Suggestions to...

...Teachers and Parents

• Positive attitude in life can help you help the learners overcome life's hurdles.
• Simplicity in thought and action can help the learners to accept life easily and without any complications.
• Patience with oneself, will help to patiently help the learner acquire the knowledge and experience to solve problems.
• Understand yourself in terms of your interest, strengths and weakness and your own expectations. Then, it will be easy to understand the learners' expectations too and help them in aligning their aspirations to their capabilities.
• Have a free mind and heart, sans all worries. By thinking and imagining like a child, indulging in childish fantasies like crying out loud, singing and laughing loudly, climbing trees, making paper planes and boats so that you can help the learner unleash his/her imagination and show inclination to innovate and invent.
• Introspection will help you to understand yourself, consequently help you to help the learners understand themselves and others too.
• Humility or ego management is key that requires balance of mind and heart. This helps the aggressive or passive nature transform into assertive and optimistic one.
• Plan all activities in advance so that you can help the learners also to do so and be proactive rather than reactive.
• Learning by doing is an example you can set to the learner by being honest enough accept that you do not know the answer to a question posed by the learners and make it a point to find the answer and inform the learners.
• It is important to make learners know that unlearning is as important as learning in terms of transient nature of life. Do discuss any misconceptions or wrong information and help find out or realize the required information/knowledge.
• Maintain transparency in your relationship with the learners. Openly discuss the subjects like crime, guilt, sex and human nature with the learner and educate the learners to have a positive approach to life. It is a fact that human mind remains preoccupied with thoughts of all that it is overtly restrained from dealing with. This can affect the learners' progress and wellbeing too.
• Through self-discipline and mild manners, we can encourage the learners to practice all this in their lives too.
• Do not maintain a stiff and authoritative relationship with the learners. Allow them to freely discuss their thoughts and point-of-view with you. so that you can help them to organize their thoughts and knowledge assimilated through any formal or informal learning process or any personal experience.
• Do not discriminate between your learners. Treat all of them equally while making them aware of their unique qualities and traits that can help in their growth and development.
• All this will help the learners to easily pave the way of their own life.

...Boss

• The adage, distance creates love is true in informal relationship, but in formal relationship that of superior and subordinate, it only breeds contempt. Cordial and empathetic relationship helps to maintain harmony at workplace.
• Respond to sweet or diplomatic wedges and spikes of the subordinate by reminding the latter of the purpose of his/her being part of the organization is to identify with the organization and the given responsibilities.
• During face-to-face interaction, have the subordinate seated in front of you at same level of eye contact, even when you need to discuss issues where you need to accept your mistake or vice versa.
• Avoid eating or drinking while conversing with your subordinate or, offer it to the latter.
• After harsh altercation, make it a point to discuss it amicably with the subordinate to unanimously resolve the issue.
• Keep tab of your subordinate's interests and family too. Show interest in his/her overall wellbeing and progress.
• Know your subordinate's strengths and weakness too. Do not use them for your own vested interest, but to help the latter to develop and progress on his/her career path.
• Do not impose functional goals on your subordinate, jointly set realistic goals and dissuade your subordinate from setting inflated goals just to please and impress you.
• Discuss a project/ assignment and how the subordinate intends to work on it. Hand over the project only if you find the latter to be confident and comfortable taking care of it. Initially guide your subordinate in starting the project and keep tab on its progress through regular updates. Do not ignore it, only to take ownership of its success and blame your subordinate in case it fails.
• Maintain proper and regular channel of communication, (both verbal and written) with your subordinate., so that the latter knows that you are aware and are interested to know of his/her work progress.
• Maintain complete transparency in your relationship with your subordinate so that the latter is aware of his/her role and responsibilities and appreciates the fact that his/her performance appraisal is inter-related with that of yours in terms of the organization's goals and objectives.
• Help your subordinate in planning and even participate in his/her learning plans to achieve his/her professional and personal goals.
• Avoid communicating with your subordinate in innuendos and maintain clarity in your conversation. Your subordinate should not believe that you believe more in information received through office grape-vine (unofficial channels of communication) than direct communication. This will help in avoiding any work-related stress and unpleasant situations in work place.
• Rules and regulations are to facilitate smooth and harmonious operation of the organization's activities. They are not for misuse such as encouraging the abider to break them by challenging them to do so, by constantly intimidating them of dire consequences, if they break the rules. You may encourage your subordinate to misuse them and challenge him/her to disrespect them, if you constantly intimidate the latter of dire consequences if he/she does not abide by the rules. Both you and your subordinate should be aware of the consequences of any deviation from work objective. Remind your subordinate, whenever you find him/her deviating from work objective.
• Do not make your subordinate run your personal errands for you.
• Do not discriminate between your subordinates. Treat all of them equally while making them aware of their unique qualities and traits that can help in their growth and development.
• Respect your subordinate and do not command respect from the latter.

