9 discussion questions

Question#1 250-500 words

After reading the interview, complete a quickwrite activity discussing three potential advantages and two challenges of implementing a PBIS framework at your site.

Beginning of interview...

In today's segment, we'll be talking about positive behavior interventions and supports. With us today is Stacey Osmond, elementary school counselor with the San Marino Unified School District. Welcome, Stacey.

Thank you.

Can you start by telling our candidates a little bit about your experience as an elementary school counselor?

OK. I've been a school counselor since 2009. I worked-- oh, gosh, how long-- five years, I think, under a federal grant. And it was a very comprehensive program.

I was in a unique position that I got to design and develop the school counseling program. It was focused on discipline, and attendance, and really providing a positive school climate. Big role was PBIS. So I went through PBIS training and through LACO.

And LACO is?

The Los Angeles County of Education?

Office of Education.

Office of Education. And so really learning what PBIS looks like, how to implement into a school. And so I have a lot of direct experience with the leadership being a PBIS coach.

Right.

And so, yeah.

Thank you, thanks. Can you briefly describe the positive behavior interventions and supports frameworks for our counselors? And some of them may be completely new to PBIS, so keep that in mind.

So it's really the planning, and the designing, and the figuring out how to implement a system that addresses positive school behaviors. It should be a tiered model-- so a multi-tiered model--

System of support.

--yeah, system of support that delivers services and interventions. But it is also really adopting and integrating evidence-based interventions on a continuum. You want to always use data to drive and figure out what the school needs are during the whole planning phase.

That's pretty comprehensive. Thank you. You just talked about tiers, so you're segueing perfectly into question two. So maybe you can go a little bit into the tiers, what percentage of the school population they're addressing, and then maybe some sample interventions or samples from each of the tiers.

OK. So if you think of the multi-tiered system as a triangle. And you have tier one, which would be the bottom of the triangle. And that's really school-wide. So all students should be receiving the interventions on that level. And this includes anything from the social/emotional curriculum to incentives-- the behavior expectations, the modeling, that teaching of--

School-wide things.

--what's expected. Yeah, the school-wide things. And then tier two would be a selected group of students.

So really let me go back to tier one. So at that level, about 80% of your student population, that's enough for them. They get the behavior expectations.

Tier two would be those selected students that need more behavioral support. And that I would say would probably be around 15% of your student population. And then the services and the interventions would be the individualized or the group counseling, social groups, classroom management strategies, daily check-ins, your behavior charts. Tier three--

Can we back to tier two first? So you talked about tier one, everybody gets tier one--

Everybody gets tier one, right.

What data do you use to identify those students who need a little bit more support, those students who fall into tier two?

Well, you could use multiple sources of data. So your office discipline referrals would be a big one. You could be looking at attendance. You could be looking at academics. It could be teacher referrals if teachers are letting you know.

You're always tracking your referrals. And the discipline is categorized into minor versus major incidents. And so the major ones are sent up to the principal to handle. But there are minor incidents that happen within the classroom. And teachers shouldn't be tracking that data. And so you as a school counselor can be utilizing that data, and putting that data, and seeing which students keep on popping up.

So you can effectively design interventions based on--

What's going on--

Real situations.

--what the behavior looks like. And then working with the teacher, maybe going in doing classroom observations, really seeing what's going on. And then tailoring your intervention to what you're seeing.

So imagine that you've gone through your tier one, you've addressed the tier two, issues now? If a student is still not responding, what happens next?

OK. So tier three are your targeted students. And it's about 5%. And it's really those high-at-risk students. And so that could be anything from what the interventions look like on that level. It can be an outside referral. It can be a special ed assessment, 504, wrap-around service.

Can you talk a little bit about wrap-around services?

So wrap-around services would be through an outside agency. And it's the kids who are getting outside support through counseling, social workers. They have people coming to the school, to the house, and all environments really working with the family. Maybe parents are getting support-- parenting classes.

That's helpful. Thanks. So who's involved in planning and implementing a PBIS framework? Is all the counselors' responsibility?

No, it's not all the counselors' responsibility. So when you are starting the process, one of the first steps you do is you form a PBIS team.

And you want to get a good demographics of the school. Always want an administrator, strong administrator support. Counselor definitely, because we are leaders, so we need to be part of that team. You want teachers who are competent in classroom and behavior management. You could have the playground supervisors be part of that team.

And it's really the team that are the ones that are planning, and implementing, and figuring out what PBIS is going to look like, how they're phasing it into their school. And so everybody on that team has roles. And I guess it's based upon the school, and the needs, and what an individual counselor feels that they can do and provide in that team.

But it could be anything from the PBIS coach-- that's a role. You can be a facilitator. The communication coordinator. So that team is always communicating with the rest of the school staff. And it is really that team's responsibility to make sure that the whole staff has a clear picture of how PBIS is to be implemented, to support, to share data, to always communicate, to make sure there is buy-in. So that team is a driving force.

It sounds like something that doesn't happen overnight.

