Although students are not being taught in the traditional form during this national pandemic, students are still receiving support, but in a nontraditional way. It has been a learning curve for students, parents, and staff on how to transition from an at school to an online learning educational atmosphere. As a School Psychologist, during crisis situations, we play a role to collaborate and support staff, students, and parents. Now that it has been almost three months since the school closures, it gives me time to reflect on my observations during this time. As I facilitate my counseling groups, I like to discuss positives before the negatives or challenges presented, so I will follow that, and start with the positives. How can we see positives during a pandemic? Let’s try.
Sexuality used to be the "hot button", but now gender has grown in to it's own space amongst children, adolescents, and adults. What is now termed "gender incongruent", is when someone expresses that they are of the different gender they were born with. I have seen students as young as elementary school, dressing in the stereotypical opposite sex clothing, wearing their hair differently, and expressing themselves of wanting to be identified as the opposite sex. Working in the schools and with a diverse population, we must be sensitive to all kinds of students, with the addition of the "gender incongruent" group of students we most likely will encounter. As anything new, people may react differently, positively or negatively. What we need to be is an educator. Those that have questions whether it be students, parents, or staff, we need to be able to feed them the information they need to understand where these students are coming from and about the issue at hand.
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