On the UABIC Campus (see earlier posts about this fantastic school) there is an office entitled, "ME CAE BIEN" which translates roughly to "I like you" or "you make a good impression." Thus just by entering the office of the school psychologist, students already feel welcome and secure about their choice to enter and to ask for help.
I sat down with Jesus Bibian, the school psychologist and the director of the CAE BIEN program to find out more about his role in the school community and the students that he assisted:
My name is Jesús Bibian I’m a trained psychologist, and I am the one in charge of this area, which is the center of attention for students, which basically what we do is roughly, to help the students in their academic lives -- we are the ones who revise paperwork for scholarships, we solve questions of any kind, and we offer services for them, we are from Monday to Friday, from 7:30 am to 3 pm. In this past August, in 2015 it was 3 years of being here in the unit, which means that the 3 generations that are already here, first, second and third year in this year, the three know CAE.
In general, what support do you offer?
The services that I provide are basically in two ways, first it's information, about entering the high school here, information about processes like scholarships as well as general doubts, doubts about the unit, dates for special examination, if an specific teacher will come, general, I have even been asked questions about how to get the SINTUR credential (tourism program), anyway, I am asked of many things, it’s been diversified a lot, regarding the information part.
And the other part is, paperwork and services. We do the paperwork for scholarships, we inform the students and also we do the paperwork for things like the city hall or the federal scholarship from SEP (federal government).
And a third service is that we provide is health care services, here in the UABIC we have 4 health services for the students that are completely free, which are, the nutrition consulting room, the one for odontology (dentist), the nursing consulting room and the psychology consulting room. These 4 services are totally free for the students.
Why did you decide to become a psychologist?
Why did I decide to be a psychologist? Oh well, what inspired me to be a psychologist is a subject that I took in high school, called social psychology, once I started taking this subject in first year I decided “This is it!” And basically I like to understand the processes that happen among people and in the groups, so that’s why I’m fascinated by psychology.
Of course, what I do here is an administrative situation, because as I had commented about the services, regarding information, to properly be in the educative process of the students, I’m not, since I don’t teach any subject. However many students, when they come to us to talk, they comment what they think and feel about certain educative processes. For example, that they have an excessive academic load, that the end of semesters are pretty strong for them because there are so many integrative activities that they have to deliver, they lose a lot of sleep.
So the experience I’ve had here has been very nice, the students had come to me do their best trying not to owe subjects, however in most cases there is one or two subjects that they owe from the current year they are taking.
Please talk to me about the students who benefit from the school’s help
From the school, well the simple fact of entering here is a great help, not only for them, but I am sure, also for society. It means, because if there wasn’t a unit in this specific area of Mérida, I think everyone who is attending here would be doing other kind of things. What things? I don’t know, but they would be doing other stuff not as productive as studying, maybe it’s not the fact of studying the high school, I think that the fact that they get here, makes them have a more ample life plan, I mean it’s not only to think about passing high school, but also to think about a degree and a post-graduate title. That’s one thing.
Talking to them, some obstacles, well the family configurations nowadays are not nuclear anymore, it’s no longer “mom, dad and children and little brothers and sisters”, but now it can be just mom, or dad, even neither, the granny, the grandpa, and they all live together. What I’ve heard from some students is that most of the time, they spend time with their little brothers and sisters, or with the granny or grandpa, the parents, if there’s any, are working most of the time.
This is one of the main obstacles, the little time the parents spend with the students, another thing is also the economic situation, the economic situation of the students according to my appreciation and as I’ve heard from them, I define it as “living day by day”, which means, if some of the parents or the money-giver in the house loses his/her job the student literally stops coming to school, because since they live day by day with what they earn it’s how they support themselves daily, so that’s why in some cases the students have to work, either in a pizza place the weekends or some may work as a show entertainer, as botarga (a huge costume that is usually an animal or a funny person/object in the square or outside a store) so I think they have a job that if well, it’d not serve for them to get income to the family expenses at least could pay some of theirs. I think these are the main reasons that the students have.
How do you identify students with economic issues?
Well I do it in two ways, one is they come here and tell us, the first is they tell us, but an objective way to identify it, at the beginning of the school year an invitation is made, to apply for scholarships and well everyone who wishes to apply, they bring us papers, so that’s our first filter of whom, first the ones who wish this because they have a necessity and when we apply the filter of how much is the family income then we can see with a little bit more detail who are the ones, from everyone who applies, the ones who really need it more than others.