No. PBIS-- a full implementation at PBIS, it can be a three to five-year process.

Right. It could be a huge change in the school culture.

Yes, it can be. And so you want to go slow to go fast, and always making sure that those staff is ready for all the different implementation phases of PBIS.

So you've been involved in PBIS implementation not only in different school sites but in different school districts. In your opinion, what are the effects of PBIS on the overall score climate, school discipline, attendance, and so forth?

Well, you're definitely going to see a decrease in discipline referrals-- especially the major discipline referrals, but also the minor. As far as classroom management, there's just going to be fewer distractions, disruptions within the classroom environment. It creates a positive classroom environment.

It's going to increase instruction time, because if kids aren't up in the office for discipline reasons, it just increases classroom instruction. Kids are in the classroom more. And I think teachers feel supported, just the social climate and the behavior climate.

And then research shows that when kids feel safe and there is a positive school culture that it's going to have a direct effect on attendance. And it's going to have an effect on academics. So you'll see all that improve. And you'll see it through the data.

Right-- if it's effective.

If it's effective.

If it's done with fidelity.

If it's done with fidelity, right.

Right, very important. Last question-- no, second-to-last question. What does the counselor's role in PBIS?

It is a leadership role. We have a lot to offer as far as interventions. I think the role is you do want to have a leadership role on that team in that PBIS committee.

You can't be all of PBIS. You play an important part. And it's one of support and one of collaboration. And you are an expert on behavior interventions. But you want to make sure that you are not taking on a lot of roles.

And PBIS really needs to be a school-wide thing. And it's a staff thing. And it takes the whole staff and the whole school to really change and reshape the culture of a school. And you are definitely part of that, but it is a part. You're not the whole face of PBIS.

And then final question.

Yes.

Real life, let's be real about the challenges to PBIS implementation. Is there any pushback? And if so, from whom and why?

Yes, there's definitely pushback. It definitely is a process. It's helping, whether it's through staff trainings, meetings, sharing videos or research. It is a shift for some schools, for some particular staff members. And you do want to make sure that you do have staff buy-in.

Basically when it comes down to it, just like how we teach math or science, sometimes you do need to also teach students how to behave. You need to teach it and you have to model it, and really changing the perception-- instead of looking for the negative in behavior, looking for the positive, and focusing on that, and trying to reward that. And that can be a shift. And that can be a challenge.

Great, thank you. We know how important school climate is, like you said, on attendance, on behaviors, on whether kids feel safe at school, and then ultimately on academic achievement. So thank you so much for your contributions today.

Thank you.

End of Interview..

Question#2 100-500 words

What are some way in which you can incorporate critical hope into your role as a school counselor?

Beginning of lecture...

As we move towards the end of this course, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the idea of hope as it relates to well-being. Hope has been found to be a very important psychological principle as it relates to growth and development, particularly through adversity. However, hope can also be used as a barrier to well-being by preventing acknowledgment of issues that need to be addressed.

Let's begin by taking a look at a poem by Tupac Shakur, The Rose that Grew from Concrete. Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's law is wrong, it learned to walk without having feet. Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.

What this poem represents is the idea of hope as a real and important element of growth and change. According to the work of Jeff Duncan Andrade, the idea of hope can be used as an opportunity or a barrier to well-being. Let's look at some of the enemies of hope or barriers. The idea of Hokey hope, mythological hope, and hope deferred, are examples of how hope can be used to prevent well-being. That is by not acknowledging injustice, or preventing individuals from aspiring to change their environment.

Let's take a look at each of these a little bit closer. Hokey hope is the kind of hope that is offered to an individual that tells them just to work hard, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, pay attention, play by the rules, and things will work out for you. If anyone knows anything about success, working hard and paying attention and playing by the rules are very important, but it also takes more than that.

Mythological hope is the kind of hope that's apolitical or de-politicize, and denies the suffering or injustice that has been occurring in the lives or in the environment. Hope deferred is the kind of hope that says, just wait. Eventually, you will make it. If you continue to push hard and lift yourself up, you will ultimately go from the bottom to the middle and beyond.

This type of hope, again, is not necessarily wrong, but it doesn't offer the true inspiration that is necessary for change towards well-being Duncan Andrade talks about the idea of critical hope, which includes material, Socratic, and audacious forms of hope. Let's take a look at that.

Material hope is the idea of having resources or pursuing the resources that bring about change in pursuit of well-being as necessary. This includes knowledge, a transformational action plan, an institutional and other agents to help bring about change. Socratic hope means examining and questioning everything.

According to Socrates, the unexamined life is worthless. According to Malcolm X, the examined life is painful. So understanding that painful examination of our lives and actions in an unjust society is important for growth and change. To be hopeful is important. To question is also important. Pain paves the pathway to justice, if explored. Righteous information is strength.

Famous James Baldwin once said that everything that is examined cannot be changed, but nothing can be changed if it is not examined. Questioning from Socratic principle is important to individuals to pursue well-being. And last but not least is the idea of audacious hope, and willed not-learning. That means not giving up.

