19 - The real us

FEBRUARY 2023

THE REAL US MAGAZINE EMBRACING DIVERSITY IN A CHANGING WORLD

TABLE OF CONTENTS 03 SURVIVING THE IB PROGRAM: AT WHAT COST? 06 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN 08

SCHOOL'S RULES AND STUDENT’S FREE DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR PERSONALITY

10 10A PHYSICAL HEALTH IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY: A GLIMPSE FROM 14 PHILOSOPHY

STAFF: JOUNALISTS: TATIANA GUTIERREZ SAMUEL BAHAMON MANUELA TORREGROSA SARA CHAPARRO ALEJANDRO ALFARO

EDITOR: TATIANA GUTIERREZ GRAPHIC DESIGNERS: SAMUEL BAHAMON SARA CHAPARRO

ADVERTISMENT MANAGER: MANUELA TORREGROSA

EDITORIAL Logo of the International Baccalaureate

SURVIVING THE IB PROGRAM: AT WHAT COST?

Mental health problems have been increasing over the years; students suffer from excessive levels of stress, which has taken a toll on GV’s juniors and seniors while taking the IB program. Nowadays, their peace of mind is not the only thing being affected by this amount of stress. We all wonder if the school is actually aware of the constant deterioration of emotional stability and unhappy students/ teenagers due to the overload of work and stress. For this editorial, three interviews were conducted: first with Claudia Aguirre, coordinator of the diploma program at Gimnasio Vermont, second with Camilo Mutis, the high school psychologist at GV, and third, Mariana Angulo, a 10th-grade student and member of a student’s initiative called Kaizen Community that spreads information about mental health and its importance.

Have you ever sat down to think about how you feel? Or how good is your mental health at school? Or if you are constantly stressed out due to academic reasons? As students currently coursing 10th grade at Gimnasio Vermont, we are constantly thinking about this topic.

It is not a secret that IB students struggle to maintain peace of mind and keep stress levels under control. The IB program requests a certain amount of academic achievements with a higher difficulty level than the national curriculum.

Because of the program's prestige, it demands more significant efforts from students to reach the expected results and established standards by the organization and the school. We consider that students' mental health inevitably changes drastically when they enter the IB program. The pressure set upon them is something they have not experienced before, and they are forced to navigate and assimilate vast amounts of stress in a short period to be able to fulfill academic responsibilities while maintaining the quality the program demands.

According to Mariana, the overload of work and anxiety affects other areas in students' personal lives, such as physical health, quantity and quality of sleep, and social interactions. Taking this into account, we consider the stress levels experienced by students are not normal; teenagers' development and well-being shouldn't be affected by academic results. The school is supposed to be a safe and stimulating context whose main goal should be fostering love for learning, creativity, and social connections.

However, what is observed during the last two years when students take the diploma, is an increase in the occurrence of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety.

Camilo Mutis - High school and clinical pshycologist

Mariana Angulo - 10th grade student and memberof Kaizen Community

According to Claudia and Camilo, the school has tried to implement workshops and strategies to cope with stress, as well as surveys to know the state in which the students are.

However, these do not have a way to systematically evaluate their effectiveness in reducing the feeling of overload in students; because of this, we do not consider that they make a complete effort to monitor in detail and permanently the needs of the students and how we are facing the demands of the program. From our perspective as students, we do not feel that they generate a change in us or provide us with enough to deal with moments of tension and stress.

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We agree with Claudia that the program provides us with skills such as organization, planning, punctuality, and working under pressure in different tasks, which will be very valuable in the future when we enter university life. However, it is a fallacy to believe that extreme stress levels are necessary to acquire these skills; additionally, overemphasizing grades or academic results may impact the consolidation of the identity of young students. The fact that the notion of success as a student and as a person concentrates only on academic results diminishes the importance of effort, motivation, interest in learning, and perseverance which are aspects that should be vital for the construction and strengthening of personal identity.

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Claudia Aguirre - Coordinator of the diploma program

Mental health will forever be a concern for IB students, we can all agree it is not an easy task to reduce stress levels, and we hope they will get better over time. We do not believe that it is particularly the fault of the school, the school administration, or the teachers that mental health problems exist in the diploma students. However, not enough is being done to prevent and counteract the adverse effects that stress has on students. With all that has been mentioned throughout this editorial, there may be more questions than answers, and we mainly want to reflect on the question: To what extent are those people who are supposed to support and educate us aware of our suffering as students in our supposed "second home"?

FEATURE ARTICLE THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN How teachers seem to be unprotected against mental health issues in school.

