Janyce Lastman, LL.B.
BIOGRAPHY
An Education Consultant and Case Manager, Janyce Lastman founded The Tutor Group in 1979 to provide families with creative tutors and mentor-coaches for “kid-life-skills'' coaching. Alongside her busy private consultation practice and supervising her tutors, she regularly writes and speaks on “hot spot” concerns and future education trends, and most recently, pandemic parenting while “COVID Schooling”. Janyce’s law degree informs her collaborative style and she maintains valuable partnerships with therapists and counselling professionals across many therapeutic approaches. She also helps students maintain their big-picture future goals by teaching incremental but accessible solutions for today’s learning.
Janyce spent Year 1 of COVID learning to enjoy her own company after her young adult son moved out days before first lockdown. She keeps busy with virtual consults, visits schools around the world via Zoom, and continues to share strategies for staying confident enough to handle anything.
Wanting to reach even more families, Sara and Janyce launched a podcast series to share practical strategies and novel solutions to adapt to the first lockdown when families were struggling with disrupted routines, lack of privacy, and ever-shifting COVID protocols. Once in-class education returned, they helped listeners gain confidence managing whatever might occur next.
WORKSHOPS
How to help families survive and thrive, at home, school and beyond pandemic ups and downs
Speakers: Sara Dimerman, psychologist & Janyce Lastman, LL.B.
Over the course of the session, Sara and Janyce will blend their areas of expertise to cover both home and school related topics, especially as they apply to pandemic ups and downs, adapted for whatever phase of COVID we may find ourselves in, by that time.
Sara will focus on how emotional ups and downs during the pandemic have impacted home life and families. She will also talk about how we have managed this period and what factors contribute to successful outcomes. She will offer practical tips that mental health workers and other professionals may share with their clients, in addition to ones they can use themselves, to continue to survive and thrive through pandemic ups and downs.
Janyce takes a practical, accessible approach to all her presentations, and promotes positive solutions to education and parenting-related matters. From the time COVID-19 initially shuttered classrooms worldwide in March 2020, she began systematically tracking and evaluating new ideas and practical solutions for classroom and community use. She will discuss how mental health professionals can help clients continue to ride this curve that has no definable end nor any predictable patterns. Examples of accessible and much-needed small-scale solutions will be discussed to share with clients (and perhaps use for themselves!) to survive and thrive during and post-COVID. She will reference cutting-edge best practices for effective instruction and cross-communication, an overview of new but essential tools for e-learning, and basic survival strategies for schools, teachers, families and students alike.
Key Take-aways
- That change, while sometimes difficult to manage, can also be "good" and often moves us to a heightened level of awareness in regards to our inner and outer resources.
- That being in the same boat as one another, so to speak, equalizes the playing ground and highlights that we are all human beings, with similar and "normal" struggles as one another
- That with the right support and strategies in place, we can overcome adversity, develop greater compassion and empathy towards one another and become more resilient.
- That by learning how to deal with uncertainty, and to ride the wave during the ups and downs of the pandemic, we can better equip our clients to do the same.
- That there is always something new to learn and that by staying current and open to new information, we are better able to better navigate these unchartered waters.