Hokey hope would have us believe this change will not cost us anything. Audacious hope stares down the painful path. Despite the overwhelming odds against us, making it down the path to change, one must make the journey again and again. There is no other choice. Acceptance of this fact allows us to find the courage and the commitment to cajole our students to join us on the journey.

In conclusion, Jeff Duncan Andrade's research has found that there are five effective practices that bring about encouraging hope for all students, that is having critical consciousness about one's purpose, and being aware of why you work with students to promote well-being for all, having a sense of duty or a form of responsibility, where it means that you work hard continuing to improve and to help those that you work with, and never take for granted your responsibilities.

Preparation, very closely related to duty, involves the idea of planning and preparing and constantly seeking to get better. This includes Socratic sensibility or being self-confident yet critical of your work in everything that you do in order to question and for improvement. And last but not least, is the idea of trust, which is a two way path. That is trusting your students, and those that you work with, as well as allowing them to trust you in your effort to support them.

End of lecture..

question#3 100 words

After reading Smith and Geroski's (2015) "Decolonizing alterity models within school counseling practice," what model of alterity would you like to develop as a school counselor?

Beginning of lecture..

In the last two units of the course, we begin to look at how well-being comes together as a comprehensive approach to your practice of school counseling. As you take the other courses in this term and subsequent terms, you'll begin to understand how well-being falls into place as it relates to the other material that you will learn, whether it's ethics, introduction to school counseling, counseling process, counseling theory. All the different courses you'll take in this program from here on out will help you focus on not only your own personal well-being but the well-being of others, including the students that you will work with.

So far, we've defined well-being and given it a framework in terms of fit, fairness, and fitness. We've also taken a look at threats and opportunities for well-being in the form of stress as it relates to risk and protective factors. We've looked at justice, restorative justice. We understand how bias and privilege are involved. Also, we've taken a look at opportunities for well-being in the form of college and career readiness. We've even had an opportunity to explore the role of hope in well-being.

In these last two units, as I mentioned, we're going to sort of bring it all together. And in particular, we want to talk about the idea of the specs of well-being and developing a strength-based, preventative, empowering community approach to well-being. And this is opposed to what's known as a drain, or a deficit, reactive, alienating, individualistic approaches.

So if we take a look at the domains of well-being that we covered in the beginning of the course, particularly those that were covered in I COPPE scale, we know that it's important to focus on interpersonal, community, occupational, physical, psychological, and economic well-being. And all those come together as an overall comprehensive perspective of well-being, the idea of helping an individual pursue their hierarchy of needs on a personal, relational, and collective dimensions. It's important to understand the role of these domains in well-being as we move forward and understand your role as a school counselor.

You will now be exposed to educational paradigms associated with well-being in the broadest sense. This involves competency and engagement in what's known as the affirmation field and time and focus in the contextual field. Let's take a look at these following diagrams to understand this further. Let's take a look at the affirmation field. As you will see, from top to bottom, we talk about the continuum between strength-based orientation versus a deficit orientation. On the bottom, you see things such as labeling and diagnosis stigmatization, for example, and also the idea of voice and choice in dealing with challenges but participating from dealing with problems only. Whereas, on the strength-based approach on the top, you understand that just saying no is a strength-based orientation. But it's alienating, because it doesn't take into consideration the context of what you're saying no to.

The idea of choice and choice and celebrating and building competencies is a strength-based approach on the empowerment side, because it helps individuals build on assets that are already there in order to improve. So from the continuum from alienating to empowering, left to right, and deficit to strength, from bottom to top, we have the idea of affirmation as a means of pursuing well-being.

In the context field, you see, from bottom to top, we go from an individual focus to a community focus. And from left to right, we go from reactive to proactive. At the bottom, on the reactive individual side, we talk about remedial work, behavior management, medications, and symptom containment. As well as, on the proactive individual side, we look at skill building, emotional literacy, fitness, and fitness programs. However, collectively working on a community perspective from a proactive end of things, you have high-quality schools in communities with community development, affordable housing, and recreational opportunities along with health services for all.

It is important to understand that both the affirmation field and the contextual field can come together and develop what's called a SPEC. That is strength-based, proactive, empowering, and community oriented. And rather than focus on all four quadrants, I'd like for you to take a look at the top right-hand corner. Here, we have a strength-based and empowering, proactive, and collective conditions that bring about change and, ultimately, well-being. This includes voice and choice in organizational community development, policy making, and efforts based on community and organizational strength and unique ways of thriving.

Now, much of this work comes from the field of community psychology. Your job as a school counselor, particularly in the next unit, will be to look at what this means for you in your role in promoting strength-based, empowering, proactive, and collective efforts to promote well-being.

End of lecture... no question

Question #4 100 words

How can the role of the school counselor facilitate critical hope? Reflect on this essential question and how you would answer it. Bring in examples from the week and connections you've made to your ongoing case study.

Question #4B 100-500 words

What are three counseling theories that most resonate with you as an aspiring counselor and why?