...not I

You hurt the boy?

...not I!

You broke her toy?

...not I!

You holed up the field?

...not I!

You stole the shield?

...not I!

You wreaked the nest?

...not I!

spilled ink on Grand dad's desk?

...not I!

You ate up the cake?

...not I!

You reached school late?

...not I!

You went to the movies on sly?

...not I!

You pulled the dog's tail?

...not I!

You toppled the cart?

...not I!

You pulled her veil?

...not I!

Why do you lie?

....who, I?...

Links in a Chain

Mrs. Chandran (nee Balan), our English language teacher in the high school I was a student of, had quite an attractive personality and was role model to many of us, her students. She took the initiative to organize us and publish the first hand-made school magazine and got me to illustrate all the articles and literary contributions. I was an average student with not much inclination towards Science and Arithmetic, but I was proficient in Hindi and enjoyed the English language. Mrs. Chandran was a divorcee. Her employment as a teacher was helping her support herself and care of her two children studying in the school she was teaching in. Unfortunately, I began experiencing unpleasantness, when Ms. Chandran started pointing me out in the class for my inability to express myself properly in English and my test scores nose-dived from modest 60% to 45% I was intrigued at this sudden discovery of my lack of knowledge of English language and it shook me up too. I was not a very self-confident student and was quite introvert too. Such a sudden change in her behaviour made me lose all my confidence in expressing myself in English. One day, she blatantly told me and my classmate, Debosree Das, to take tuition from her after school hours. Then, taking tuition was not in trend and those who opted for tuition were looked down upon. I spoke to my parents and they decided it was not feasible for me to attend tuition after school, while my friend Debosree started attending tuitions after school hours. I worked hard to improve myself and still continued to earn low marks in English. Time passed and I prepared myself for ICSE exams and earned a modest score of 62%

My question is: How relevant are private tuitions? What is a school's responsibility in helping a student effectively learn a subject being taught in school?

In the early nineties, our family moved to Orissa to set up an industrial unit, but the things did not work out in our favour leading the family to face financial hardship. In order to help the family to tarry over the difficult times, many of my Uncle's friends started sending their children to me after school to help them with their studies and now, I was giving private tuitions. When I tried to explain the lessons to the children and explain various concepts and methods of language and science, the children insisted that I help them with their homework and help them prepare for class tests. In the name of preparing for class tests, I had to help them to memorise all the answers their teachers had given to them to the questions on each lesson, of course, for each and every subject! According to them, this would help them to score good marks in the examinations!

My question is: Do we study to learn and understand? Is Education in school to learn and acquire knowledge and prepare oneself for life or to score impressive marks?

While working for an organization managing its Livelihood Training Programme projects, one of my colleagues, had an uncanny way of avoiding any work-related responsibilities as he was confident that the project would fail. He would only observe us trying hard to work in organizing training programmes. I personally believe in doing my bit and execute my responsibility to the satisfaction that no stones remain unturned in completing the project.

A time came when Management tried to set a functional target for us to achieve without providing us with the required support and it was then that most of the members of the team cautiously worked on the new assignment except the gentleman, who then jumped into the arena, while we had made it quite clear to the management that both external and internal (organizational) environment was not ready to help us meet the objective. At that time, out of clear exasperation I had exclaimed at the gentleman "Can't you keep your backbone straight and your head high and clear? You are Father of grown-up kids and have seen life more than anyone of us?"

My question is: Are not the organizations and the society at large responsible or each and every individual, who is its integral unit or building block? To what extent can organization negate an individual's individuality and as a result alienate itself from those it is functioning for?

When I left the organization, one of its business partners' gave me employment. It is then I realised that the lady, who was the Director of the organization, was treating me exactly as my colleague in the previous organization and deliberately negated all the efforts made to achieve my functional objective as part of the organization. Respecting the social network and its functional objective, realising that I was employed to accept failure as part of the role reversal, without any further ado, I stopped from all my efforts in innovating and improving the operations of the organization to complete a farce called Performance Assessment when the building blocks of the organization were not in place.

My question is: Like the schools are the organizations too not responsible for its employees? IS not the failure of an employee the failure of an organization? Is not the strength and potential of an employee, is that of an organization too? Therefore, is not the overall development of an employee or its unit the responsibility of any organization?

