A Sensemaking Space for Learners and Their Families
By Sherry Van Hesteren (Ed. D.), Educational Consultant at The Family Counselling Centre
There comes a moment in many families when school stops making sense.
A child who once loved learning no longer wants to go.
Assessments accumulate.
Meetings multiply.
Different professionals offer different perspectives.
Parents are left trying to understand not only what is happening, but what it means.
Sometimes, before students and families can decide what comes next, they need a place where they can become grounded and begin making sense of their experience. From there, new possibilities emerge and decisions become easier to make.
Becoming Grounded
When students and families reach this point, they are often carrying pieces of a much larger picture.
There are report cards and classroom assessments. Teacher observations and school meetings. Psychological reports and professional recommendations. Conversations around the dinner table. Questions that linger late into the evening.
Each piece may be important. Yet, viewed in isolation, they can leave families feeling as though they are navigating unfamiliar terrain without a reliable map.
Educational consultation offers something different.
Rather than rushing toward solutions, we begin by slowing down. Together, we gather the pieces, notice patterns, ask questions, and gradually develop a clearer understanding of the learner, their current situation, and the possibilities available to them. Sometimes that understanding emerges through conversation. Sometimes it develops through stories, images, sketches, or other ways of making our thinking visible together.
What I Bring to This Work
My approach has been shaped by more than twenty-five years in education in Saskatchewan, as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, school division consultant, educational leader, and now educational consultant.
Over those years, I have come to deeply appreciate the different perspectives that students, families, educators, psychologists, counsellors, and other professionals bring to understanding and supporting a learner. My work often involves collaborating across those perspectives, helping people respond adaptively as a learner’s needs, strengths, and circumstances evolve.
At The Family Counselling Centre, I contribute a complementary educational lens. Together with children, adolescents, families, and, when appropriate, the professionals supporting them, I help explore how learners experience school from the inside and how the interaction between the learner and the educational environment shapes that experience.
My work is grounded in a trauma-sensitive, neuro-affirming approach. Beyond understanding a learner’s profile, we identify the conditions, relationships, supports, and pathways that can improve their day-to-day experience of learning and strengthen the confidence of learners and families as they navigate the education system.
Children and adolescents are far more than their challenges, diagnoses, or assessment reports. Every learner deserves to be understood as a whole person and to learn in conditions that support safety, belonging, growth, and joy.
Keeping the Learner at the Centre
Although parents often make the first contact with me, my work is not simply about advising parents. Whenever appropriate, children and adolescents are active participants in our conversations.
Sometimes I meet with parents on their own. Sometimes I spend time with the child or adolescent individually. Sometimes we meet together. As our understanding develops, conversations may also include teachers, guidance counsellors, resource teachers, educational assistants, or other professionals supporting the learner.
The goal is not simply to solve today’s problem. Together, we develop a fuller picture of the learner and the educational context surrounding them. From there, we can imagine and explore environments, supports, and pathways that are a better fit for who this young person is and who they are becoming. Throughout the process, the learner’s own voice remains at the centre.
Understanding the Learner, Not Just the Challenges
One of the most important goals of educational consultation is helping children and adolescents better understand themselves as learners while helping families better understand their child. This knowledge becomes a foundation for navigating current decisions and the opportunities, questions, and transitions that arise over time.
When school has been difficult, it is understandable that everyone’s attention, including the student’s, becomes drawn to what isn’t working. Over time, recent experiences can begin to shape the stories students and families tell themselves about the past, the present, and what the future might hold.
Together, we work toward a more complete picture. We explore not only the challenges a learner is experiencing, but also the conditions contributing to them, strengths that may have been overshadowed, and possibilities that become visible when we see the learner through a wider lens.
This perspective is especially important for many neurodivergent learners. Their experiences at school are shaped not only by how they think, learn, and experience the world, but also by how well their educational environment understands and responds to those differences. When a learner is experiencing persistent stress, exclusion, anxiety, or a growing sense that they do not belong, timely educational changes can make an enormous difference to learning, well-being, confidence, and hope.
Along the way, we may also encounter unfamiliar language. Terms such as executive functioning, processing speed, working memory, neurotype, accommodations, modifications, and self-regulation can feel overwhelming. Together, we translate those words into a meaningful understanding of how a child or adolescent experiences learning and what that might suggest about next steps.
Rather than beginning by asking who or what is “the problem,” we begin with different questions.
Who is this learner?
How are they experiencing school?
What strengths and capacities might be hidden beneath recent challenges?
What conditions support their learning, well-being, and sense of belonging?
How might we strengthen the fit between this learner and the educational environment so they can become more fully themselves?
Expanding the Map
One of the most hopeful moments in this work is when families realize that their options are often broader than they imagined.
Sometimes the best path is strengthening the fit within a student’s current classroom or school.
Sometimes it involves different accommodations, learning strategies, or supports.
Sometimes it means exploring opportunities families did not know existed, including specialized programming, Montessori education, arts or sports academies, STEM or trades-focused programs, alternative education, online learning, flexible pathways, or other environments that may better reflect a student’s strengths, interests, and aspirations.
Educational consultation is not about finding the “perfect” school. It is about understanding the learner and the available possibilities well enough to make informed choices about what comes next.
Building Partnerships
Children thrive when the important adults in their lives work together.
Part of my role is helping families communicate effectively with teachers, guidance counsellors, resource teachers, educational assistants, and school leaders. Together, we prepare for meetings, organize questions, interpret recommendations, and strengthen partnerships that keep the learner at the centre.
Equally important, I help students develop the language and confidence to understand themselves as learners and communicate with the adults who support them. When words alone are not enough, we may explore other ways of expressing and making sense of their experiences together.
Over time, students can begin to see themselves not as passive recipients of support, but as active participants in shaping their own education.
From Understanding to the Next Step
Educational consultation is not about having all the answers.
It is about creating a space where children, adolescents, families, and educators can make sense of complex experiences together.
As understanding grows, families often feel more grounded. The picture becomes clearer. New possibilities come into view.
Only then do we begin asking, “Given what we now understand, what is the next right step?”
My hope is that every learner and family leaves not only with a plan, but with a deeper, more precise understanding of the learner’s strengths and needs, along with the skills to advocate effectively for these when and whenever it really counts.