Mental health is one of the most debated topics at school, but maybe not in a complete manner. Usually, when we talk about mental health, recurring topics tend to pop up, homework load, exams, number of subjects, or even waking up at 7 for pre saber on Saturdays. There is a subtle similarity with all these topics: they are all focused on the students' perspective.

This would not be a problem at a first glance, but then we need to consider that the student-to-employee ratio at school is about 3:1. Here another issue arises: an estimate of 33% of people at Gimnasio Vermont also have their own mental health issues caused by academic load, and yet they are not being considered in the newest workshops and initiatives to mitigate the stress and anxiety that school can generate. It seems very concerning when looked under that perspective.

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FEATURE ARTICLE THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN Eager to know what the community’s perspective was? We asked both sides of the coin regarding the topic: the teachers themselves, and the department who is allegedly responsible for mental health issues.

The first interviewee was the Biology and Environmental Systems and Societies teacher, Catalina Romero, who manifested in her interview the difference between students and teachers at school. Our interviewee stated that she did not have any knowledge of any organism similar to what students have and known as “school support” she attributed this to the fact that school, legally has to pay for a medical insurance, which according to minsalud, also covers psychology service.

Later, we moved into the department of Health and Safety. When asked about the campaigns or initiatives the school takes to improve mental health in teachers, the department mentioned a variety of programs, whose main goal is to de-stress teachers.

Catalina Romero- Biology teacher

With volleyball matches, short birthday celebrations, or even an active break initiative, the Health and Safety department showed the effort and caring the school gave for good mental health, but, what about the actual problem? What about the workload and the upcoming mental health issues due to, for example, exams?

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FEATURE ARTICLE THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN The department’s answer was rooted on something called “Bateria de riesgo psicosocial”, which is conducted by an external psychologist who then delivers an action plan to the school in order to know which areas they have to improve and which areas are fulfilling the expectations regarding the mental health of teachers.

As for the last interviewee, we had the opportunity to contact a TOK teacher.

When I mentioned the programs that the Health and Safety department described, not only he agreed to them, but also left clear that the methods used to spread the information were effective. Even though the teacher stated that the mentioned methods were efficient, he also wanted to make it clear that there could be other mechanisms to boost the mental health awareness at school, such as hiring a quality management organization, described as an “Icontec but for mental health standards”.

It can be concluded from the information that the opinion varies from person to person, but a general thought is that the mental health of students is prioritized with respect to that of the teachers.

Sometimes we fail as students to notice that when our workload and our stress increases, the same occurs to the teachers. Here is an example of the tons of additional work a teacher must do per one assignment versus the additional work the student does for the same, inspired by our biology teacher Catalina Romero, from her previous interview. Let’s start our prediction with the student side of the coin, maybe with a workshop or a handout aiming to prepare for a midterm or a final exam. Assuming it is a topic which the student is not acquainted with, and adding on top of that, the possible procrastination when doing the assignment, we estimate a total of three hours doing the workshop.

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FEATURE ARTICLE THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN For the teacher, the workload starts way before. He or she must create the whole workshop, making sure that the exercises presented will help to understand the topic and prepare for a possible test.

Assuming less procrastination for the teacher, it will take an estimate of 1-1.5 hours for the creation of the workshop.

The next step is the grading process.

Here, the times can be drastically different. Correcting a multiple-choice workshop can’t take longer than 3 minutes per student, but correcting an analysis workshop or an essay can take 15 minutes or longer per workshop.

Let us take for this prediction the meantime used to grade a workshop, 7 minutes per paper. The number of students also varies, but considering that we are talking about a midterm, it is probable that the teacher is responsible for 3-5 classes at least, with an average of 19 students per class.

Making the math, and adding a 10% of extra time due to possible procrastination, we have a grand total of 10,7 hours! More than the triple of what we predicted for the student.

The goal of this article is to inform the reader about the other perspective regarding mental health, Maybe the load of the students is heavy compared to the national curriculum here in Colombia, but we need to realize that many of the ways we tend to use to relief our academic load, such as asking for extra time, or extra grades to improve the final grade on the subject, ends up increasing the academic load of the teachers, which is in itself pretty heavy. Maybe the solution to most of our problems regarding mental health and academic load relies on being empathetic with the other side of the coin, realizing we are not the only ones who stress in exams, neither the only ones with a personal life besides school, may be a decisive factor in order to survive this exam season in one piece.

Alejandro Prada- Tok teacher

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INTERVIEW SCHOOL'S RULES AND STUDENT’S FREE DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR PERSONALITY Q:: Tell me about yourself and your role By: Manuela Torregrosa

in the school A: My name is Camilo Mutis, and I am a high school psychologist.