So it’s like the first objective filter we have, the second one is they come to us asking “My dad lost his job, so I can’t come anymore, I need help” or something along those lines, those are the two ways in which the CAE identifies the students who have economic issues. And also the unit, before getting in, as a part of the selective process, a socio-economic survey is conducted to the family, so there are items that they have, there’s pictures of the house, they make a visit, for example in April they go and make the domiciliary visits to everyone who applies, they go to their houses, take pictures, chat and conduct a survey. This is another mean to know the socio-economic status of the people who are here.
Each student has the possibility to receive the resources from the school, the ones everyone get in the same way are, well classrooms, everything related to the unity, the classrooms, the health services, the tutorship department, everything that has to do with the high school they receive in the same way.
In the case of other resources as scholarships, then not everyone gets them, but only those who get in, that fit inside the requirements that are needed, so that is the variable. Another variable is that there are the ones who are irregular students, it means they are on stand-by, due to owing subjects, they lose the right to apply for a scholarship.
Can you talk to me about the students that do not attend school every day?
Hmmm I don’t have the exact data of the students who don’t come to school, what I can tell is that when they skip school, it’s due to some familiar situation, meaning they can’t afford coming here or simply the student doesn’t like the study plan, he feels it’s too much and gets demotivated and says “well I don’t want to continue” so he stops coming to school. Sometimes due to illness, so it’s a variety of factors that could influence that a student stops attending school.
The department of tutorship, that is in charge of the graduated Diana Rodriguez, they are the ones who have all the information of who are the ones who are not attending and then they handle the process, what I have understood is that what they do is, they call the guardian’s house to say “Hey, your son, or your daughter, is not coming to school, is this due to some problem?” they check if the student doesn’t have some sort of justification due to some kind of disease or something that is giving now or some surgery or something.
They discard this health part and if there’s a personal or family matter, they are the ones who directly deal with the families and see the way that it doesn’t affect the student so much, that the information reaches the student to try that he’s not too affected in his academic life.
Talk to me about the communitarian project, please.
Wow, there’s a lot of projects, too many, the ones that I’m going to mention are the ones that come to my mind, but there are too many, the approach that the high school has is with communitarian integration, what does this mean? What is wanted is that the student has this sense of belonging in a bigger group, then that’s why several projects are developed, they are oriented to answer to necessities of the community that the students are in, for example there is one called “Playing and learning” in this what it’s done is that they tutor children from elementary school, to reinforce this academic part, especially in math. There is another one called “Hands to dirt” where they are taught to work, to know everything related to sowing, harvesting, the ideal times to do the sowing and also to develop strategies to create sustainable products.
So there are several projects in the unit, then the students can choose what they like, there are some who leave to other towns, like for example, a town that comes to mind, that they go to is… hmmmm no, I can’t remember the name, but what is wanted is that they go to the people, talk to them, listen to them, listen to their needs, and according to that to present a solution proposal in conjunction with them and they work with the community, so it’s a cooperative work.
There are two projects that are done during the week, which is “Playing and learning” and “Hands to dirt”, these are done during the week, on Thursdays, and on the weekends, which are on Saturdays, those are the ones where the students leave to whenerever they have to go on Saturdays when these are developed, they only come for projects. During the week, from Monday to Friday they study most projects are on Saturdays.
What would you change in the program, the project or the school?
One of the matters that I got to reflect upon, with the students, was this part of the academic load, well, that my personal perception was that the students owed so many subjects precisely because of the academic load they had, it was too much, too much this load, so there comes a point when they could not humanly continue, they burned out, the burn-out syndrome, they couldn’t performance anymore or they did it very lowly or they just simply failed the subjects, that was my perception and I talked about it with the students and they agreed with me regarding this part, that the academic load was way too much.
That’s how it was for the ones on the old plan. At the beginning of this plan, the new model, the MERFI, such adjustments are made and on this time, with this new plan, the number of people who owed subjects decreased, even the number or subjects that were failed decreased, so I think with this new model , the academic load was taken into account. It’s now a more stable load, a more stabilized one, so I think this worry I had, well with the new model things got better.
And another concern, what would I change? What would I change in the high school? Ah that’s a very personal thing, part of the responsibility that the high school propitiates is the awareness of responsibility, so I think it would be useful to let students make their choices in certain things, for example when they don’t attend school, the student has a certain percentage to miss classes, this 20% of handling classes, to allow him to handle it, and not to be on their backs “hey,you gotta go , you gotta go, you gotta go to school” since I think that to promote a culture where the decisions you make, you assume the consequences in the academic part. It’d be very important to promote this and not so much to decide on behalf of the students, in some aspects, very few, nothing more than a little adjustment, a minimum, but I think it’s important.
In general, what are the most important matters in education for you?
