It's Counselling Time

For my high school education I attended a Catholic school. Therefore, it was essential that every student took up Education for Living as a subject. My streamates and I were given the platform to led the rest of the class once a term by our 2003 education for life teacher -Mrs Smit. Just before we closed for the August holiday that year it was my turn. She gave me a theme beforehand- I was to act as a Counsellor, comforting a depressed teenager on the verge of committing suicide.

'Now how do I do ths effectively?'. I knew not a single thing about counselling. But due to my perservering nature, I tried to prepare adequately for the next lesson. We normally had our Education for Life lessons every Friday an hour before breaktime. That day I nearly thought of calling in sick but I gathered the needed courage and went to school just like every other day. I was not sure how the entire class my teacher especially was going to take what I had planned so I felt agitated during the first lesson of the day. At 9.00 a.m.

I grabbed my cd player and ran to the Counselling room where we normally had our lessons. I arrived before everyone else and made sure the cd player had been plugged in correctly. It was not long before all eyes were on me. When everyone was seated ready for the lesson I gave an introducrion. In brief, I just explained that I would have some tea prepared for the depressed teenager. I would then play 'everbody hurts' in a bid to make the depressed teeny understand that what they are experiencing is just a phase and then I would begin the counselling thereafter. Everyone clapped and my teacher gave me 90% for a task well done.