Q: I am conducting this interview to analyze different perspectives on something important at school, especially in high school, and that is school rules regarding dress code and personal image, more specifically, hair dyes and earrings in boys. What do you know about the school rules that address these situations.

Camilo Mutis - High school and clinical pshycologist School rules in the handbook regarding the personal image of students have often been a controversial topic due to the question that arises of whether it is okay or not to apply this prohibition on the use of certain accessories and hair colors to students and if these rules affect or not the free development of their personality.

A: I know them but not what they textually say.

Q: Okay, I am going to tell them to you then: chapter VI, article 31, “Personal image” 2: "Colored hair dyes are not accepted for both men and women, since they affect the institutional image and go against the Guiding Principle of Equality." and 5. “(...)Men may not wear earrings(...).”

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Q: Do you think this situation affects students in some way? If you do, how?

A: It does, due to the fact that the first impression of a student when they are told that something such as dying your hair or wearing earrings as a boy is forbidden and against the rules is that they are being limited from something that they consider a way of showing their personality through their physical appearance.

Q: Do you think these rules block students from freely developing their personality, especially at this age in which we are discovering ourselves and what we like and don’t?

A: I think they do, but I also think they don’t. They do in the sense that there is inevitably a moment in life, especially in high school, when identity is being formed, and you would like to show it through your physical appearance because when we talk about these aspects, such as dying our hair and wearing earrings, we also see how they help to express our personality. They would affect in the sense that the students' first impression is that they are being limited from doing it. However, it may have another purpose, and it is to be able to understand that identity can not only be defined from the outside and physical appearance because, to this end, we would be saying we are only what can be seen on the outside. It is also important to mention that only with a prohibition of these acts it is normal for it to be seen as a limitation, which is why an explanation must be given as of why this rule exists.

Q: In which way does dying your hair and wearing earrings as a boy affect the school image?

A: Personally, I don’t think that it affects the school image in the sense that it will bring a negative effect on it, but perhaps it is more about trying to unify us as a community; that is why we use uniforms. Maybe the purpose of this is to find equity for everyone, especially at this age when students want to highlight their personalities from their physical appearance. Then they will internalize it to find that it goes hand in hand with both external and internal aspects.

OPINION COLUMN 10A PHYSICAL HEALTH By: Samuel Bahamón Do you sleep well? Do you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day?

Do you eat fruit? Do you eat fast food? These were some of the questions that were asked to students of 10A classroom at Gimnasio Vermont school with the objective of having an idea about their physical health.

The first question was: “Do you have breakfast every day?” The answers show us that a little over 46% of students do not eat breakfast every day.

Do you have breakfast every day ?

Yes: No:

However, 92,3% affirm that they eat lunch every day.

Do you have lunch every day ?

Yes: No:

They were also asked if they eat dinner every day; for this question, a negative answer was obtained. In this case the 38,5% said they didn´t

Do you have dinner every day ?

Yes: No:

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The consumption of fast food is moderate since only 23,1% said they consume this type of food daily, while the rest affirm that they consume it only a few times a week.

How often do you consume fast food?

Daily: Few times a week: Only occasionally:

Regarding the consumption of fruit, 53,8% consume it daily, while 41.7% said they consume them a few times a week.

How often do you consume fruit?

Daily: Few times a week: Only occasionally:

Another question they were asked had to do with how many hours they were sleeping each day. For this question, 84,6% answered that they sleep between 4 and 6 hours a day.

How many hours do you sleep daily?

6-8: 4-6:

They were also asked about how often they exercise. In this case, the answers varied a lot, since 16.7% said they do physical activity daily, 25% said they do it once a week, 33.3% do it 2 to 3 times a week, another 16.7% 4 to 5 days a week, and 8.3% do not exercise.

How often do you exercise?

Daily: Once a week: 2-3 times a week: 4-5 times a week: Dont exercise:

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The last question they were asked was if they believed their answers to the survey had been affected by school, to which 91.7% said yes, making particular emphasis on hours of sleep, since they may be affected by the high academic load.

From 1 to 10, how tired do you feel?

In my opinion, some of these results are worrying. For example, the fact that many do not have breakfast before going to school means that they probably do not have the necessary energy to perform favorably in class.

The other data that is worrying is that 83.3% sleep between 4 and 6 hours (taking into account that it is recommended to sleep 8 hours). This can also affect the performance of the students, although sleeping 6 hours once should not be a huge preoccupation, if this is repeated frequently, the hours of sleep that are lost daily will accumulate, causing physical and mental tiredness in students.

However, not everything is negative.