The important points, in general the education, personally I think I like it very much that the education is centered in this awareness part, of a global awareness that we are, we are immerse within a society, and whatever we do or stop doing, will not only affect me but also the others and the ones to come. So I think this awareness, that translates in environmental awareness, of resources, it’s important and also another essential part of the education is this promoting to the human part, a little bit of what the pillars of education refer to, learning to be, teaching to be, learning to be, re-learn the pillars of education, I think this is important, that the students are aware, to promote programs that encourage the consciousness, that encourage the questioning and not only to be listening, to question this part, to question everything so that they can make proposals, to listen, this is of utmost importance as well, to listen to be able to understand and to comprehend that this intercultural part is not to treat the others as they treat me, but to treat the others as they like to be treated, I think that’s how interculture goes.
What are your plans or goals for this school year?
In the area part? Well to continue to add more services for the students, and for this we just promoted military service, which is a new service that is given to the students, where the students who have to fulfill military service can do the paperwork here, here their doubts can be solved, here documents are received and they don’t have to go to the other board that is in downtown, that means the fact that this can be done here, that they won’t miss lessons, they won’t spend money on transportation and also not to waste time.
Another thing among our plans, not only for this year, but always, is to always position ourselves as a reliable source of information. Which means, that the students know that what CAE tells them is truthful, reliable and official. That is on one side, to always be on the vanguard, be the first ones to say this and the first ones to properly tell the information, that we are a reference point inside the unit, this is our goal for this year and forever.
Have you been in touch with the graduated students?
Yes, with very few, I’ve talked to them, and like what kind of things would you like to know about them? Have these students gone to university after school?
Right, I don’t have the exact data or the exact statistics, teacher Guillermo must have it, of how many of the, well to start with, who among the ones who studied considered to get into university, because that’s important, there were people who said “I don’t want to study, just my high school and that’s it”, from those who considered getting into university how many signed up for our university, the UADI and from those how many managed to actually get it.
I know several who did make it, I know others who couldn’t and went to study to a private school, and I know some others who just didn’t, it wasn’t a part of their life plan and are already working, or in some workshop or doing what the dad does, so they had another kind of working plan.
This answers to the needs at home, if you need to generate money as soon as possible, because otherwise you can’t keep on living, then the exact data I don’t know it, but some are still in touch with me, through Facebook and we talk, “Hey, you know what? I have some doubts” even “Hey I have doubts about this”, “Hey do you know where can I get my credential? I lost it”, so I’m still supporting them with them being graduated because if they continue in the UADI, the information is more or less the same.
That’s what I was talking about, the part about listening, of being there, it’s not the same to read something or to be told than being in the community, and you can have the feeling of being part of something bigger, that’s very nice, very cool.
In general, what support do you offer?
The services that I provide are basically in two ways, first it's information, about entering the high school here, information about processes like scholarships as well as general doubts, doubts about the unit, dates for special examination, if an specific teacher will come, general, I have even been asked questions about how to get the SINTUR credential (tourism program), anyway, I am asked of many things, it’s been diversified a lot, regarding the information part.
And the other part is, paperwork and services. We do the paperwork for scholarships, we inform the students and also we do the paperwork for things like the city hall or the federal scholarship from SEP (federal government).
And a third service is that we provide is health care services, here in the UABIC we have 4 health services for the students that are completely free, which are, the nutrition consulting room, the one for odontology (dentist), the nursing consulting room and the psychology consulting room. These 4 services are totally free for the students.
Why did you decide to become a psychologist?
Why did I decide to be a psychologist? Oh well, what inspired me to be a psychologist is a subject that I took in high school, called social psychology, once I started taking this subject in first year I decided “This is it!” And basically I like to understand the processes that happen among people and in the groups, so that’s why I’m fascinated by psychology.
Of course, what I do here is an administrative situation, because as I had commented about the services, regarding information, to properly be in the educative process of the students, I’m not, since I don’t teach any subject. However many students, when they come to us to talk, they comment what they think and feel about certain educative processes. For example, that they have an excessive academic load, that the end of semesters are pretty strong for them because there are so many integrative activities that they have to deliver, they lose a lot of sleep.
So the experience I’ve had here has been very nice, the students had come to me do their best trying not to owe subjects, however in most cases there is one or two subjects that they owe from the current year they are taking.
Please talk to me about the students who benefit from the school’s help
From the school, well the simple fact of entering here is a great help, not only for them, but I am sure, also for society. It means, because if there wasn’t a unit in this specific area of Mérida, I think everyone who is attending here would be doing other kind of things. What things? I don’t know, but they would be doing other stuff not as productive as studying, maybe it’s not the fact of studying the high school, I think that the fact that they get here, makes them have a more ample life plan, I mean it’s not only to think about passing high school, but also to think about a degree and a post-graduate title. That’s one thing.
