“BridgeU classes combined with mindfulness gives students some time to be reflective and helps them feel centred.”
Rachael Gerbic arrived at Bali Island School in Denpasar when BridgeU had already been introduced and implemented. Rachael was new to BridgeU when she took up her position as K12 Counselor at Bali Island School, having used Naviance in her previous role.
Her initial impressions of BridgeU were of a platform that was helpful and easy to use. Bali Island School is an IB World School and Rachael was able to use BridgeU’s lesson plans and resources to structure her counseling curriculum across grades 9-12. The lesson plans helped Rachael to schedule key milestones and learning objectives for each year, from MYP through to the final year of IBDP.
Rachael combines college counseling with social and emotional counseling and has used BridgeU to link mindfulness to the university application process. “One of the things I do as a K-12 counselor is teach mindfulness. University and careers exploration is an emotional process, so I designed a programme to link mindfulness to the BridgeU lesson plans,” explains Rachael.
Rachael uses the BridgeU lesson plans to get students to focus on their own personal qualities, their individual strengths and interests. She describes how this has the effect of helping students to be more centred and reflective. It stops university & careers exploration from being about “what everyone else is doing” and makes it more of an internal process.
“Students use the BridgeU strategy adviser and realise that their experiences are their building blocks.”
Rachael has encouraged her students to use BridgeU to explore different career pathways.
To prepare her students for Careers Day, Rachael asks them to choose three career pathways and use BridgeU to create a careers report, which they will then share with their Home Room teacher. Rachael will then set follow up tasks for students to complete in their Home Room sessions.
Follow up tasks might include finding out what salary they can expect from their chosen career path, the further education/qualifications they will need to succeed.
Rachael has also found that the BridgeU Strategy Adviser has been really helpful in getting students to reflect on their personal experiences and think about how they can incorporate these writing their applications for university.
Rachael observes that students might begin the university application process unsure if they have any noteworthy experiences to list in their essays and personal statements.
“The CS team will usually get back to me straight away and walk me through something over Skype or Zoom. It’s like having someone here. It’s fantastic.”
Rachel credits the Customer Success team with helping her to learn her way around BridgeU and integrate it into her counseling programme at BIS. BridgeU has helped Rachael to personalise her guidance curriculum at Bali Island School.
She has been impressed with how quickly and easily she can get an answer to a query. “The CS team will usually get back to me straight away and walk me through something over Skype or Zoom. It’s like having someone right here. It’s fantastic.”
She explains how BridgeU’s lesson plans make it easy to maintain continuity throughout all the years of the school. “You need something that builds on itself and you can teach like a course,” she says. “You can build something up from the start of high school.”
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