Alyssa Garrity
Counseling with creativity and empathy through leadership and advocacy
School counselors have learned that the American School Counselor Association recommends in its 2012 third edition of The ASCA National Model, that counselors should aim to spend at least 80% of their time delivering direct and indirect services to their students. While school counselors can have an idea of who they aim to be professionally and stand firm on their moral position as a school counseling professional, it would be impossible to know how to deliver preventative and remediate services without having a comprehensive school counseling program. Foxx, Baker, and Gerler (2017) write that programs are based on “the knowledge of the developmental needs of children and adolescents” (p.41). This type of prevention required the ASCA (2012) to remodel their ideology from position towards program. They sought out to have all school counselors able to answer, “How are students different as a result of what school counselors do?”
The difference between a position and program lies in the work put into the foundation of the program itself, the management of the program, the delivery of services to students, and maintaining accountability as a professional. In sum, creating program goals based on the assessed needs of the school and community, researching and implementing methods for delivering services, and effectively evaluating program outcomes are wildly different than having an overarching mission statement. Gysbers and Stanley (2014) wrote, “A benefit of the program concept is that the program’s delivery system of direct and indirect services provides authoritative descriptions for all of the school counselor’s duties” (p.25). The American School Counselor Association advocates for the cohesiveness of school counselors and an across-the-board job description. It is widely known that not all school counselors share the same job tasks, creating a divide within the school counseling community and an uncertainness outside of it. However, with ASCA’s “One Vision One Voice” motto, they implore all school counseling professionals to evaluate their duties and how much time they spend on their school counseling program. Gysbers and Stanley (2014) also write that implementing a school counseling program and recording results can show administrators that full program implementation requires 100 percent of a school counselor’s time” (p.26). This, in turn, will generate more time allotted for school counseling services, encouragement of further professional development opportunities, and revenue. These actions will further unify all school counselors and as NC State’s counseling program themselves recognize, counselors are more effective when they work together and produce and share research.
Another benefit of creating school counseling programs is the use of data and having accountability of the school counselor’s effectiveness in the school and community. Using data to decipher progress and stagnation allows counselors to evaluate the effectiveness of their school counseling program. Thus, they know how to continue and how to change. This is how progress is made. At the end of the day, that is what we want as professional counselors – progress in our schools and communities.
References
American School Counselor Association (2012). The ASCA National Model: A Framework for School Counseling Programs, Third Edition. Alexandria, VA: Author.
Gysbers, N. C., & Stanley, B. (2014). From Position to Program. ASCA SCHOOL COUNSELOR, 22-27. Retrieved January 21, 2018, from https://www.schoolcounselor.org/asca/media/asca/LeadershipSpecialist/FromPositiontoProgram.pdf.
Foxx, S. P., Baker, S. B., & Gerler, E. R., Jr. (2017). School counseling in the 21st century (6th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
In response to Emily Wapnick’s TED talk on being a “multipotentialite”.
The ability to narrow down one’s choices in order to pick a suitable career – and be fulfilled by that career – can absolutely as Emily said, “keep us up at night”.
As far as exploring career readiness with a client similar to Emily, I am most concerned with why the client (similar to Emily) no longer feels fulfilled in a career after a period of time. I would want to use assessments to determine what is causing that “bored-ness”. One assessment that came to my mind while thinking of this question, was the Adult Career Concerns Inventory (ACCI) (Super, 1988). The ACCI attunes to career development issues facing older and more mature clients by measuring career development stages on a 1-5 Likert scale. Then, scores can be used to identify the client’s constellation of life roles – or “what (Donald) Super referred to as the life structure” (Niles & Harris, 2017, p.40). By assessing the salience that a client attaches to their life roles, together, the client and counselor can begin assessing values and importance of interests. How do they all fit together? The Strong Interest Inventory is the most well-known and arguably valid interest inventory to be used with clients (Chartrand, Borgen, Betz, & Donnay, 2002). However, other inventories such as a Value-Sort activity as found on Harvard School of Education’s (2017) website thegoodproject.org, may be more appropriate for a client like Emily. The Value-Sort activity directs the client to read through 30 value cards and drag the cards to the scales ranging from least to most important. There are five scales with different allowances in value numbers. What is unique in this activity, is that it allows the client to see in black-and-white what they value as important in a job, and what they do not value. For a client like Emily, finding what they value (such as independence, recognition in one’s work, social concerns, etc.) and comparing them with their interests may help narrow down a career path that does not lead towards boredom or mental burnout. These new options and possibilities should all help relieve career anxiety and give the client a new perspective on how to choose and career based off multiple aspects of their interests and values.