Reflect on the essential question with a focus on personal well-being, social well-being, and collective well-being of the subject in your case scenario.

In my ongoing case study, the girl is a 13 year old girl whos parents are divorced and she has not seen her father since the divorce. She is late to school often and lives with her mother.

Beginning of lecture..

Now we're going to talk about counseling theories. This, for some, may be the most exciting part of the course, and for others, the most boring part. But what we want to make sure we understand is that counseling is both an art and a science.

And part of the scientific part of this is having a theory that guides our work. We are not working willy-nilly. We're not out here just doing what makes us feel good. We have a very specific strategy and theory that's guiding everything that we're doing.

So we're going to take a closer look at a few counseling theories and highlight them. As you're going through the rest of the text, you'll see others that you will feel more comfortable with and will help define your role as a counselor.

So again, a counseling theory is an assumed framework that aids the counselor and guides their therapy. It's very clear that we need things to give us parameters, frameworks, underpinnings, and a logical explanation for human behavior. And counseling theories do that for us.

We also recognize that not one single theory can explain all facets of human experience. Humans are a very dynamic group of people. Right? Every individual that we work with, every individual in this class, has their own distinct makeup.

Some things that work for you and can explain your position may not necessarily apply to other people. But with a counseling theory, you have enough of a range of experiences being articulated that you may be able to figure out how to at least approach a particular person, community, family, or group.

Counseling styles are developed and tailored to a counselor's identity and personality. One thing as counselor candidates that people want to do is say, this is my style. At this point, I would be reluctant to identify your style, because you're still developing as an actual counselor. You're still developing your theory. You're still developing the way that you want to work.

And so style is something that evolves over time. And it is tailored and shaped based off of who you are, where you're from, how you move, what you think, and what you believe about how people develop. And so it's OK to look for and develop your style, but also recognize that styles change.

And so if you're into combat sports, you recognize that styles make fights. That's a kind of term that's used. From a therapy standpoint or counseling standpoint, your style also has to fit with the population that you're working with, with the individual you're working with.

So if you have a theory that does not fit the framework or does not fit the guiding principles or the tenets of a community group, that theory is not going to work. Similarly, if you have a style that does not work with the client that's sitting in front of you, or the youth, or the family, or the school that you're working in, then it's not going to be effective.

And what we want to be able to do is develop our counseling style based off of solid theory and having a clear understanding of the populations that we're working with, within their cultural context. And so that's kind of how we want to use theory. We bring theories to life. People bring theories to life.

The more you are disciplined in understanding theory, the more flexibility and freedom that you will be able to operate with. I think about it as freedom within a box. We can be as free as you want, as long as what you're doing is being guided by some overarching underpinning, and that's the theory.

So now we're going to take a closer look at a few counseling theories-- solution focused, person centered, cognitive behavioral, and existential. These are a few therapies that we'll see reflected in the book, but also are theories that I find that students gravitate to initially. So I want to kind of highlight a few of the areas in each one, and give you a baseline to say, these are the things to consider as we're moving forward.

So solution focused brief therapy-- this therapy is critical in the sense that it allows us to move forward with families in a way that doesn't get us stuck in the problem. In solution focused therapy, you're always looking for alternative ways to come up with a solution to combat whatever the problem is.

Many people, many communities, many therapists, we come from a position where we can identify the problem, but we get stuck there. Solution focused says, there is a problem, but there's always a way out. There's always a solution.

And it is done within a time frame, in a brief manner. So brief, from a theoretical standpoint, doesn't mean short and quick. But it does mean that in eight to 10, 12 sessions, there should be some type of movement, as compared to therapies or theories which are long-term, life-long processes. This says we can solve a solution, move forward in time, and go on to the next thing.

Person centered therapy allows us to focus on putting the client at the center of the process. The goal here is to enable the client to develop within a structure, within a system that's safe and caring, compassionate. And through that process, they're going to be able to come to solutions on their own. They're going to be able to grow and develop. And they're going to be able to move forward in a way where this feeling can be replicated across multiple dimensions in their life and other relationships.

So the relationship between the therapist and the client is critical to setting the stage of replication for the same feeling, the same notion, the same experience in other relationships. And so what you may find is, a person who may have been in an abusive situation, never had their voice recognized or acknowledged, can be with their therapist or with their counselor, and then be able to experience what is it like to be heard, what is it like to be affirmed, what is it like to be of value.

And then, when they move to another relationship, they can bring that same feeling with them, so that they then can measure themselves against that feeling and move forward and grow. And when things feel good, they know it's a good situation. When it feels bad, they know that it's not such a great space, and they might want to change and move forward in a different way.

Cognitive behavioral therapy allows us to look at how our thoughts impact our actions. And so it highlights the ability for people to understand how they think-- not just what their thoughts are, but the process of thinking-- and then how that thought then gauges, shift, moves, and propels them in action, in behavior.

This is critical when you're working with youth, because a lot of times, youth move and act so quickly that they never slow down and develop a plan of action. And so part of what we want to do, when working with schools, in particular, is have a high level of thinking occur at early ages.

