Psychological education is an important aspect of talent training in colleges and an important part of ideological and political work, which is related to the Party’s undertakings, the development of the country and the future of the nation. Since the College of Foreign Languages was approved to build the 8th Nankai University Ideological and Political Work Quality Project, it has focused on students’ mental health and development trends, built a college-level secondary psychological counseling station and promoted the fourfold psychological education. The College combines “cultivating heart” with “cultivating morality”, strengthens humanistic care and psychological counseling and carries out education and guidance in warm-hearted care and assistance to escort the healthy growth of students.
“Be with you”: Promote the professionalization of psychological counseling
In response to the crucial and difficult problems in the ideological and political education of foreign-language major students, the College of Foreign Languages has established the “Be with you” psychological consultation workshop to promote the branding of psychological education.
The workshop is led by teachers of the College who are certified as national second-level psychological counselors and is joined by many teachers from the university departments, such as the University’s mental health education center, college counselors, doctoral tutors, class tutors and management cadres to provide students with mental health education and individual counseling. The workshop provides students with mental health education, individual counseling, group counseling and other services. The workshop invites teachers with professional psychological knowledge backgrounds to guide other teachers to carry out practical exploration, theoretical project approval, seminars and communication. The workshop is committed to improving the professional level of psychological counseling work and actively exploring effective work measures and working mechanisms. Through professional support methods such as sandtray therapy and positive discipline, the workshop actively builds a comprehensive consulting service system that integrates education and guidance, counseling and self-help, and self-help and other assistance. This system helps students solve problems including difficulties of life adjustment, pressure caused by job searching or academic study as well as interpersonal difficulties.
Teacher-student exchanges: Create an all-round education pattern
Focusing on the characteristics of disciplines and students, the College of Foreign Languages actively builds a normal linkage mechanism between the first classroom and the second classroom and gives full play to the educating role of undergraduate and graduate tutors. The College takes advantage of the small-class teaching model. Every 20 or so students are assigned a class tutor who regularly communicates face-to-face with students and actively participates in student activities. Class tutors help students to clarify ideological confusion, solve practical difficulties and guide students to face up to the pressure, difficulties and problems in their studies. Paying attention to various aspects such as academic assistance, career planning and life guidance, they have a timely understanding and judgment of the mental health status of students.
In the beginning of 2022, in order to relieve the nervousness of the students who were staying at NKU in the face of the sudden outbreak of the epidemic in Tianjin, the College of Foreign Languages specially opened the psychological decompression room to provide students with a decompression space to relieve their emotions, create a friendly and warm atmosphere and guide students to enjoy life. The psychological decompression room has a reading area, a decompression area, a rest area and an audio-visual area to create an environment for decompression and relaxation. At the same time, the decompression room has set up an anonymous “tree hole mailbox” to answer their life problems, help students relieve pressure and live a wonderful and fulfilling campus life.
Innovative practices: Stimulate the positive energy of campus psychology
In order to create a wonderful campus atmosphere, the College of Foreign Languages actively creates high-quality psychological education activities to stimulate endogenous motivation to promote students’ psychological health. During the “May 25 Mental Health Month”, the College specially planned the “Mood Palette” mental health education series activities to escort students’ mental health growth in an all-round way. Relying on the official WeChat platform, the College has opened the “Mr. Tree Hole” column. By collecting students’ psychological confusion anonymously and giving answers, the College helps students alleviate and eliminate negative emotions to maintain an optimistic and upward mental attitude. The College also actively organizes mental health lectures to help students raise their mental health awareness. At the same time, the College carries out a variety of interesting activities and forums to guide students to relieve emotional pressure, express their thoughts and feelings, and record life moments.
Focusing on the main sources of pressure faced by students, the College of Foreign Languages has set up a number of support programs such as the Pioneer Post for Peer Party Members, Morning Reading and Evening Translation, CET-4 and CET-6 Tutoring Stations and Non-General Language Project to help students effectively relieve realistic pressure. To fully combine the concept of “integration of five domains of education” with mental health education and cultivate students’ optimistic attitude towards life, the College has carried out labor education practice activities and let students realize the value of life in the experience of labor and life observation. At present, a number of normalized workshops such as GLOBAL screening room, academic guidance, and “i read” oral language training have been established. Through integrated reading, movie watching and music appreciation, mental health education activities attracted more and more students.
Based on the fundamental purpose of fostering virtue through education, the College of Foreign Languages actively builds the fourfold psychological education system of knowledge popularization, practical activities, consulting services and preventive intervention. The College continues to promote the construction of the second-level psychological counseling station at the college level, escorts the growth and success of college students and contributes foreign language strength to cultivating pioneers for national rejuvenation of the era.
