On January 3rd, student volunteers from Shanghai Politics and Law University led by teacher Zhou came to the Qingpu center, and gave the Qingpu children a lively psychology class titled “ How to overcome fear.”
The children expressed the things they were most afraid of, such as snakes, a tomb, public speaking, or being blamed by their parents for poor test scores.
“Ok, kids, how do you overcome your fear? For example, this child is afraid of snakes, can anyone figure out a solution to help her to overcome this fear?”
“Keep away from it, do not touch it, it will not hurt you, and you will not be afraid.”
“Pretend not to see it, and you will not be afraid.”
“Try to play with snake more and you will not be as afraid of them.”
The children warmly expressed their opinions.
Finally the girl found a way to overcome her fear of snakes with group wisdom contributed by all the other children and expressed she would not be as afraid of of snakes in the future.
“Ok, kids, we just shared some ideas on how to overcome our fears, now it is time to practice these ideas. Our volunteer sister is willing to sing songs to us, but she is very shy, how we can help her to overcome her fear of public singing?”
The children responded positively once the teacher asked them the question, “let her close her eyes, and then sing”, “Turn around and then sing”. Suddenly a loud voice came out of the corner of the classroom saying, “We can sing together with her!” Then she bravely came to the front with another little girl, stood besides the volunteer, and then they sang a nice song as the ending of the activity. All of the children enjoyed the very funny class.
We appreciate teacher Zhou and his students for bringing such a funny class to our center children, and believe our children will use these teaching to overcome their fears in the future.