So if you're able to understand how you think, you are also able to understand your behaviors. We can then help you think about things in a way to help you behave accordingly, behave in a more appropriate manner. All of the [INAUDIBLE]-- you are able to move forward and act responsibly from a behavioral standpoint.

Now we can spend some time talking about existential therapy. Existential therapy talks about being able to look for things outside of yourself. This is a sense of connection and belonging with the world around us. A lot of times, we focus on the interior, and we focus on what's happening with me, me, me, and not figure out what's going on and what is my meaning in life.

That's the central question for existential therapy. What is my purpose? Why am I here? What am I going for? What do I want to be when I grow up? All of the questions that we deal with on a daily basis, even as adults. We figure out, man, I've been living a good life, but what is the purpose? Do I want children? Do I want to go back to school?

What do I want my life to stand for? What is the meaning of my life? So the constant search for meaning drives us and propels us into spaces that we wouldn't normally go when we're dealing with the day-to-day problems that we live with.

So when thinking about your theory, as you're reading the text, as you're going through your process of developing your own particular counseling style, we want to make sure that it's grounded and focused in a theory that allows us to explain who we are, what we're about, and how we work with people. From that standpoint, you'll be able to figure out your own way of executing the theory.

And then you can watch your counseling style, from an educated, thoughtful space. Again, we want to work with a great deal of freedom within the box. And the box are the counseling theories that we're going to learn.

End of lecture...

Question #5 100-500 words

How might cognitive behavioral theory assist you in identifying and incorporating client strengths in the counseling process?

Beginning of lecture..

CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy-- cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the more popular therapies that is used in schools. And so we're going to spend some time thinking about what the theory is, how the therapy is applied, and give some examples of what it may look like in a everyday school counseling setting.

The cognitive behavioral approaches has a certain set of assumptions like all theories. It's a collaborative relationship between the client and counselor. In order for this to work, there has to be a level of kinship or a bond between the two, because there's a constant pushing and prodding that happens with the counselor and also the client. It's also an active and directive stance by the counselor. It's not a position where you take where you stand back and allow people to move.

We are actively engaging with our youth, actively engaging with the family to move forward towards a very specific direction. The premise is that psychological distress is often maintained by our cognitive processes, meaning stinting thinking. If you ever heard that term, you know what it means. It means that if you think wrong, therefore you act wrong, and you have negative consequences. This is a therapy that tries to repair that or disrupts that stinking thinking.

It also is a present-centered, time-limited focus-- meaning, we're going to talk about what's happening here and now; what's the situation at hand; and how long will it take for us to develop a solution to address this problem. It's time-limited in focus. It's not a long term process. Some of the consequences or some of the benefits of making these corrections will have long term effects. But the focus is to make these changes and adjustments within a short period of time.

It also allows us to create treatment plans and focus that are very specific and structured for the targeted problems. In addition, the focus is on changing cognition to produce desired changes in effects and behavior-- meaning, we want to see a difference in attitude, in thinking, and also in behavior. There's an outcome and you will see the benefits of it. So from a school standpoint, particularly when you're working with behaviors, which is one of the major issues in schools, we'll be able to say, OK, we're thinking differently, we're acting differently, we can see that with measured outcomes in behavior and performance in a particular school setting.

It also emphasizes cognitive processes in private events, such as how a person thinks, the self-talk as mediators for behavior change. One of the things you see a lot in cognitive behavioral therapy is the ABC model. And we're going to break that down. That is the Antecedents, the Behaviors, and the consequences. There's a beginning, there's a middle, and there's an end. And so this next slide will show that more graphically.

So again, we know that how a person thinks also has an impact on their behaviors. And those behaviors have consequences. As we begin to help young people understand this concept, it allows them to say, if you believe things to be a certain way, you will then follow and act those out. And then there will be consequences.

Consequences doesn't necessarily mean there's a punishment. Consequences means that there is a reaction to whatever the antecedent was. There is some type of outcome-- there's something that's going to be there.

So for example, if you think you want to get stronger, you will probably go and work out. If you work out, you will have bigger muscles. The consequence of your thought of I want to be stronger is that you have bigger muscles. If you want to be strong, don't work out, you may not get bigger muscles.

And it's clearly that simple of a logic. And we want to help pull those things out, break them down, and help people understand that. Again, this sounds simple. But from a strategic standpoint, we work very, very, very hard to help people understand this. And those people that are able to do this are more successful.

For example-- another example, if you have a relationship and you cheat on your partner, you may be threatening the relationship. Therefore, you might not want to cheat on your partner in order to maintain a successful relationship. Sounds good, but as we know, 50% of marriages end in divorce. And infidelity is one of the major causes of that, so therefore, again, we want to simplify it but also recognize that there's a lot of other things that go on around this that make it more difficult to execute.

So now, we want to talk about some of the therapeutic techniques that are involved in doing cognitive behavioral therapy. And one of the reasons that students like this, or counsel candidates gravitate to this, because there are very specific things that can be done that you can practice and implement in real time with our clients. So for example, relaxation training-- when dealing with people with stress, one of the biggest things that we do is help them relax.

