On Febuary 13th, 2020, I chatted with Kathleen Schultz, Director of University Counselling at Dulwich College - Shanghai Pudong campus. I wanted to learn from a school counselor and a parent working in China how high school students were coping with this sudden transition to staying at home and learning online. At the time, Kathleen was in Prague, her children were with her husband's family in Sweden, and she had just come from Shanghai; I was in Jakarta with my own young children.
Now, we are both scattered once again. Some international schools in China consider reopening their high school divisions. As I listen to our conversation two months later, while the rest of the world is grappling with what our colleagues in China first encountered, her comments seem prescient. The mental health toll of this pandemic on teachers, parents and particularly adolescent students around the international education community will have effects long into the future.
My thanks to Kathleen and the hundreds of international school counselors around the world who continue to support their students, families, colleagues and community every single day.
If you are an educator, please take care of your mental health and resilience with these tips from the CIS Wellbeing blog here and here. As school counselors, educators and parents, the International School Counseling Association (ISCA) has compiled a very thorough list of resources here.
