Juliana Pacheco Mendoza
Mental health at school: resilience in everyday school life: lecture by Neila Diaz
This week in the Educational Psychology class we had the opportunity to share with
Professor Neila Diaz who gave us an overview of the main challenges of Educational
Psychology in the face of the pandemic and how coping with them comes down to the
development of resilience skills in families, schools and even governments. What I found
most meaningful is that through her research she wanted to collect those distinctive moments
of the pandemic, which is a common experience for all, and organize them according to those
aspects that converge in different issues such as the lack of access to technology, increases in
housing and market costs, problems of coexistence within families, among others.
Now, I would like to go deeper into all these reflections that her research has left us
with. First of all, we were able to explore how the privileged conditions under which we
faced the pandemic are very different from those of the rest of the country in areas where they
went through very difficult times and where the lack of technological devices, of places in the
house and even of school materials hindered and delayed the educational process in schools
and universities. Also, I would like to highlight how all these difficulties have that common
factor of innovation and that is where resilience skills are found. For example, teachers who
took on these problems and looked for ways to get the guides to the students and correct them
or rural communities where they set up a study area with internet in the middle of the
mountain and in the open air.
Another of the reflections I would like to highlight from what the professor shared
with us is that many of these common experiences found are not good at all. For example, the
increase in abuse in the family environment, food insecurity, physical health problems and
even dropping out of school due to the impossibility of accessing classes. It is here where the
importance of the use of coping strategies is shown, since this population, which was so
vulnerable to the challenges of the pandemic, was able to find solutions to their problems and
develop resilience skills thanks to this ability to cope with stressful situations. It is here that
we were able to see the full picture of the true role of educational psychology as an agent of
change in crisis situations. Thanks to what the professor shared with us I was able to realize
the power of impact that an educational psychologist has in order to carry out strategies and
action plans that guarantee the well-being of students but above all, their access to education.
Finally, I must say that I found the conference extremely necessary for students like
us, who have the future in our hands and must recognize from now on the challenges we will
face as future professionals. In my case, I would like to dedicate myself to this field and I
have a deep interest in the learning process and the different pedagogy methods. It was an
incredible opportunity to listen to someone who has been practicing educational psychology
for so many years and who exposed all the challenges that we will have in the future with the
new normality and the post-pandemic, since it is necessary to rethink education in favor of
student learning and collect all those positive things that the contingency left us to update the
methods, renew classrooms, curricula and promote everytime the existence of educational
institutions in favor of new competencies and the individual learning of each student.