(2) 100 word discussion posts

Lecture.

As school counselors, you will all have different types of ways to use techniques to work with your counselees. One of those things are practitioners, in your case, school counselors, need to function with intentionality. In other words, they must have a clear understanding and a sense of expected outcomes of their interventions. Also, some specific techniques appear to be more effective with particular symptoms and disorders, especially for certain behavioral disorders.

So unless you're working with counselees that have behavior disorders or what have you, those techniques may very well be a little bit different for a population, and in some cases may even be the same. The therapeutic alliance enhances the quality of the working relationship. In other words, the better the rapport that you have with a counselee, the quality of the working relationship will be strengthened.

The techniques counselors employ, although important, are less crucial to therapy outcomes than they are interpersonal factors operating in a client-counselor relationship. Now, as this text is more so written to clinical mental health counselors, for school counselors, you have to think about the interpersonal factors that are operating within your relationship with your counselee. So from your own personal counseling style, from your own culture, understanding your world view, to also understanding the world view of the counselee.

And much of your technique will also depend upon the rapport that you have which your counselee, the type of school setting you're in, for example, in a high school, you might not have as much time because of the subject matter courses that high school students have and how important it is for standardized tests to be passed and for students be academically successful. And you may have a little bit more time in an elementary setting, where they may come to your office for 10 to 20 minutes.

But those techniques you use will be based specifically on the type of rapport you have with that counselee, the type of school you're in, the resources you have to you, and then yourself being observant of your counselee to see what works best with the person you're working with and where you are.

End of Lecture....

Discussion Question #1

Talk about your school counseling style. Especially discuss how cultural competence impacts your counseling style. How could your personal counseling style affect ethical conduct? How could your counselees be affected?

Answer should be between 100 words.