Educational Psychology Team

Interschool Coordinator for the HAEF Schools’ Department of Educational Psychology: Maya Alivizatou

Counselors :  Danai Lazarou, Eleonora Sourlagka

Special Educator: Alexia Kazakakou

Speech Therapist:  Giorgos Kalomoiris

 

The Educational Psychology Department operates within the context of the School, offering assessment services and support for students, particularly those who have special educational needs.  It also provides support, information and awareness to teachers and parents.

The Educational Psychology Department:

  • Carries out the diagnostic assessment of school readiness for students admitted to 1st grade.
  • Counsels both children and parents.  As an advisory service, it affords parents and children an opportunity to discuss every day personal concerns on an individual basis.
  • Intervenes in emergencies, whether this relates to individual cases or to the School as a whole.
  • Collaborates with teachers to address issues related to children’s behavior and emotional development. 
  • Observes children in the class, thus maintaining direct contact with children both within and outside the classroom setting.  This allows the Psychologists to gather data about students’ difficulties from learning as well as from emotional and social perspectives.
  • Implements specially designed programs with a view to strengthening students’ social skills.
  • Performs students’ assessments to identify and address their difficulties.  The evaluation has two objectives: identification of the difficulties and intervention.
  • Supports children with learning challenges by providing them with the services of a Special Educator.



Learning Intervention Program

This program, implemented by the Special Educator, is for students in grades 2 to 6.  With the exception of 2nd grade students, all other students who participate in the program must first be evaluated by the School’s Department of Educational Psychology or by a qualified, external Psychologist.

Students in the program work outside the class, in small groups of 3-5 children, usually twice a week.  Each student has his/her own personalized program based on his/her needs.  There is frequent communication between the Special Educator and the classroom teacher, in order for the individualized program to be tweaked, as needed, as well as to follow the students’ progress.

The program’s objectives relate both to the surface structures of language (coding / decoding language) and the deep structures of speech (conceptual and semantic language processing).   Lastly, a significant part of the intervention is to provide emotional support to students, so that they may get to know themselves better and, thus, find ways to cope with their challenges.