At The École, we take a whole-child approach to ensure that all of our students’ social, emotional, and academic needs are being met.
Our Educational Support Team is composed of counselors and psychologists who provide a variety of direct and indirect services to tailor an individual approach to each student.
A multicultural team of experts working together for the well-being of all our students
Counseling Department
The Counseling Department consists of our school counselor and our French psychologist. The team provides French and English counseling for individual students or groups. Our international team is multiculturally competent to respond to the needs of our diverse community.
The team offers three kinds of counseling based on the needs of the child:
- Crisis counseling: an intensive, very short intervention based on an acute event that has placed a child in a state of extreme distress.
- Short-term, solution-focused counseling: aims to provide the appropriate support required so that the child may return to the classroom feeling supported, at peace, restored, and ready to learn.
- Longer-term counseling: whose objective is to create consistency in the support they provide, as needed and at the pace of the child in question so that they can develop the tools to confront the issues they are facing. Should any learning or social/emotional challenge arise that is beyond the scope of the school, the team can make referrals to outside providers.
Our Counseling Department in Action
The Counseling Department’s door is always open, and its members are a visible presence in all grades, from Pre-Nursery through 8th Grade. A crucial role that they play is in providing the space, support, and guidance to enable our students to resolve conflicts in a healthy, productive, and respectful manner. To this end, our team of dedicated professionals is always creating new initiatives in response to the needs of our students, such as group work for students on topics that affect their daily lives.
Guidance Lessons
The counseling team conducts monthly in-class guidance lessons for Nursery through 5th Grade, in French, and in English. The themes of these lessons include friendship, bullying, diversity, feelings, and kindness.
Counselor Chats
The counseling team provides support and resource referrals to teachers and parents. Regular parent presentations called Counselor Chats cover a variety of topics (e.g., concerns about screen use and separation anxiety). These chats are informative and serve the underlying goal of supporting the whole child.