One thing that we may find when you're working with a potential client or working with a family is say, let's take a pause, let's take a deep breath, let's take one now. [INHALES AND EXHALES] When stressed, breathing, relaxing, grounding yourself, these are things that help us move forward, help us cope with the stress. So there are very specific different relaxation techniques that people can use to help that. If you're into yoga, you may be able to do a brief yoga meditation with a client in the moment to help them work through the stress.

We also look at systematic desensitization. This is good for anxiety and avoidance reactions. Systematic desensitization allows you to move through very specific paces to make people feel more comfortable with the thing that stresses them out. So for example, on TV, what someone might say is that I'm afraid of snakes, so therefore, I'm going to slowly work myself up to be able to hold a snake. That may first require being able to look at a picture of a snake, talk about snakes look at a worm, little bitty baby snake, do something that's going to gradually move you up towards that fear.

In other examples, it may be I want to go to college, but I'm afraid of college. I'm afraid of the loss of leaving my family. I'm afraid of not being able to be successful.

One way to begin to move people systematically to being able to accept the reality or the fear or the anxiety of college is to say, let's read about college. Let's watch movies about college. Let's take a college tour.

Let's talk to family members who have been to college. Let's go on to a college campus and spend the night. There are things that we can do to make them feel more comfortable. And this can apply across multiple dimensions.

Modeling is another technique that we use. And as it sounds, it's clearly and simply being able to help people understand how to change their behavior based off of seeing an example that someone else has. With modeling, we begin to say, OK, if it's good practice for me, it should be good practice for you. So as a school counselor, you may be able to say, I'm going to show up for my clients consistently and be on time. That will let a student know that it's important for them to be consistent and on time for class.

As a parent, you may be able to say, I am going to show my children how to cook. So therefore, I'm going to get up every day and cook breakfast. They will also observe you cooking and then say, I can learn by working without you, being in the kitchen, being around you, talking about. And then they were actually learning how to cook.

Similarly, we'll skip and talk about social skills training. One of the things that's very important in helping young people develop is being able to model and show how to correct deficits in their own interpersonal skills. What this means is sometimes people have to be in different social situations in order to understand how to engage in those situations, because their natural life does not allow them to be exposed to certain things.

So for example, if a person is very, very shy, you may want to help them better understand how to engage with others by being a part of small groups. Team sports going to lectures, going to games, group activities allow young people to be able to work out the kinks of awkwardness, shyness, being in crowds, being in spaces that are difficult to manage as a person that's often isolated. So these are a few of the therapeutic techniques that are a part of cognitive behavioral therapy.

There are many more. There are things that you can find online. You can talk to different people. You can do the things that are most comfortable for you.

But as you see, there's a wide array of things that are all designed to help people understand the antecedents, the behaviors, and the consequences for their thoughts and actions. And we want to be very thoughtful and have a little fun with using different techniques and practicing them out.

End of lecture...

Question #6 100-500 words

What are five instances where genograms would be beneficial to the counseling process?

Beginning of lecture..

"Genograms, Mapping Family Interactions." Genograms are one of the tools that I use on a daily basis as a counselor. It's also a tool that I want you to master so that you can use and put as a part of your tool belt, as well.

One of the things we want to keep in mind when using genograms is that oftentimes people feel overwhelmed by the symbols and the strategies used to draw the family tree. But once you understand the basic concepts and the core principles of a genogram, you can use it many, many, many different ways and as a tool that will help you track family stories. So I want to try to present this in the most simplistic way possible, knowing that this complex and powerful tool is something you will use for the rest of your professional careers.

So a genogram is a graphic picture of family relationships. So in order to make things graphic, we use symbols. So I want to just focus on two symbols that we'll use. One, the square is for males and the circle is for females. Square is for males. Circle is for females. Keep that in mind as we're moving forward because everything we do is going to use that mapping to move things forward.

If you want to look at things from a gender identity issue then from a gender identity perspective, you may find that a diamond might work better, or some other symbol that represents and makes everyone feel comfortable as we are identifying gender or assigning gender to the participants in the family. But the other symbols you'll see, we're going to revisit these as we go, but focus on squares and circles.

Then we start to see other symbols. If you draw in someone that's married, you would have a line going beneath the square and the circle in a heterosexual relationship. If someone is living together but unmarried, it's a dotted line. Someone is in a committed relationship, maybe a solid line with a dotted line. If someone is separated, you put a slash across it. If someone is divorced, it's a double slash.

So there's multiple ways to describe and define the relationships, and what you want to do is be as accurate as possible in doing that. So part of the process is having conversations with people to help them understand what it is their family situation is. So for example, in the example here below, you see a father on one side, a mother on the other side, and then you just have the different examples of the types of kids.

So there is a biological child that's a male that's 13. There's an 11-year-old, there's a 10-year-old, a stillborn child, the information is unknown, the miscarriage, there's an abortion, there's twins, identical twins, and there's a pregnancy. That's just the children line that we're showing. In that, you also can put the date of a significant date of birth, the age, and other identifying features for that person.