Basics of Career & Solution Based Counseling

Counseling generally involves two individuals. The Counselor: the one provides the ability to understand viz. an issue or a set objective to help develop the ability to decide on the ways and means to achieve an objective. The Counseled: the one who is facilitated by the Counselor to clearly understand the way to resolve issues and difficulties faced and find out the ways to achieve ones goal or objective.

Our focus is generally on issues such as career exploration, career change, personal career development and other career or livelihood related issues. Typically when people come for career or employment related counseling they know exactly what they want to get out of the process, but are unsure about how it will work

Let us now focus on the two basic forms of counseling that are effective for the prospective trainees as well as the trainees we interact with while explaining to them the various Livelihood Training programme that will be appropriate for them. At times, while training them on specific skill sets under Livelihood Training Programmes, we need to counsel them on how to remain focused on their training objective. We too need to counsel the team members to meet the common functional objective of the team.

(A) Career Counseling:

This is useful while counseling candidates from educational institutions or those who seem quite aware and are trying to develop their career or striving for appropriate means of livelihood.

Career counselors work with people from all walks of life such as adolescents trying to explore career options or with experienced professionals looking for a career change. Career counselors typically have a background in psychology, vocational psychology, or industrial/organizational psychology.

Each and every counselor has his/her unique way of counseling, but generally they generally use one or more ways to find out the interest, ability and aptitude of those they are helping in deciding on career options or appropriate means of livelihood. These assessments typically include: interest inventories, cognitive ability tests to find out the level of formal education i.e. school, pre-university, college or other levels of formal education, and personality assessments i.e. self assessment or behavioral traits such as integrity, Kindness, responsibility, determination, team work, etc.

Interest Inventories:

An interest inventory is a self assessment tool, used in career planning, that assesses one's likes and dislikes of a variety of activities, objects, and types of persons; the premise is that people in the same career (and satisfied in that career) have similar interests.
Examples:
· Ramana, who is aspiring to be a sales executive has listed his hobbies as making friends, traveling, learning languages, etc and the successful sales professionals have similar interests and their job description mentions that they need to get new clients and develop good client relationship. They need to travel to meet clients and make business deals with people who are located in distant places.
· Reshmi, who is a young Indian village girl, but is very shy by nature yet wants to work in the BPO industry has a very good voice and likes to sing, can play the harmonium and easily works on its keys and is good in accounting work; therefore shows all the interest and potential to be groomed into a successful Executive in BPO industry

Career counseling basically consists of four elements:
(a) Helping individuals to gain greater self-awareness in areas such as interests, values, abilities, and personality style.
(b) Helping individuals to gain opportunity awareness by connecting individuals to resources so that they can become more knowledgeable about jobs and occupations.
(c) Through job search engaging students in the decision-making process in order that they can choose a career path that is well suited to their own interests, values, abilities and personality style, and
(d) Through self-assessment assist individuals to be active managers of their career paths (including managing career transitions and balancing various life roles) as well as becoming lifelong learners in the sense of professional development over the lifespan.

Following is the detailed Checklist of the four basic steps of Career Counseling activity:

Checklist of Career Counseling Steps

The Checklist

Self-awareness:

1. What are my values?
2. What are my skills and abilities?
3. What are my interests?
4. What is my personality style?
5. What other life roles are important along with my job or occupation?
6. What are the family and cultural influences on my career path?

Opportunity-awareness:

1. What kinds of occupations and jobs am I suited for?
2. How much do I know about these different fields (job description, amount of pay, working conditions, opportunity for advancement, whether there is a demand for this field, the types of tasks performed, etc.)?
3. What are my options (possibilities: further study/training, work shadowing/ work experience/ volunteer work as a stepping stone towards long-term employment)?
4. What are my short-term and long-term goals?
5. How do I make decisions about these options?
6. Provide all necessary information on options available as professional training programmes that can help the individual to avail livelihood opportunities available according to his/her interest and aptitude.

Job search (How to prepare oneself for it):

Explain to the individual how Professional Training Programme will help him/her:

1. How do I prepare my resume and Job Application letter?
2. What do I need to know about attending a job interview?
3. How to search for employment opportunities? Contact potential employers to provide employment opportunities after the individual completes the professional training programme.
4. How to prepare oneself for career in the chosen industry’s specific domains viz. Customer Service in Retail industry.
Self Assessment
Self assessment is an important step in career planning process. It is the process of gathering information about oneself in order to make an informed career decision and plan and progress on the career path by regularly updating thus information. A self assessment should include a look at the following: values, interests, personality, and skills.