Talking to them, some obstacles, well the family configurations nowadays are not nuclear anymore, it’s no longer “mom, dad and children and little brothers and sisters”, but now it can be just mom, or dad, even neither, the granny, the grandpa, and they all live together. What I’ve heard from some students is that most of the time, they spend time with their little brothers and sisters, or with the granny or grandpa, the parents, if there’s any, are working most of the time.
This is one of the main obstacles, the little time the parents spend with the students, another thing is also the economic situation, the economic situation of the students according to my appreciation and as I’ve heard from them, I define it as “living day by day”, which means, if some of the parents or the money-giver in the house loses his/her job the student literally stops coming to school, because since they live day by day with what they earn it’s how they support themselves daily, so that’s why in some cases the students have to work, either in a pizza place the weekends or some may work as a show entertainer, as botarga (a huge costume that is usually an animal or a funny person/object in the square or outside a store) so I think they have a job that if well, it’d not serve for them to get income to the family expenses at least could pay some of theirs. I think these are the main reasons that the students have.
How do you identify students with economic issues?
Well I do it in two ways, one is they come here and tell us, the first is they tell us, but an objective way to identify it, at the beginning of the school year an invitation is made, to apply for scholarships and well everyone who wishes to apply, they bring us papers, so that’s our first filter of whom, first the ones who wish this because they have a necessity and when we apply the filter of how much is the family income then we can see with a little bit more detail who are the ones, from everyone who applies, the ones who really need it more than others.
So it’s like the first objective filter we have, the second one is they come to us asking “My dad lost his job, so I can’t come anymore, I need help” or something along those lines, those are the two ways in which the CAE identifies the students who have economic issues. And also the unit, before getting in, as a part of the selective process, a socio-economic survey is conducted to the family, so there are items that they have, there’s pictures of the house, they make a visit, for example in April they go and make the domiciliary visits to everyone who applies, they go to their houses, take pictures, chat and conduct a survey. This is another mean to know the socio-economic status of the people who are here.
Each student has the possibility to receive the resources from the school, the ones everyone get in the same way are, well classrooms, everything related to the unity, the classrooms, the health services, the tutorship department, everything that has to do with the high school they receive in the same way.
In the case of other resources as scholarships, then not everyone gets them, but only those who get in, that fit inside the requirements that are needed, so that is the variable. Another variable is that there are the ones who are irregular students, it means they are on stand-by, due to owing subjects, they lose the right to apply for a scholarship.
Can you talk to me about the students that do not attend school every day?
Hmmm I don’t have the exact data of the students who don’t come to school, what I can tell is that when they skip school, it’s due to some familiar situation, meaning they can’t afford coming here or simply the student doesn’t like the study plan, he feels it’s too much and gets demotivated and says “well I don’t want to continue” so he stops coming to school. Sometimes due to illness, so it’s a variety of factors that could influence that a student stops attending school.
The department of tutorship, that is in charge of the graduated Diana Rodriguez, they are the ones who have all the information of who are the ones who are not attending and then they handle the process, what I have understood is that what they do is, they call the guardian’s house to say “Hey, your son, or your daughter, is not coming to school, is this due to some problem?” they check if the student doesn’t have some sort of justification due to some kind of disease or something that is giving now or some surgery or something.
They discard this health part and if there’s a personal or family matter, they are the ones who directly deal with the families and see the way that it doesn’t affect the student so much, that the information reaches the student to try that he’s not too affected in his academic life.
Talk to me about the communitarian project, please.
Wow, there’s a lot of projects, too many, the ones that I’m going to mention are the ones that come to my mind, but there are too many, the approach that the high school has is with communitarian integration, what does this mean? What is wanted is that the student has this sense of belonging in a bigger group, then that’s why several projects are developed, they are oriented to answer to necessities of the community that the students are in, for example there is one called “Playing and learning” in this what it’s done is that they tutor children from elementary school, to reinforce this academic part, especially in math. There is another one called “Hands to dirt” where they are taught to work, to know everything related to sowing, harvesting, the ideal times to do the sowing and also to develop strategies to create sustainable products.
So there are several projects in the unit, then the students can choose what they like, there are some who leave to other towns, like for example, a town that comes to mind, that they go to is… hmmmm no, I can’t remember the name, but what is wanted is that they go to the people, talk to them, listen to them, listen to their needs, and according to that to present a solution proposal in conjunction with them and they work with the community, so it’s a cooperative work.
