Online Bibliotherapy: Coping and Living Through the COVID-19 Pandemic

It is the third week of the Emergency Community Quarantine (ECQ) in the country and the second week of total lockdown in our province. It has been a crazy three weeks. It demands from us a great flexibility to cope, survive and thrive through this pandemic.

I am working from home since March 13, 2020. Overnight, I turned into an online school librarian providing access to resources, lending advice to students and colleagues and sharing experiences for professional development. On top of this, my reading and bibliotherapy advocacy continues. While I am working on a directory of books for bibliotherapy for the children evacuees of Taal, I am just as concerned with the socio-emotional needs of my students.

So, I whipped up several activities for them. I discussed it with the group up during advisory. We have it once a week. I posted the activities in the blog so that, others may find inspiration and use them too. Here is a roundup of the bibliotherapy activities I organized for my grade 10 advisees.

Mapping Your Heart - for self knowledge, self awareness and management of emotions

Collage - for self expression and spring board to more creative endeavors

Journalling - recognizing that we are all a part of this pandemic, the necessity to keep a diary or a journal keeps us sane and, when all of this is through, we have made history together. I used #ourcoronadiary as an example. Check the website, Our Corona Diary, for information on how to participate.

This is a collage I made the other day. I posted this on Instagram and used #ourcoronadiary. Try it too. It makes coping and living through this pandemic a little bit more joyful.