Educational Guidance
The School Guidance Department accompanies and guides the comprehensive development of students from their admission process to their withdrawal from the institution.
We rely on 4 programs:
1. Priority attention by the DOE
The Educational Guidance Department supports the follow-up actions, first by identifying and then providing assistance to student cases whose comprehensive development is perceived as vulnerable or with difficulties, in one or several of its dimensions (socio-emotional, cognitive, behavioural, motor, sensorial).
Strategies are generated and implemented based upon the know how and scope of the Educational Guidance Department, which addresses the etiology and/or reduces or eliminates the impact of said identified difficulties. In turn, it guides parents, teachers and section directors to manage reported students and specialists perform a follow-up of these intervention processes according to the suggested strategies.
The Educational Guidance Department carries out the following programs aimed at optimizing the students´ training process:
2. Promotion of socio-emotional skills
Affection Program
The affective sphere is central to people’s well-being as it is the basis on which personality and relationships are built. At the DOE, spaces are created that contribute to the acquisition of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral skills that positively impact the affective development of our students. Their abilities to respond in an assertive, empathetic and regulated way to the different demands of the social world are enhanced, and on the other hand to establish the concept of meaning of life as a fundamental guide for their daily actions, their goals and the coping strategies that they especially choose. in times of crisis.
Thus, it is also intended to generate in students an awareness of caring for their own being from the development of socio-emotional skills that impact the intrapersonal, interpersonal and contextual area.
Sexuality Workshops
Program for students and parents. Sexuality is part of the human being, from the moment of its conception until his death. Therefore, sexual education is a lifelong process and it is configured by acquiring information and value-based education, beliefs and attitudes about the topic. Some of these as important as identity, interpersonal relationships, gender, autonomy, equality, emotions, sensations and intimacy.
As a result, the Departament of Academic Guidance together with Dr. María Clara González de Zapata have led and complemented the program, by working directly with the students and parents, through workshops and conferences that involve themes specifically aimed at the students´ emotional and affective development for each of the Grades. Workshops of 11 sessions are annually organized from 1st to 4th grade and include a booklet called “Love and Life”. From 5th to 11th grade, students take 1 day workshops and they have the possibility to share, clarify, and look into core contents that allow them to favour their growth in values, principles and to have a greater classification of their overall life project.
3. Vocational guidance
This program starts in 9th grade and seeks to generate a personal space, where students are able to identify their interests, skills and personality traits that are framed and harmonize with an area of knowledge. It also provides solid tools in the psychological and academic fields to ensure their decision making process regarding technical, technological or profesional choices and in some special cases, with respect to informal education.
The Academic Guidance Program has an internationalization strategy whose goal is to offer a counselling and accompaniment service to students who are interested to have access to education programas abroad. We feel the need to educate students with an international outlook, who contribute in the construction of a better world without losing their national identity and guided by the school´s values and faithfully following our motto: “Being to Serve”
4. KEY Program (Knowledge Enhancement Yard)
KEY is a program of the Educational Guidance Department that seeks to:
- Respond to the requirements of evaluation and estimulation needs of the learning processes or academic support that results from the follow-up program or from the priority assistance program DOE.
- Identify the cognitive skills profile of referred students.
- Propose and execute action plans sought to improve the students´ skills that will favorably impact the academic process.
Good Treatment Program
We promote good treatment among all the members of the community.
One of our objectives, philosophy and responsibilities in the school, is to disseminate and promote good treatment among all of the members of the community. For this purpose, the school designed a program that carries out preventive and intervention activities regarding situations that might threaten the integrity of any of the students.
We expect to increase pro-social conducts inside the Portales home. We must also not ony increase respect and tolerance as main tools for providing fair treatment to the people around us, but use assertive communication, promote self-acceptance among students, generate empathy and provide intervention tools to strengthen joint responsibility and a healthy coexistence.
The program suggests workshops and campaigns that evolve throughout the school year and the creation of the Peace Center. This Center was created by students and led by the Academic Guidance Center to learn how to autonomously solve conflicts that arise among peers; hence, contributing to a healthy and harmonious coexistence.
Welcoming New Students
We facilitate the adaptation of new students to one of the most significant changes for the human being during its school years, as it is to enroll in a new school.
The program is aimed at new students who enroll in school either at the beginning or during the school year. This program arises from the need to ease adaptation to one of the most significant changes in human beings during their school years, as it is enrolling in a new school. It is important for students to perceive, right from the start, that they are active school members and that they adopt the Portales philosophy as their own, besides reflecting their behavior inside and out of the institution.
The program´s main objectives are to minimize the impact that new students might have when entering the school, to promote a suitable school adaptation for students at a cognitive, social and emotional dimensión, and to ease their sense of belonging to the institution. Therefore, the Department designs and carries out a welcoming and orientation activity among new and current students who play a vital role as godmothers by supporting this initial adjustment process.
