 Hello and welcome to another Let's Talk. My name is Chris Satney. In today's edition, we speak on school guidance counseling within the education sector. And to discuss this topic, we have with me guidance counselors or school guidance counselors that is Krista Lee of the St. Mary's College and the Candice Seishu of the Leon Hesse Comprehensive. I want to welcome you both to our broadcast. Let me first ask you to give to give me, each of you, your sentiments on your career. How does it feel to do what you do, Krista? Mr. Satney, I have to say when you are asking me a question like that, I have to ask how much time. When I started this career, the more I did, the more I loved it. I think this is the best career in the world. When I speak to parents, when I speak to anybody, when I speak to the students, I said, listen, I have the best job at the school. I get to sit down with young people. I get to hear them. I have them, you know. I have their issues and they don't have to put on any pretenses. I have people and people are the best thing on earth. So, really, actually, I can't say there's any better profession than school. Well, counselling on the whole, this area of helping school counselling, wonderful. That's so good to hear. Ms. Seishu? Yes, for the most part, I can echo Ms. Lee's sentiments on school counselling. It is a very, very rewarding profession. And you get to be the cool person at the school. It's not our job to discipline the students, per se, we're supposed to be the person at the school that the students can come to speak to and open up to and that sort of thing and create a very comfortable environment for the students. And it's always my pleasure to be in that position at the school. So, like Ms. Lee said, it's very rewarding and it's ultimately, or overall, I should say, is quite a rewarding profession. You spoke about comfortability. How important is that in doing your job? Oh, you mean for the students? Yes. Extremely comfortable. Yes. For the students to be able to go to the school counsellor in order to confide in them, because essentially that's what we're there for. It's a big deal and it's very important that students feel comfortable and we create an environment of trust and that we are trustworthy because confidentiality is extremely important. I mean, we all remember what it's like to be teenagers and so on because essentially the age group that we deal with at high schools between 11 and 18. And when you're at that stage of life, your parents are not usually your best friends. You're sort of creating your own personality and then you're sort of, you want to assert yourself as an individual and separate them apart from your parents at that time. You're not a very, you're not a little child anymore. So, most times the children are not comfortable speaking to their parents and that's okay. So, we would like to be that person at the school, especially, where the students can feel comfortable speaking to us. We create the environment of trust, confidential environment and we find out a lot of things about the students and I guess eventually we'll tell you a little bit about the sort of things that we hear about. Definitely, I want to know about that as well. But there's a little more. What does the job entail, not just counseling, is it? Counseling children. When we say school counseling, we have to always explain and a lot of people don't know. So, yes, we do individual. So, I have people who walk, students who walk in and say they would like assistance or teachers or principal parents refer their students. So, these are individual cases. However, we also do classroom guidance. That is, go into the classrooms and where issues have been identified, whether it be from the teacher's point of view or from just dealing with the students, we do classroom guidance. Teaching, giving the skills, helping develop the students' knowledge base so that they can deal with issues. We also do career guidance, right? So, bringing people from workplaces. We do help of job employment or at least exposure to what it is to go out into the work of the world. A lot of variety of things like that. What takes the cake in all of them? You did speak about career guidance and we will talk about that, but what really takes much of your attention in all of what you do? Okay, so, sorry. No, you could go ahead. For me, I think you have to talk on an individual, sort of an individual basis. I love individual counseling. I love individual counseling, but I know there are counselors at schools who prefer guidance counseling, going into the classroom. There's some of the school counselors who were teachers before and so they trained as counselors. Does that help? Mrs. Hsu? The teaching around the teacher. I was not one of those persons who was a teacher before. I went straight into the school counseling, but I actually, I don't, I can't talk for those persons. Maybe, Crystal, were you a teacher before? No, I was. Alright, go and teach her. But I know that for those persons who were teachers before they went into the counseling, they do say that there are some benefits, but I don't think that it's affected my relationship with the students or my work. Because I think, as you will probably find out eventually, this is a sort of profession. You have to love it in order for you to do it. And the persons who are in it, I can tell they give their all. I'm not speaking just for me, I'm not speaking just for Mrs. Lee. It is, it can be a very heavy job. They're as much as there are lots of successes and it can be very fulfilling. It can be heartbreaking as well. And most of us have been in this for over 10 years. And so for us to be here, for as long as we've been here, it is something that we obviously love and we're giving our all to. So, regardless of whether we were teachers or not before, I think everybody's giving it their best and it's working out very well for everybody involved. Wonderful. We have more to talk about, but we must take a break now. You watch and let's talk with you after this. You didn't answer the question. Everyone is at risk forgetting a foodborne illness. While most foodborne illness cases are mild and go unreported, long-term health complications and even death can occur from a foodborne illness. Foodborne illnesses are caused by contamination of food at any stage of preparation. If you are a food handler involved in home-based food production, meat, fish, chicken, or a big shop, as a food vendor, how you prepare food can put your customers at risk. Do you know the risks and how to avoid them? The Syndusia Bureau of Standards can help you. For