For example, the consumption of fast food is moderate, while the consumption of fruit is adequate, which means that although sometimes they miss dinner or breakfast, at the time of eating, what they eat is healthy.

Another piece of information that, in my opinion, is positive is the physical activity carried out by the students throughout the week. This is very positive since most students exercise at least two times a week.

What I see in the answers to the last question is that the academic load is the reason for getting little sleep or exercising less than they would like. In this, I agree, since as a student in the same class, I have been forced to sacrifice several hours of sleep and, in general, sacrifice time that I could use for myself.

All this leads us to conclude that the health of the students who answered this survey could be seen mostly affected due to the lack of rest and also possible eating disorders.

What is true is that this can have an improvement. The key is to organize our time better. As I mentioned, maybe with this, we get more rest and have a proper eating plan, so the most important thing is to encourage ourselves to do it powered by the benefits that we know this organization will bring to us!

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PUBLICITY TIME!! #ADD

In our magazine "The Real Us" the main motto is: Prioritise your mental health. This is why we think we should promote alternatives for our readers, so that they find a way to know that they are not alone and mental health is something that should be a priority. This time we share the posibilities that we as students have in school to be able to talk to someone about how we are feeling, we know that we all are going through a lot so we wanted to show you a way that might help you.

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FEATURE ARTICLE

From right to left: Andrea Navas, Valentina Caicedo and Catalina GomezPhilosophers and phylosophy teachers

IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY: A GLIMPSE FROM PHILOSOPHY By: Sara Chaparro I tend to complicate myself, so when the teacher made us choose a topic for writing an article in a magazine, I decided on identities. I assure you that asking yourself about who you are will keep you busy for hours or even your whole life. This concept is so troublesome to define, that we usually ignore it with the noise of our daily hustle and bustle. However, that doubt will be by your side until you die, or even after; death is also perplexing, but I will abstain from going deeper into it.

Concerning my assignment, I was left with the question: “How should I address such a complex topic?” The teacher was the one who enlightened me, reminding me why I chose identities. “Because that constitutes what human beings are,” I answered, confused. There came my answer: Philosophy.

Valentina Caicedo was the first philosophy teacher I consulted. When I asked which philosopher proposed the most attractive concept of personal identity for her, she answered without hesitation: “Hannah Arendt”. It wasn’t a surprise, because I would have also chosen her.

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Hannah Arendt- Philospher

You may be wondering, “What did she propose?”. Well, Arendt thought that our life is divided into three levels: labor, work, and action. In this last one, we are free to the extent that the interaction with others allows us to display on the table a plurality of ways of seeing the world that we may or may not share. As Valentina said, “the discourse in which we meet the other, helps us define who and how we are ''.

We result from the knowledge we exchange through communication with our peers.

One perspective isn’t enough when discussing philosophy, or anything else, so I asked the same question to Catalina Gomez, my philosophy teacher. She said a different name: ”Martin Heidegger”. Apart from his ecological proposals, I have never heard from him.

“It is the most realistic concept”, she continued.

I didn’t expect Heidegger's tragic view to resonate with Catalina, who always appeared optimistic and overly serene. For this German philosopher, the true identity is the one that human beings form with their experience with death. As Catalina explained, “When people see that they are going to die soon, they are anguished, and from those emotions generated by knowing that their life has an end, they create an identity and seek to make it authentic”. In other words, we are ourselves when we realize we lack time to be ourselves; how dreadful, but as she said, realistic.

Martin Heidegger-Philospher

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Friedrich Nietszche -Philospher

The teacher who offered me the most interesting or thought-provoking answer was Andrea Navas. After thinking a bit and even stating that she would question the notion of identity, she answered what I predicted: “Nietzsche”.

He said that we don't have an essence, a unique or authentic identity; therefore, we will never find who we “truly” are. In Andrea’s terms, “the human being is a pure coming, a fluidity”. We build ourselves as time goes by, but always taking into account those contradictory instincts that we have as animals. “You cannot deny them; you must build yourself from them”, insisted Andrea. In Nietzche’s philosophy, instead of asking yourself who you are, you ask, “What can I be?” Not as an ultimate goal, but as your possibilities.

In conclusion, as with all things in philosophy, there isn’t only one definition of identity. For some, it may be the product of our interaction with others, our attitude on the doors of death, or even something that we will never fully enclose because it is constantly shifting, and we will never finish constructing it. But as these, there are many more perspectives. I know how distressing this result sounds; as someone who wants an answer, I find it hard to admit. The only clear thing is that what you conceive as your identity depends on your view of the world and how your existence connects with it; your definition of identity is also part of your identity.

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