Gangdong-gu Supports Learning Guidance and Career Counseling for Vulnerable Elementary, Middle, and High School Students

Resolving Educational Gaps Among Students Due to Prolonged COVID-19 Pandemic

Last September, a pre-learning assessment was conducted at Gangdong After School.

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Jong-il] Gangdong-gu (Mayor Lee Jeong-hoon) is operating the ‘2021 Gangdong After School’ program, which provides consulting on learning and career paths for elementary, middle, and high school students to address the growing educational gap caused by the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic.

Recently, as remote classes have increased due to COVID-19, the educational gap based on school or individual learning environments has deepened. Additionally, emotional and psychological anxiety among students and parents has also grown.

In response, Gangdong-gu is running ‘Gangdong After School,’ which supports learning and career counseling, self-introduction letter writing, and interview consulting for elementary, middle, and high school students from low-income households.

Last year, Gangdong After School, operated in a hybrid format of online and offline classes, provided 408 consulting sessions to 34 students from 15 schools until March of this year.

In particular, last year, the program expanded its consulting target to include elementary school mentees as well as middle and high school students, receiving positive feedback.

Furthermore, through pre-assessment of mentees’ learning types and personalities, customized learning guidance and counseling were provided for each student. Continuous collaboration with university student mentors and local education experts, Edu Education Counselors, resulted in excellent consulting outcomes for the students.

The 2021 Gangdong After School program aims to pursue the effectiveness of long-term learning guidance and career counseling by providing continuous consulting to students already participating.

Along with this, additional elementary, middle, and high school students will be recruited through recommendations from schools and institutions welcoming the new semester, with a total of about 60 students participating.

The district plans to operate mainly one-on-one consulting for tailored support for each student, actively recruit university student mentors enrolled in colleges of education and teacher training colleges, and conduct capacity-building training for instructors to strengthen the program’s quality.

Additionally, to prevent COVID-19, real-time online classes will be conducted using the Gangdong remote learning platform.

Various non-face-to-face methods such as phone calls and FaceTalk will also be actively utilized.

Lee Jeong-hoon, Mayor of Gangdong-gu, stated, “I hope Gangdong After School will be helpful to students and parents struggling with educational gaps caused by COVID-19,” and added, “We will systematically operate the entire process of learning, career, and college admission to guarantee students’ right to learn and support their psychological stability.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.