When I see “career adaptability” I see a think of two things. First, Donald Super identified career adaptability as the career decision making readiness in adults (Super, 1990). Secondly, I see it as a synonym for a career flexibility, thus, a skill – an asset to be explored. One negative aspect of having a high level of career adaptability is that their resume often portrays this. Potential employers may view this adaptability as the inability to commit or settle down. However, as we saw in the TED talk, that is not the case. Therefore, using the Cognitive Information Processing Approach (CIP), the counselor can identify where the client currently is, where they want to go, together come up with an Individual Action Plan (IAP), and further, reflect on the plan – all through the implementation of the CASVE cycle (communication, analysis, synthesis, valuing, and execution) (Peterson, Sampson, & Reardon, 1991). Nonetheless, one of the most pertinent skills a counselor can employ with a client such as Emily, is the power of reframing. Showing your client how to reframe what looks like an undesirable quality (job-hopping) into a positive quality (a person with a wide-ranging skill set).
Career development is viewed throughout life processes, and our career decisions reflects our attempts to translate our self-concepts into career terms (Super, 1990). Thus, to help a client with low career adaptability and maturity, we must look at the whole client. What does their life look like? What roles do they play in various settings? How do they feel about these roles? Using Donald Super’s Pie of Life exercise can be great at determining these questions, as well as a helpful visual tool to show the client where they are spending their time, and thus, what they are physically valuing the most. Then, the counselor can begin exploring salience, concerns, and potential possibilities. This can be done using the Career Development Assessment and Counseling (C-DAC) model. The C-DAC is useful in helping clients who are in the “exploration” stage of career development, identify career concerns in correlation with personality, interests, and values. Furthermore, the C-DAC
“recognizes that, in an age of increasingly rapid cultural and economic change (McDaniels, 1989), no simple process of matching people and jobs can adequately meet the needs of individuals and society. It is built on the need to take into account the possibility, and the likelihood, of changes in individual needs, values, interests, and circumstances, and the changing nature of work, as people go through life” (Super, Osborne, Walsh, Brown, & Niles, 1992).
This methodology is especially relevant to a client such as Emily as it takes into account her whole picture and thus, assess her real needs.
I would also continue to help them reframe metacognitions about themselves that are controlling their decision making and leading to unhappy career choices. We would further work on the idea that individuality and multiple areas of expertise are in fact, assets that should be embraced and explored in the career decision making process. However, if they are unhappy with constant job switching, we would address this area. Maybe, what they require is a position with multiple roles, one with travel, one with the possibility of frequent promotion, etc? These are all areas to be addressed. They do not have to paint themselves as only “multipotentialite” – but as just who they are. I fully believe there is an occupation/ career out there for everyone.
References
Chartrand, J. M., Borgen, F. H., Betz, N. E., & Donnay, D. (2002). Using the Strong Interest Inventory and the Skills Confidence Inventory to explain career goals. Journal Of Career Assessment, 10(2), 169-189. doi:10.1177/1069072702010002003
Harvard School of Education. (2017). Value-Sort Activity. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from http://thegoodproject.org/toolkits-curricula/the-goodwork-toolkit/value-sort-activity/
Niles, S.G & Harris-Bowlsbey, J. (2017). Career Development Interventions In The 21st Century. (5th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Peterson, G. W., Sampson, J. J., & Reardon, R. C. (1991). Career development and services: A cognitive approach. Belmont, CA, US: Thomson Brooks/Cole Publishing Co.
Super, D. E., Thompson, A. S., & Lindeman, R. H. (1988). Adult Career Concerns Inventory: Manual for research and exploratory use in counseling. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press. The ACCI
Super, D. E. (1990). A life-span, life-space approach to career development. In, Career choice and development: Applying contemporary theories to practice (pp. 197-261). San Francisco, CA, US: Jossey-Bass.
Super, D. E., Osborne, W. L., Walsh, D. J., Brown, S. D., & Niles, S. G. (1992). Developmental career assessment and counseling: The C-DAC model. Journal Of Counseling & Development, 71(1), 74-80. doi:10.1002/j.1556-6676.1992.tb02175.x