more information, contact the Syndusia Bureau of Standards at 456-0546, or email SLBS at candw.lc, or visit the website at www.slbs.org.lc. Syndusia Bureau of Standards, making quality and standards our way of life. Welcome back to Let's Talk. As we continue our discussion on school guidance counseling with our two school guidance counselors, Ms. Eshu and Ms. Lee. We were speaking about the areas that seem more important to you, but what takes up more of your time, Christelle? Definitely, because of the ratio, individual takes up a lot of time. However, when we say about allocating time, we need to give a lot of precedence to dealing with the larger numbers, the classroom guidance, as well as the large group guidance, where we would, for example, the career guidance, or if I'm doing school leaving for form fives, right? We need to pay a lot of attention to that, so because then you can affect a larger number at the same time. So when I talk about the ratio of allotting time, we need to invest a lot of time into the large group guidance. I was listening to you, while we were talking about some difficulties that will come in. Probably you could expand a little bit on some of those difficulties, issues that you're facing, handling your job. Okay, I remember, I think the counselors had a career showcase the first one a few years ago, and I did an interview with one of the radio stations, and one of the questions was very similar to what you just asked about. Some of the things that we experienced that are a little difficult. And I started going on and on, and after, I think some people called in and they could not believe some of the issues that we have to deal with on a daily basis. And it makes the job, it does make the daily basis. It makes the job very, very difficult at times. When I first started, I remember thinking to myself, I didn't understand that this was going on, and saying, let me show almost every other case that came to me with an incest case, it was almost once a week of getting an incest case. And I couldn't believe it, I said to myself, uncles and cousins and so on, sleeping with their underage, 11 and 12. I mean, it was really, it blew me away. And I remember thinking for a minute, I said, am I in the right profession? Can I handle this? You know, because at some, you really, when we're going through our master's program, a lot of us had to get our own counseling because we had to make sure that we were fit for the job, because some of the things that we have to experience as counselors, we have to make sure that we can deal with them because the information that we get, there was a suicide recently at one of the higher schools on the island. And with this sort of, when this sort of thing happens, sometimes what happens is that other people sort of imitate, especially since it was a 17-year-old and so on, you'd have this childrenhood. And within maybe months or so on, I had 12 suicidal ideations, students coming to me saying, and these are situations you cannot leave. You have to report it in a different way. Yes. But we must talk about them, Christelle. There are so many things that happen. Candice only mentioned the suicide. She's mentioned two of them. We have so many things going on. We have people, the drugs we have. So I'm talking all across the island, what we're seeing. We're seeing interpersonal relationships which are inappropriate between students. There are a lot of sexual issues and so on. Oh, there's so many things to deal with. But you're yourself, how do you take away from it? You're talking about counseling yourself, but what do you take yourself away from it? And not putting yourself, your person, your personality or your thinking in it so that you can do a good job? For me, I think that was part of the training because when we went to school, we understood. Apart from understanding yourself and reflected and be able to know where your boundaries, where your limitations are. Because of course, every counselor has to know that so that if there's a case that they think that they would be affected, then they can't deal with it objectively. They need to refer it. And these are ethical things that you learn at school. And even dealing in how self-care, self-care is part of it. Because if you're not well, you can't help. You can't make or encourage somebody to be well if you're not well. You hurt if you are hurt, you know? And these are things we teach, but these are things we have to practice as well. We know that there are so many difficulties and we know that a lot of things come up and you have to deal with them. But there are good results in reality, in dealing with those situations. Tell us, not specifically of a situation, but of course, you know, you come across some very heavy things to deal with, but the results turn out right, turn out well in some cases today. Yeah, we do. Like Christelle was saying a while ago, and like you just mentioned, a lot of what we're mentioning now, not particularly individual or not specific to the schools that we're at, and the difficulties that we all experience, and we do have shared successes as well. I'm sure all of us have had situations where we deal with students, and I remember one particular student, I speak about her all the time, she was about to drop out. And through the counselling, and she says it to this day, through the counselling, and I'm sure Christelle has cases like that. She is now at one of the premier hotels on the island. She's moved up. She was about to drop out of school. She was taking care of her mother, who was an invalid and she had lost all hope. She was 14 years old, and she's now married, and she's completely successful. And she says it all the time. She says, Miss, if it wasn't for y'all, or if it wasn't for the program, I don't know how I would have got it. So we are, we're happy that we're there. We're there for a reason, and we're serving our purpose, and we're helping, and the students are, I have to say, when I first started counselling, it was sort of, there was a stigma attached to it. You know, boy, I'm crazy. I don't do it as a counsellor. You have the students now who are volunteering. They're knocking on the door every two seconds. Let me tell you what, we've run out of time. Oh my. But you can't have one program for such a topic. So we'll continue with a second program. We want to thank you so much for being part of this program. Join us next time, when we will continue this discussion on school guidance counselling. I'm Chris Satney, on behalf of the entire production team, thanking you for watching. Until next time. Let's talk. Let's talk.