So the conversation would go something like, so, hello, Chris. How old are you? I'm 12. You're 12. Are your parents together? Yes. Are they married? Yes. Do you have any other brothers and siblings? Yes. So then you would draw the mother, the father, and the child. For the child sender and whoever is the person you're speaking with or the center of the conversation, you'd have a double line or make it darker so it's distinguishable from the other members of the family.

Once you understand the structure, then you can also start to map out the quality of relationships. And so the sheets that we have here in the PowerPoint-- the sheets that are in the book are symbols that you want to pull to the side, have as a study guide, put in your notebook, and be able to reference back and forth to these as you're going, because you're tracking. And what happens is, because you're creating a symbol or a graphic representation, you're able to remember more of the storyline because you actually are able to have a picture of it.

And so here we look at some of the emotional relationships that are used when describing families. You have everything from a relationship where there is empathy or indifferences, which is a dotted line. There's differences, or distance, or poor relationship, if we're going down, that has more separation through it. If we go back up, a single, solid line is something in harmony or it is a close relationship.

Also, if you're looking at hostility or some aggression, then it becomes a squiggly line with larger space. When it's violent, that line has more intentionality to it, and it's just going straight across. So these are multiple symbols to track relationships. So when you're drawing-- if we look here, here's an example of a family that was already drawn. Take a second and see if you can state back and tell me the story of this family.

If I were describing to someone, I would say, we have Roberto and Angela. Roberto is 30 years old. Angela is a 35-year-old. They're married and have three children. The children are Andres, who's 18, Natalie-- who's identified client, or patient, or the focus of our discussion-- and Sofia, who's a 15-year-old daughter-- the baby. Simply here, all you see is the tracking and the levels of where the relationships are.

So everything is on levels. Whenever you're doing genograms, you want to typically go three generations. This one shows two. So Natalie, Andres, and Sofia is one generation. Roberto and Angela is another generation. And that's all we're showing right here. We also identify the year of birth and the district where they were born. So what do you see in this slide? And again, we want to keep it very, very simple. Just read what's on the sheet.

So here we have this example of a husband who's divorced from his first wife, and out of that relationship, there was one brother, and then they had a set of twins. Then there was also a separation, and out of that relationship there was a half-sister. Then there were-- after he'd separated from the second wife, he's now currently living with another person. So clean and simply, we're tracking relationship with movement. We're looking at left to right, and we're going down to generations.

So you can take the time to map out your own family, think about how your structure is. And so there's never a family that's too complicated. If it's half-siblings-- if you use that term, that's fine. If you don't, that's fine as well. Some relationships and some families, half is not a term to use. You want to use the language of the family that you're working with to describe the relationships.

You want to always be respectful as you're engaging and asking the families as well, what's going on in the family? What's the situation? How long have you lived together? What is the quality of relationship? When were you born? All these questions come, and you can track for different things. So again, here, we want to be able to just show that there's different symbols that can represent different relationships.

When there's a complex family structure, then it's purely a matter of you understanding the right symbol and the right spacing to draw that relationship out. That's the focus. It's not that it's too much, it's too little, it's weird, it's strange. There is no qualifying words to describe what the relationships are in the families that we map. It's purely, do we have the skill and the confidence to draw this in a way that's logical?

So how do we get the information to draw the genogram? Now that we understand the symbols-- which, again, are purely symbols. I'm emphasizing that because a lot of times we get confused about what we're actually doing, which is really drawing what people say. The process and the skill-- or second skill set-- is, how do we get the information? So to gather information, we should do it in a way that's in an affirming and supportive tone.

We also should remain focused on what is affirming about the information than what is pathological or problematic. The process will likely require normalizing certain information that may be disclosed. You never affirm or normalize harmful behavior. You might confirm something that happened while being clear that you don't endorse risky or destructive behavior.

We also want to make sure we place the information in context of affirmation by commenting genuinely with things like, you're not just filling out a form in this process, you're affirming family history. So what does this mean? The information gathering process, one, is very fluid. As a counselor, your skills as a counselor will allow you to connect with people and encourage their story to come out in a way where it is, again, affirming supportive.

If your parents were divorced, they were divorced. Divorce happens to a lot of people. What was the quality of relationship that you had? If you have a father that was absentee and there's no relationship where there's distance, then that is purely your father-- there's a disconnect, or there's distance between you and your father, not that he's a bad person or another person is a better person.

It's purely about, OK, I understand that this is a relationship that has distance. If there's violence, violence occurs, and I want to know more about the story. Part of our process is finding the stories behind the information. I want to know how we got to this point. I want to track both the information as well as the process of how the family evolved, and by doing so, I get a much clearer picture about how this family functions.

What are some of the stressors? Where is the resilience? What are some of the strengths, and how we can continue moving forward as a unit together collectively? And again, we're not just filling out paperwork. We're not just taking down some notes. You're affirming history, you're affirming life, you're affirming culture in the process, and this is therapeutic. So the genogram is therapeutic in its process.

