Sept¨2020

Reflection - Storytelling

Challenge and selection  When I want to connect emotionally with the kids and youth that I work, I use  Storytelling. This great tool that I use a lot of times let me make a match with my  peer group at work, with the students in the school I work, with the parents and  with the headmaster. This people, which make the whole community of the  school, need to be validated in their emotions, values and the good things they  make. In the Counseling Department, a lot of times, I receive kids that don´t  believe in themselves. It´s incredible when people feel that you are really listening  to their stories and letting them know with verbal and non-verbal information to  them. Also, when they have a problem, sometimes I can share with them a  meaningful story of another peer that could overcome the almost same bad  situation. This stories of the school community are very relevant to collect  information from the different stakeholders (parents, students, teachers,  coordinators, etc.) and try to find a way that could help them or use a variety of  strategies to overcome what is making their day a bad one.        I selected the storytelling because is an implementation tool that allows the  speaker to transmit a powerful idea or ideas in a very simple way to the public  that in hearing us (in this case, mothers and fathers of an elementary school). I  think that this way of transmitting information allows to share some experiences  with the public in an active way so they can pay attention and feel that the story  belong to them. Also, because, we make a previous meetings with the parents,  help us know every small detail of every family so the psychologist could speak  knowing the background before the conversation (e.g. 5 of 10 boys and girls  from 4° grade present nightmares since the social distancing began, 7 of 10  families belief that their children doubled the tine in videogames, etc.), make  some proposals during the conference and propose some hope and calm to the  families.        Application  I want to share an application of storytelling in the counseling department that I  work. Due the pandemic social restriction, some parents asked me and my pears  by email how they can manage their kid’s anxiety, bad humor, difficult to sleep,  etc. With the help of the headmaster of the school, we set virtual meetings in the  night of every Wednesday to have a talk with this worried/anxious parents in  groups up to 10 families. After we finished this rounds of meetings in a month, the  psychologist set a big reunion with 40 – 50 families to make a conversation about  the strategies that they can use in home to give contention to their kids. The  psychologist make a good storytelling with the idea of transmitting logical  message with specific information with an emotional connection. The idea was  to generate a bigger cause, about the importance of the parent support during  the months of social distancing and pandemic restrictions. During the  conference some questions where left as unknown and where answered during  the whole talk.

Sept¨2020

Insight and Approach  Maybe in 2018 an in the past years, probably we will go straight to de  psychologist conference with all the families. This year, when we step back and  think in the best way to support the parents, knowing them in this small talks make  a very big difference. The people really feel that the counseling department was  working with the needs of every family in a very close an intimate way  connecting with their emotions and needs. With all this information across the  whole moth, the psychologist could make a conference well suited for this  public.     At the end, my team mates and me felt that this conference give the parents a  bunch of tools (recommendations) so they can bring social an emotional support  to their kids and also to them so they can make something to change the actual  situation of each family. It will be a great option that the school could invest in  design thinking tools to all the teachers, coordinators and headmaster so in the  future the different interventions of the school could be more creative and more  effective in a major amount of families.      This course help me to define much better this tool that I usually use in my daily  work. When you have the theoretical information, you can perform better and  make this design tool very useful to understand your public and make them part  of your story.