When you are able to clarify your own interests, values and skills then you can understand better about jobs/ careers which are a good match for you and those which are not. When you are well-matched to the career/ job you are likely to be more motivated and successful in your work, and would enjoy the job more than the person who is poorly suited for the same. That is why self awareness is so critical for successful career counseling.

An effective counselor helps a job aspirant in Self Assessment and guides the individual to Appropriate Livelihood (related Skill) Development Training Programme, if necessary, while enabling the individual to plan his/her career.

Individual Character Awareness is very important and Interest Inventory also has six basic character traits:
1. Kindness
2. Integrity
3. Community Existence
4. Determination
5. Responsibility
6. Respect
Based in part on the “Six Pillars of Character,” these traits are seen as cornerstones of good character and are necessary for social progress—regardless of one’s religious beliefs or cultural background. The Character Development Scale (CDS) allows individuals to explore their character development by rating how well actions and attributes tied to these six traits apply to them and this helps in their career development and advancement too.

(B) Solution Based Counseling:

This is useful while counseling candidates from slums, villages and other rural areas.

The counselor uses respectful curiosity to invite the candidate to envision their preferred future and then counselor and candidate start attending to any moves towards it whether these are small increments or large changes. To support this, questions are asked about the candidate’s story, strengths and resources, and about exceptions to the problem, seeking employment or means of livelihood.
Solution focused counselor believes that change is constant. By helping people identify the things that they wish to have change in their life and also to attend to those things that are currently happening that they wish to continue happening, Counselor helps the candidate form a concrete vision of a happy future for themselves through self development and livelihood opportunity available through various Livelihood/Career Development Programmes. The counselor then helps the candidate to identify an appropriate livelihood programme that will help to progress towards the desired future. Through many success stories of candidates with similar profile who have succeeded in charting the course for their life. Get such candidates to share their success stories with the job aspirants as that will boost latter’s hope and confidence. Through this exercise, the counselor can motivate the job aspirants to overcome their failures and help them plan and move towards their goal. In this way, the counselor helps the candidate devise methods to analyse the problems they face and draw up a solution to overcome them. Thus counselor helps the candidates move towards the preferred future they have identified.
Solution focused counseling can be seen as a way of working that focuses exclusively or predominantly at two things:
1) Supporting people to explore their preferred futures.
2) Exploring when, where, with whom and how pieces of that preferred future are already happening.

Coping Questions
Coping questions are designed to elicit information about candidate's available resources that will help the candidate to decide on the livelihood/career along with the required training programme(s) and how to organize finances for executing his/her career plans. Counselor should help the candidate to organize and cope with the available resources to avail to help the candidate develop required knowledge/skill specific to the chosen profession. "It is really nice to see how you are coping with your existing resources to travel from your village to come and meet me. Let me help you see how you can work out your joining one of the Livelihood programmes and in successfully getting a job at the end of it!"
Genuine curiosity and admiration can help to highlight strengths without appearing to contradict the candidate's view of reality. The initial summary "I can see that things have been really difficult for you" is for them true and validates their story. The second part "you manage to join the programme.", is also a true, but one that counters the problem focused narrative. Undeniably, they cope and coping questions start to gently and supportively challenge the objections raised by a candidate to joining a livelihood programme.
Problem Free Talk
Problem free talk is often over looked as a technique. In Solution focused counseling, it is thought to be a useful technique for eliciting resources. Many people do leisure activities that relax them, or have experiences of being assertive, and many other useful resources that can help. The counselor can also gather information on the candidate`s values and beliefs and their strengths. From this discussion during the counseling session the counselor can use these strengths and resources to help the candidate decide and confirm his/her joining appropriate livelihood programme. For example; if a candidate finds it difficult to convince his/her parent or is not free with parents to take their consent to join the programme then get a meeting with the parents organized through the candidate.

Checklist of Support and Materials needed during Counseling
1. Venue in the form of a comfortable place where two people can comfortably sit and talk to each other.
2. A note pad and a writing pen for the counselor to take notes while speaking to the candidate
3. Drinking water
4. Adequate fresh air and light
5. Information Materials on various career options available.
6. Information on financial assistance available to meet the professional training/education expenses.
7. Materials for Aptitude test or such assessments.
8. Information on the Industry Clients and domains and career opportunities in them.
9. Counseling log book to maintain candidate wise records for case studies.

Important
· It is important to counsel that parents and guardians of the candidates when counseling the candidates to various livelihood programmes Counsel the parents during the mid-term assessment of the trainees.
· Counsel the parents on how they can participate in the process of their child’s career planning & development.