Counseling at WvSG Gronau
Counseling is part of the work of all teachers at our school and takes place on a daily basis. Even a brief informal conversation during class or between the doors of the school, with the whole class, with a smaller group or with individual students has a counseling character. Likewise, counseling takes place in every parent-teacher meeting, even outside of parent-teacher conferences and other formal settings, as part of the educational partnership between home and school.
Subject teachers and class teachers or year group leaders are the day-to-day counselors. Counseling is also provided by specially trained counseling teachers, the level coordinators and the school social workers. Specialists from Diakonie Gronau regularly offer counseling on the school premises. In cases where this seems sensible or necessary, the school's counseling teachers work together with the school psychological counseling center of the Borken district as well as with various extracurricular supporters and institutions.
Teachers also consult with each other about the pupils they teach and advise each other in peer case consultations.
Counseling - a relationship process
Counseling takes place in a network of relationships, in the most common case between the student, possibly parents/household and teacher/school. This core constellation is embedded in the respective more complex relationship structure of family, class, peer groups, teachers, school community, etc.
Confidentiality is a central component of counseling at our school. Counseling teachers and school social workers are bound to confidentiality.
Two key references
There are two focal points of school counseling: counseling in the context of school careers, learning and academic performance and counseling in the area of personal development or psychosocial issues. In practice, these focal points prove to be focal points of an ellipse, as developmental tasks, conflicts or problems often cannot be clearly assigned to one or the other area. The focus can also shift during a counseling process.
Three basic situations
Counseling takes place in three basic situations, namely 1. to provide preventive stimulation and assistance in coping with developmental tasks in adolescence and to prevent crises, 2. to intervene and support in the actual counseling case, and 3. to reflect on the developmental task after it has been mastered and to provide aftercare with those involved in the school.
Advice between voluntariness and obligation
Counseling in the school context is always voluntary. The success of school counseling also depends on the student, parent or teacher being willing to not only endure the counseling process, but to actively shape it in order to change something or themselves. On the other hand, counseling is part of the school's educational mandate. Teachers are obliged to at least offer counseling to students and their parents if they observe or notice that the students are at risk of not meeting the requirements that the school's educational program places on them, or if they reasonably suspect that the student's development is significantly impaired.
Cooperation
Counseling in the school context is dependent on cooperation with other agencies. It is good practice to clarify in counseling sessions at school whether there is a need for further counseling, what this need is and to establish contact with a suitable further offer. Staff from counseling centers outside of our school also play a role in providing further training and expert support to the counseling team and all teachers.
The Werner-von Siemens-Gymnasium maintains contact with the following extracurricular counseling centers and cooperation partners: school psychological counseling center of the Borken district, Caritas in Gronau / Epe, Diakonie in Gronau, youth welfare office, police, GrowNet integration center, family education center, Gronau hospice association, "Hummel" association - and other cooperation partners. The Diakonie family counseling center offers regular consultation hours at the Werner-von-Siemens-Gymnasium Gronau.
Educational partnership as a building block for effective counseling
The same principles essentially apply to counseling for and with parents, with an important shift in emphasis: counseling can be particularly effective when parents and school work together in an educational partnership, i.e. when parents and teachers meet as equals and agree to act together for the good of the child - if possible also together with the child or adolescent.
Collaboration in and cooperation with the school crisis team
The members of the counseling team at Werner-von-Siemens-Gymnasium Gronau are part of the school crisis team. They mainly cover the psychosocial aspects of the crisis team's work. They work together with the other members of the crisis team and in particular the school management on a case-by-case basis, are available as contact persons in the event of a crisis and take part in appropriate training.
Prevention includes all actions by pupils, teachers and parents that strengthen and support non-violent, respectful and appreciative coexistence. Extracurricular and extracurricular activities are of great importance here: a lively school community whose members are connected to each other through joint action prevents disrespect and violence in a meaningful way and provides a supportive framework for the development of children and young people.
The same values - appreciation, respect, non-violence - also apply to the school's core business, teaching and everything associated with it. In the following, those aspects of the work at our school are mentioned that are explicitly classified as preventative measures.
Preventing violence: strengthening social interaction
Lions Quest in Year 5; "Theater against bullying" and "Lions Quest" project days in Year 6; activities and projects under the motto "School without racism"
Media education
Training and activities of media scouts at the school; the school's internal concept for media education; this also includes information and discussion evenings for parents in the area of media education in cooperation with the "Parents and Media Initiative"
Addiction prevention
Project days on addiction prevention: "WvSG strong against addiction"
Since the 2014/15 school year, project days on addiction prevention have been held in year 8. These days, which generally last three days, take place during the report week in January, usually from Monday to Wednesday. They have two aims: To educate students about addiction and addictive substances in general and to strengthen their resilience.
To this end, the project days are structured in three parts: On the 1st and 2nd day, the students attend an information block in the 1st / 2nd hour, which is conducted by external experts. In addition, the students choose one of about 10 workshops in which they deal in depth with a topic that focuses on promoting resilience. The third project day ends with a presentation in which the students of the year group show their classmates what they have worked on in the workshops.
Further projects
In addition, there are project days on addiction prevention and road safety in year 9 in cooperation with the police and projects on addiction prevention in the upper school.
Road safety education
These include the road safety education project in the trial level and the aforementioned project on addiction prevention and road safety in Year 9, both of which take place in cooperation with the police.
Advice for individual pupils
Please refer to the information under "Offers" - Pupil coaching and school social work .
Advice for groups
Conflicts between pupils or groups of pupils
In the case of conflicts within a class or between classes, especially in cases of bullying or cyberbullying, it is not enough to work with the pupil who is being bullied. Instead, in these cases we work with the whole class or a subgroup from the class.
In the lower grades - up to around year 7 - the "no blame approach" is generally used. In the upper grades, "class-related counseling" tends to take place. The primary goal of both approaches is not to punish the perpetrator, but to change the problematic situation, i.e. to ensure that the bullying stops and that the students in the respective group live together in peace.
In cases of cyberbullying, the school's media scouts are usually involved in the counseling process: Older pupils independently advise the class in which cyberbullying is a problem as peers, accompanied by a teacher responsible for the media scouts.
The "dispute mediators" approach is still new at our school, where conflicts between pupils are resolved with the help of specially trained mediators. The mediators at Werner-von-Siemens-Gymnasium Gronau are trained according to the "Bensberg model".
Conflicts between pupils or groups of pupils and teachers
In the case of conflicts between teachers and groups of pupils, the counseling service is also primarily aimed at changing the problem situation. The basic structure corresponds to that of class-related counseling; the counseling teacher increasingly takes on the role of a moderator who ensures that both sides can present their point of view and are heard and that both sides work constructively to resolve the conflict.
The counseling team meets at regular intervals and, if necessary, several times during the school year to reflect on the work process and cooperation within the counseling team. In addition, reflection on the work takes place with the help of the school psychological counseling center of the Borken district. Regular working meetings of the district's counseling teachers are offered here and, if there is an acute need for discussion, a contact person from the counseling center is always available for a meeting.