The head of the counseling department of a middle school surely, gave all her heart, and soul to education, not just the children’s, but also, the parents’ as well, and it’s, a well-deserved award she’d, won too! Off of the Newspapers, translated…
The former head of the counseling department of the Dajen Middle School in Kaohsiung, Lin retired seventeen years ago, and started working as a volunteer educator, and for a long time, she’d, advocated the education of parents, she knew, that the emotions of the parents can, affect the children too deeply, that if the families don’t want rebellious children, then, the parents must be, able-bodied, and capable, for close to thirty years, she’d, focused on leading the parents to learn how to set up the methods of discipline for their own children, to interact with the younger generations the right way, to help the children grow toward a positive means, she was the recipient for the sixteenth annual education dedication award, and was the only retired worker in education who’d won the award in Kaohsiung.
Lin was a graduate out of the department of psychology of National Taiwan University of Education, the parenting studies department of graduate studies of Kaohsiung Teacher’s University, before she retired, she’d worked as a school counselor, the instructor of special eds, head counselor. She noted the importance of parents’ role in parenting education, she’d set up the “Parent Growth Program” for Dajen Middle School for twenty-nine years, and was successful in her counseling the students with autism and emotional troubles, she’d become the recipient of the POWER Teacher award and Teacher of the Year from Kaohsiung, into her seventeenth year of retirement, she’d, gained one more: the dedication to education awards, she is among the rare educators who’d won all three.
Thirty years ago, Lin noted the importance of parent-children relations, she said, that in her own coming of age, whenever her parents were upsets, it’d affected her studies, to the point of wanting to run away from home, and yet, she’d, recalled how when her parents were happy, and got influenced by the positive atmosphere, which kept her hard at her studies, so her parents needed not worry over her school work.
She had the thought of setting up a parent growth group back in 1992, and the principal of her school supported her idea, and, for the first sessions, she’d found a parent, to host a lecture session, to teach the parents on how to educate their children at home, it’d attracted many parents to attend. She said, from before, as the school first started, the “Mom’s classrooms” were hosted, and it flowed toward the directions of the teachers, tattling on which students misbehaved in class, who didn’t pay attention in class, causing the parents to feel ashamed, and unwilling to get involved, but after the parent growth group was started, it’d, helped turned the views of education in the parents’ beliefs around completely.
She said, a lot of parents carried their methods of educating their own young for their own parents, but it’d not matched the requirements of the times now, the children are changing with the times, so how can the parents not change too? And since the start of the “Parents Growth Group”, gotten the passions in the parents going, a lot of the moms who’d originally started trembling with the mic in their hands, are trained to become, ever the more, articulate, and can detect the feelings of their own young too, “As parents hold the right values, they can hold conversations with their own children at home.”
And so, this school counselor noted how the parents and the students didn’t know how to communicate with one another effectively, so she’d, set up the seminars, to teach the parents, how to connect better with their own young, and, she was successful, in teaching the methods of helping the parents connect more with their own young, and she is, well-deserved in the awards too.
Pushing Forth the Special Eds Courses, Opening up that Window for the Autistic Students
The children with special needs such as autism are hot potatoes to the teachers and the schools, with no place they can go, the former head counselor of Dajen Middle School, Lin, in 1996, set up the city’s first and only “Special eds class for Autistic Students”, allowing the families with autistic children to find that lifeline.
Lin, being a faithful Christian, has that love for the world, and, since she started working as an educator, she’d not just helped the parents grow, she’d also, paid close attention to special education, she believed, that the children with special needs shouldn’t be cast out, that they should be allowed to interact and learn with other children, that way, they can be, socialized into the society when they’re older.
In the 1980s, not a lot was known by the public about autism, back then, a lot of the autistic children after they finished elementary schools, they couldn’t go on into the middle school levels, the parents were worried and stressed, and they’d gone to Lin to solicit the Department of Education for help. She knew the hardships the parents are faced with, she’d expressed their needs to the Department of Education then, and worked hard with the Autism Association, and fought for the very first special eds class for autistic students at Dajen Middle School to get set up, at its highest capacity, the class had fifteen students at a time.
She said, the Dajen Middle School originally had the special needs program, and later on, added the special needs courses for children with autism, not only the children with are high and low functioning autism, also, the children diagnosed with ADHD, as well as the emotionally disturbed too were included, and the “undifferentiated special needs” class continued to this very day, because the classes were taught in all inclusion, it’d not left this group of children out of the society’s interactions.
But, when a new student gets placed in the program, she’d spent a massive amount of time, collecting the data on the student’s profiles, and analyzing each of her student’s personalities, including, the children may rant on incessantly, the meal times, under what situation would the students become physically violent? She’d known all the details of the each and every student’s habits, personalities, Lin believed, that if the better qualities of autistic children had been noted, she will be able to use that to her teaching advantage, to open up a window for the students.
And so, this, is this school counselor’s dedication, to help the children with autism and parents with children with autism, to find ways that they can adapt to the world, and, the group of mothers she’d set up, offered the supports that these parents with special needs children too.
Life, the Obstacle Course 