Using Digital Tools in the Guidance Classroom Catherine Wachter, CSFP Guidance Counsellor, University of Toronto Schools I would like to thank Newton Foundation for its generous support of this research. I bring a number of experiences to my work as a guidance counsellor. I have five years of classroom experience at multiple independent secondary schools, I am a Certified Solution-Focused Practitioner (CSFP), and have been a life coach for adults and youth for the past five years. I have undergraduate and graduate degrees in history and I completed a three-year conservatory program in acting in New York City. Before entering into education, I worked in the creative industry as an actor and filmmaker in Canada and the U.S. I joined the University of Toronto Schools in 2013. Having worked in public and independent schools as a guidance counsellor in both Canada and England, I have an appreciation of the diversity of students and teachers within both of these settings. During my first year as a guidance counsellor at UTS, I provided support for students through individual, face-to-face counselling sessions. I started to wonder how I might reach students who were opting out of seeking my support despite the fact that they may have needed it. Knowing that adolescents today are immersed in digital technology and social media, I began to question whether this could be an avenue to support students who were not pursuing face-to-face counselling. After watching a webinar called The Quantified Self Movement and What it Means for Employee Wellness, I began to brainstorm different approaches to supporting student wellness. The Quantified Self is a movement that incorporates technology such as wearable devices to acquire data aspects of an individual’s life (2012, www.slideshare.net/ShapeUp/the-quantified-selfmovement-and-what-it-means-for-employee-wellness). While my research has gone beyond solely focusing on the Quantified Self, the insight into this movement definitely acted as a springboard for the development of my questions/goals for this year’s Eureka! Teacher Inquiry.
Why Address Student Wellness? In my role as a guidance counsellor and as a life coach for youth, I am keenly aware of the challenges that adolescents face in their daily lives. Whether it is school and/or social-emotional stress, 90
there seems to be a growing number of students who are struggling to navigate through heightened periods of stress and/or anxiety. Combine this with the cognitive and physical changes that occur