“Empathy involves stepping into another person’s shoes in order to gain an understanding of their emotional experience, and then conveying our insights to them accordingly”.
As an initiative to improve on Staff Development, St. George's School organised a Psychological First Aid Workshop for its teaching staff on the 3rd of March 2023. The aims of this workshop were to educate teachers on the importance of Emotional First Aid and how to implement this method of communication between teachers and students in the school environment.
Alister Tieng, a graduate in the Bachelor of Arts in Humanistic Counseling from the University of Nottingham and a current psychotherapist at Relate Counselling presented the workshop, sharing his own personal and professional accounts when dealing with issues pertaining to mental health among students. He touched on topics such as depression, self-harm, anxiety and panic, which, although previously considered taboo topics, have now become a social norm, especially among teenagers. Alister shared various methods and tips for teachers on how to address and intervene when presented with situations that require counselling in the above mentioned areas.
All attendees of the workshop were notably engaged throughout the session, as evident from the question and answer session, where teachers shared their own personal thoughts on the matter, as well as their takeaways from the workshop.