Symposium on Comprehensive Counselor Development begins in Dharamshala
By ATWS Staff Editor
ATWS Dharamshala, December 2nd, 2024: The Department of Education, Counseling Section, CTA is organizing a Six-Day Symposium on Comprehensive Counselor Development from December 2nd to 7th, 2024, at the Administrative Training and Welfare Society (ATWS), Dharamshala. ATWS is facilitating the Symposium with venue and service facilities.
Around twenty-eight school counselors from various Tibetan Schools under STSS, TCV, THF, and SLF across India and Nepal are attending this Meeting.
This program aims to enable them to share their experiences and better understand children’s issues. During the upcoming six days, they are expected to speak on various Counseling topics, such as positive parenting, Mental Health Awareness, Career Counseling, Special Needs Education, etc., and discuss the challenges they face in their respective schools.
Apart from the School Counselors, the speakers include three Officials from the Education Department, one resource person from Manjushree Education Service Mcleod Ganj, and another resource person from the Tibetan Conflict Resolution Centre.
The inaugural session held this morning was graced by Chief Guest Mrs. Sonam Sangmo la, Additional Secretary, DoE CTA, accompanied by a team of Officials.
Mr. Jamyang Wangyal la, Joint Secretary /Head of the Counseling Section, gave an overview of the Symposium program. He urged the participants to share their best practices in their respective schools and make the best use of the meeting to clarify their doubts.
Following the introductory remarks and a self-introductory round by the participants, Chief Guest Mrs. Sonam Sangmo la delivered her keynote speech and spoke on two to three key points.
She drew the participants’ attention towards guiding parents in terms of inculcating positive parenting skills in the parents, given the additional responsibility of residential Counselors of Tibetan Schools in fostering an activist human race.
Further, drawing examples from her personal experiences, she stressed Counselors to make a constant effort to meet parents despite the challenges of low parental participation in such programs. She mentioned how the present Kashag too finds the importance of addressing the mental health issues seen as prevalent among many youths in the Tibetan Community as per a finding from a recently concluded Community Outreach Program that she has been part of.
Secondly, she encouraged them to share their best practices so that organizing such a symposium becomes meaningful in fostering a team of in-house professionals as initially intended, by sharing about an incident where the head of a factory saved his bankrupt factory by pooling in ideas of his staff and finally wished them all the success in delivering best students outcome.
The opening session was concluded with a vote of thanks by Mr. Tenzin Choenden la, DoE Counselor cum organizer, who summarized the key points highlighted by the two speakers and acknowledged all the concerned individuals and organizations involved in facilitating the symposium.
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