or suggestions, just motivate, encourage and provide an opportunity to exhibit their talent and creativity.
3. Students may become very anxious and Tensed at the time of examination. At this point a counselor can reduce tension and anxiety by suggesting the student to spend some time to things of their interests like playing games and so on which acts as a stress buster.
4.There are students who are very inferior and with low self confidence, to overcome their inferiority complex and to boost their self confidence a counselor can organize a program such as debate about an ongoing issues in the society take for instance ‘Prevention of Corruption’ and ask the students to discuss in the group and motivate them to come out with their individual views and appreciate their opinions, which in turn will be helpful in interacting with people, team work, to overcome inferiority complex, to build leadership qualities among students and also help them get updated with the ongoing societal issues.
Importance of a counselor
On a whole the counselor will take part in contributing a bit in upbringing the young generation to build a healthy society.