Department of Psychology
The Department of Psychology, which fully supports the educational work of the institution, puts all the tools of psychological knowledge at the service of the education of our students, teachers, parents and other members of the community. This accompaniment is oriented according to the principles that address the comprehensive understanding of the human being. It seeks to accompany children and adolescents in the different stages of their development, offering them spaces where they can reflect on their emotions, their sexual and affective formation. Environments in which each student can find their own leadership and improve their habits to learn all the necessary skills for their own autonomy.
Additionally, the department supports conflict resolution among community members and carries out prevention activities from a formative perspective that involves all members of the educational community.
Counseling and Support Program
The school encourages the development of all children, recognizes their abilities, their limitations, their potential and the exceptional nature of their individuality, for each of them to be what they can be. In this sense, the search for alternatives and tools to respond to the needs of its students has been a constant. Understanding and accepting the differential rates of development and learning, is something that tests the creative ability accept difference. Thus, from the Flexibilization and Integration programs, pedagogical accompaniment strategies are developed to work with students from their own characteristics, conditions, needs or difficulties and, of course, from their capacities and skills.
The school has an Inclusion Program, according to the requirements of the Law, which seeks to give support to students with certain physical or cognitive difficulties, according to the capacities of the school, and which encourages their development, the school promotes empathy and respect for the difference within the students community. The policies of this program can be checked with the Psychology Area.
Inclusion Program
The educational institution Gimnasio Moderno, in its interest to value the difference, has become -through the years- an inclusive pedagogical community, with the aim of forming more democratic, respectful and capable individuals to build a world in which there is room for everyone.
The school encourages the development of all children, recognizes their abilities, their limitations, their potential and the exceptional nature of their individuality; so that each of them is what they can be. In this sense, the search for alternatives and tools to respond to the needs of its students has been a constant. Understanding and accepting the differential rates of development and learning, is something that tests the creative ability accept difference.
The main concepts are “integration” which is understood as a way of thinking about the education and training of human beings that promotes reflection on people with disabilities, understood as: “those who have long-term physical, mental, or intellectual deficiencies that, by interacting with various barriers, may prevent their full and effective participation in society, on an equal basis with others”.
For the School, the integration of students with disabilities into the regular classroom seeks to generate a school that believes in diversity and difference, a place where reflection around it can be promoted. The “flexibilization”, which is understood as the pedagogical process that allows to provide students with learning difficulties, the possibility of acquiring and developing skills that allow them to belong, participate and be academically and socially active in the community.
Through curricular adaptations and environmental accommodations, during the instruction and assessment, which are established and formalized in the Individual Learning Programs “P.I,A.”, designed for each one of the students that belong to the Inclusion Program, they remain in the regular classroom, with the accompaniment and follow-up of teachers, psychologists and other professionals, who constantly evaluate the process along with external therapeutic teams and establish support strategies, if necessary, they work with each other to achieve the goals. All of these is made with the acknowledgement of the parents.
The Diverse Capabilities Development Program – PCD, arises from the identification and recognition of the diversity of the students who are part of the community of the Gimnasio Moderno and is coherent with the Institutional principles of encouraging the development of the students taking into account their abilities, strengths and potentials.
In the Gimnasio Moderno, we consider that the recognition of diversity, in any of its expressions, positively impacts the development of the educational community and favors the construction of a more inclusive, tolerant environment with consciousness and social responsibility.
The Program has an interdisciplinary team of professionals in speech therapy, occupational therapy, psychology and special education, who work with the academic area, not only to accomplish the Institutional principles but also under the legal framework that is in force in Colombia in terms of inclusive policies and attention to diversity.
The main mission of the PCD is to promote the development of the Diverse Skills of the students of the Gimnasio Moderno, recognizing their Characteristics, Special Educational Needs and Exceptional Talents, with the guidance of an interdisciplinary team committed to the design, implementation and monitoring of pedagogical strategies, activities and didactic material, through the construction of Individual Plans of Reasonable Adjustments PIAR and Continuous Training Programs for the Community, in order to favor the active and successful participation of students in the school environment.
Vocational Orientation Program
Guided by the Gimnasio Moderno’s Psychology Service, the Vocational Orientation Program is executed based on the following principles: decisions are made throughout life. Choosing a career or choosing the course of life after getting graduated from the high school is just one more circumstance, where the decision marks a very big turn and determines what life will be from that moment.
It is not a profession, but a vocation: for many urban and educated adolescents, the main life option is to go directly to university to become professionals. The current project tries to open a little the horizon of the tenth and eleventh grade students, so that several life options become valid.
Parents’ School
The Parents’ School is the result of an institutional effort to strengthen the paternal and maternal commitment in the formation of the children through a work carried out between the school and the family. It offers a variety of topics for participants to obtain parenting tools, achieve proper communication with children, and strengthen positive bonds. It includes spaces for discussion and analysis of current issues, psychological development and institutional policy, which seek to organize and promote the participation of parents in school life in an organized and assertive way. The topics worked are segmented according to their relevance and the age of the students, in order to cover the specific needs of each section.
Federico Niño Noriega – 6C
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