We also want to make sure we have a certain set of questions. And one of the things that we want to do in practice as counselors is being able to track our questions in a way that is logical. So a tip is, as you're working and you hear a good question in class, from this lecture, from anywhere else in the world that's a great question, write it down. Get you a sheet of paper, or a notebook, or set up something in your computer where can actually keep and track those questions, because a good question is always going to be a good question.

Here's some resilience-based questions that'll help you move through the process of understanding families as you track the genogram. So for example, you might say, as you look at the folks who are drawn here, who would you say you're real close with? You may also ask, what would you like to know better? Who would you like to know better or get closer to? You can say, in every family, there are people we may not have connection to. Maybe we don't even know them. Who are those folks in your family?

Who are the people you have a good relationship with, but you are not really that close to because you don't spend time with them? Is there a particular happy time together that comes to mind about any family members in your generation in your genogram so far?

These are questions that, when used, can ask the same thing different ways and allow you to talk about distance, disconnects in a way where it shows promise and hope and is looking for the resilience, instead of from a negative, pejorative way where it points out the distance that's there and leaves people in a space where they feel bad about where they are. You can be optimistic and hopeful talking about the death of a loved one.

How did she die? Tell me about the story? What was good about her? What did you-- how did you enjoy spending time? These are questions that you want to use to inspire and create a level of resilience in the conversation. It also looks at making sure we look at the positive assets. We do strength-based genograms. We want to know about the strengths in the family.

A lot of families are very problem-saturated in their day-to-day living, and we don't want to just point to all the chaos that's going on, even when there is chaos. We want to be able to see that, but do it in a way that promotes health and wellness. So for example, you may be able to say, who is looked at as a role model in the family? Tell me a story about that person. What strengths do you admire?

This question alone illustrates the ability to track how someone can overcome adversity, and also how they can resist or move from street life. So if someone is in jail, and they got out of jail, and now they're working, you say, wow, tell me about your uncle Chris. What did you like about him? I know he was gone for a long time, but he went to jail, and came out of prison, and he's really solid dude now. Is that something that you think you can be inspired by?

We're not saying that what the person went to jail for was good or bad, but we're saying, through that adversity, they were able to move forward and now are living a different life. So you're struggling or you're fighting to pull out the positive assets. Another thing is people oftentimes feel like they're very much isolated, and most people aren't completely isolated in their lives. They may not know people. They may not have contact with people, but that doesn't mean they can't be connected to.

So one question to check to see where a person may be in terms of isolation is, who do you turn to in times of trouble? That person may be someone in their immediate family or probably extended family. So to say, I'm all alone in the world, is a very hard stretch for me to go with someone. Do I have close contact with the people who can support me? That might be more accurate. Do I need to build better relationships so I can have more people in my network? That's what we want to move towards.

We also know that genograms are an assessment tool. In addition to tracking families, to tracking patterns, to looking at family structure, quality of relationship, you can track for cultural moves, for strength and resilience. You can track for all these different areas depending on what is necessary at the time for the client. So once you've establish trust with the client and made sure the client wants your involvement, then you can take place.

You want to make sure that you're sitting in a space where people are comfortable, it's very therapeutic, it's very supportive, and then you go in and you figure out, how do you want to track where or what-- what do you want to track, and how do you want to track it? So one of the things you might find is that assessment is a process where you determine if a client is aware of the care that she needs, how the client can go about obtaining care, and if barriers exist that will keep them from obtaining care.

So we want to know what's going on, what's available, what are the resources, and how do we move forward? So this becomes this very strategic tool. It is the intervention in itself. Having these conversations push people forward and allows them to see the possibilities of their lives. It's also an assessment tool that can track medical history, financial supports, environmental issues, and also other barriers, again, that help people-- that affect people's lives.

And so if we think about genograms, it's a very dynamic tool. One, again, it tracks patterns of relationships. It also tracks quality of relationships and also can be a tool to assess many, many, many areas of a person's life, all the different dimensions that you can think about. So we want to work on a couple of things.

One, understanding how to use the symbols and to do the actual mapping. And two, how do we do so in a way that is both from a strength-based perspective that engages people, empowers them, and allows them to see the possibilities for their life.

End of lecture...

Question #7 100 words

As your counselees' families may be experiencing issues and concerns at home, discuss your thoughts about school counselor ethical conduct both culturally and/or personally.

Watch video to answer question 7..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31EgvvbXS6M&feature=youtu.be

Question #8 100 words

Based on the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy's Code of Ethics, examine how you would work with the mother in the case scenario regarding her husband's desire to talk to his children at school.

Case scenario for question #8

A married father of six was having a sexual affair with another woman. Very active in the education of his children, one of his kids suspected he was with another woman. Their mother took them to "watch" their father, confirming their suspicions. The mother, devastated and distraught, was very angry and did not want her husband to talk to her children at school. However, because there is no legal document barring him from seeing his children, he was able to do so.