There are two projects that are done during the week, which is “Playing and learning” and “Hands to dirt”, these are done during the week, on Thursdays, and on the weekends, which are on Saturdays, those are the ones where the students leave to whenerever they have to go on Saturdays when these are developed, they only come for projects. During the week, from Monday to Friday they study most projects are on Saturdays.
What would you change in the program, the project or the school?
One of the matters that I got to reflect upon, with the students, was this part of the academic load, well, that my personal perception was that the students owed so many subjects precisely because of the academic load they had, it was too much, too much this load, so there comes a point when they could not humanly continue, they burned out, the burn-out syndrome, they couldn’t performance anymore or they did it very lowly or they just simply failed the subjects, that was my perception and I talked about it with the students and they agreed with me regarding this part, that the academic load was way too much.
That’s how it was for the ones on the old plan. At the beginning of this plan, the new model, the MERFI, such adjustments are made and on this time, with this new plan, the number of people who owed subjects decreased, even the number or subjects that were failed decreased, so I think with this new model , the academic load was taken into account. It’s now a more stable load, a more stabilized one, so I think this worry I had, well with the new model things got better.
And another concern, what would I change? What would I change in the high school? Ah that’s a very personal thing, part of the responsibility that the high school propitiates is the awareness of responsibility, so I think it would be useful to let students make their choices in certain things, for example when they don’t attend school, the student has a certain percentage to miss classes, this 20% of handling classes, to allow him to handle it, and not to be on their backs “hey,you gotta go , you gotta go, you gotta go to school” since I think that to promote a culture where the decisions you make, you assume the consequences in the academic part. It’d be very important to promote this and not so much to decide on behalf of the students, in some aspects, very few, nothing more than a little adjustment, a minimum, but I think it’s important.
In general, what are the most important matters in education for you?
The important points, in general the education, personally I think I like it very much that the education is centered in this awareness part, of a global awareness that we are, we are immerse within a society, and whatever we do or stop doing, will not only affect me but also the others and the ones to come. So I think this awareness, that translates in environmental awareness, of resources, it’s important and also another essential part of the education is this promoting to the human part, a little bit of what the pillars of education refer to, learning to be, teaching to be, learning to be, re-learn the pillars of education, I think this is important, that the students are aware, to promote programs that encourage the consciousness, that encourage the questioning and not only to be listening, to question this part, to question everything so that they can make proposals, to listen, this is of utmost importance as well, to listen to be able to understand and to comprehend that this intercultural part is not to treat the others as they treat me, but to treat the others as they like to be treated, I think that’s how interculture goes.
What are your plans or goals for this school year?
In the area part? Well to continue to add more services for the students, and for this we just promoted military service, which is a new service that is given to the students, where the students who have to fulfill military service can do the paperwork here, here their doubts can be solved, here documents are received and they don’t have to go to the other board that is in downtown, that means the fact that this can be done here, that they won’t miss lessons, they won’t spend money on transportation and also not to waste time.
Another thing among our plans, not only for this year, but always, is to always position ourselves as a reliable source of information. Which means, that the students know that what CAE tells them is truthful, reliable and official. That is on one side, to always be on the vanguard, be the first ones to say this and the first ones to properly tell the information, that we are a reference point inside the unit, this is our goal for this year and forever.
Have you been in touch with the graduated students?
Yes, with very few, I’ve talked to them, and like what kind of things would you like to know about them? Have these students gone to university after school?
Right, I don’t have the exact data or the exact statistics, teacher Guillermo must have it, of how many of the, well to start with, who among the ones who studied considered to get into university, because that’s important, there were people who said “I don’t want to study, just my high school and that’s it”, from those who considered getting into university how many signed up for our university, the UADI and from those how many managed to actually get it.
I know several who did make it, I know others who couldn’t and went to study to a private school, and I know some others who just didn’t, it wasn’t a part of their life plan and are already working, or in some workshop or doing what the dad does, so they had another kind of working plan.
This answers to the needs at home, if you need to generate money as soon as possible, because otherwise you can’t keep on living, then the exact data I don’t know it, but some are still in touch with me, through Facebook and we talk, “Hey, you know what? I have some doubts” even “Hey I have doubts about this”, “Hey do you know where can I get my credential? I lost it”, so I’m still supporting them with them being graduated because if they continue in the UADI, the information is more or less the same.
That’s what I was talking about, the part about listening, of being there, it’s not the same to read something or to be told than being in the community, and you can have the feeling of being part of something bigger, that’s very nice, very cool.