As a school counselor, the primary role is to provide students with a variety of academic, career, social, and emotional guidance that will shape them to become better individuals. Counseling is one of the few professions that strongly depend on an individual's attitude, beliefs, and characteristics (Grunwald & McAbee, 2013). Before considering a career in counseling, I had three critical personal values and religious beliefs that could have negatively impacted my work as a school counselor. First, my religion taught me to embrace courage in the face of adversity. It means that when an individual faces a problem, it should be taken as an attempt by God to test one's resilience. The religious value of courage during adversity came about when I was young as our pastor liked to emphasize the story of the Biblical Job who suffered immensely due to his faith in God. Therefore, I grew up believing that anybody experiencing problems should face them head-on and pray harder to receive help from above.
However, as a school counselor, one must demonstrate their ability as a problem-solver and an option in a bid towards restoring hope. Many students face a plethora of problems ranging from domestic violence, poor academic outcome, and a lack of basic necessities. It would be foolhardy and unhelpful, to say the least when I tell a student to face domestic violence head-on because it is a trial by God. They might eventually succumb to the violence and become victims themselves. Most importantly, this religious value hindered my potential to become a school counselor because it denied me an opportunity to express empathy, a critical value that many counselors have. Empathy is the ability to understand and share in the feelings and experiences of another person (Pedersenet al., 2016).It was almost an unwarranted stereotype that any follower of God is meant to suffer. I would have therefore become one of the worst school counselors had I continued to hold this religious trait. Thus, the only way I tried to counteract this perception was to consider other areas of the Bible that supported seeking help in times of problems. For example, Jesus showed empathy with the family of Lazarus following his death.
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Secondly, in most of my childhood and teenage life, I have shown immense intolerance. Intolerance is primarily defined as the inability of a person to accept different views that might necessarily not conform to the ones held by a person. I was overly confident with myself almost to the point that it turned out to be narcissistic. I believed that this was a positive aspect of my life because I would in most cases seek to win arguments and arguments. I wanted people to follow my suggestions without any opposition. However, I soon realized that this was going to be a detrimental aspect of my life especially if I wanted a career in school counseling. A counseling session is a two-way conversation where I must hear from the side of the client. However, being intolerant meant that I could not accommodate any views that student clients bring up during the session.
It would, therefore, deny the client an opportunity to be part of the remedy process. Secondly, it limits my ability to seek help from other professionals and counselors who might have knowledge in a particular area I am trying to solve. It would also limit my chances of consulting scholarly materials and books as required for any professional. As such, in combating this potentially debilitating problem, I needed to understand that finding solutions to problems of the students is a two-way process that requires the input of the clients. Secondly, I came to understand that I should not act like a know-it-all when it came to helping students because there was no definitive answer when it came to finding solutions. It only depended with how well we talked and how we could harmonize our suggestions to come up with a solid course of action that could possibly solve the issue.
Naturally, I am an emotional person. I am easily touched and tend to respond with excessive emotions when faced with a challenge or when one of the people I know has a problem. The problem originated when I was a child. Growing as a last-borne, I was shaped to believe that I was meant to be protected at-all-costs. As such, I was detached with negativity and believed that everything that happens in the world should please me. Soon, the realities of the world began dawning on me. I responded to problems or negativities with excessive emotions which had an immense toll on me. I have carried the characteristic with me to adulthood, and I believe that it implicated my desire to become a school counselor. A counselor, as previously noted is a problem-solver. Most of the problems are emotionally taxing, and as a counselor, it would be unethical and more significantly, unprofessional, to demonstrate negative emotions in front of the client (Pedersen et al., 2016).
Such a move can negatively impact the client who might receive a feeling that their issue is beyond solution. However, I have dedicated all my energy to ensure that this trait does not affect the way I interact with the clients. First, I have practiced being courageous and mentally tough at the same time. I have further learned to accept the fact that life comes with a mixed bag of fortunes including the positives and negatives both of which should be accepted and appreciated as a normal part of human existence. As such, no matter the problem that a client is experiencing, it would be my utmost responsibility to guide the student without necessarily depicting my emotions.
However, over recent years, I have also held several values which I believed could have helped me to launch a successful career as a school counselor. Religiously, a critical value that has served me well includes wisdom. Through the lenses of Christianity, wisdom is described as the ability to apply God's to one’s life. As a firm believer, I believe that God intends that human beings live a good life. It all began during my time as a Sunday school student where I learned many Biblical stories which I apply till today. I have read the book of Wisdom multiple times, a factor that has helped me to distinguish between a wise person and a foolish one. Some of the problems that students face are primarily as a result of the negligence, irresponsibility, and a lack of accountability. Therefore, when dealing with such students, I will apply the Biblical definition of Wisdom to explain why I think they need to change.
For instance, one Biblical story that explains the difference between foolish and wise people includes Jesus' teachings on the virgins where some failed to save enough oil for their lamps by the time the bride and the bridegroom had arrived. Such teaching is essential in helping students see that some of their problems are down due to the lack of preparation. Therefore, I have a duty to continue working on my wisdom by incorporating various biblical teachings that would change the mindset of children and set them towards the path of improvement. Such analogies come with a sense of fulfillment thus creating a positive environment that would leverage the required outcomes. Clearly distinguishing foolishness from wisdom can be a template for classifying human behavior and ensuring that students the side that guarantees the best results in life.
Another characteristic that will bolster my opportunities of becoming a counselor is the communication skills. Research has shown that most of the successful education counselors possess the best communication skills. It is one of the required minimums to venture into a prosperous career as a student counselor. It is common knowledge that counselors rely on talk as their primary therapy. One must be eloquent, consistent, and must match their language and intonation with the context of the counseling session. I developed excellent communication skills once I began attending a leadership skill class in my sophomore years. Here, I learned a wide variety of effective ways of communications such as the use of both verbal and non-verbal cues. I also appreciated how to keep my audience captured and the likely ways to avoid boredom by breaking the monotony. Gysbers & Henderson, (2014) asserted that good communication skills also cover non-verbal skills such as concentration, nodding in approval, listening, and maintaining an eye-contact. A student counselor will benefit in three fundamental areas when they employ effective communication skills.
First, their clients will understand them well because of the clear instructions and signals sent. Secondly, the client will develop trust in the counselor due to the exuded confidence. Thirdly, the entire session will become successful as each party has an opportunity for expression using language. However, it remains critical to note that communication is two-way traffic. I believe in a situation where communication happens in the form of a conversation. Here, it would be easy to understand the problem facing the students and further understand their point of view. It is also one of the primary ways in gauging whether a student has effectively understood a particular instruction based on the response they give.
Lastly, flexibility is another vital aspect that has built me towards pursuing a career in counseling. Flexibility is primarily defined as the ability of a counselor to adapt and change in a way that best responds to the needs of the clients. It would be inappropriate for a student counselor dealing with young children to show rigidness in their path towards intervention. In some instances, some clients require a change in approach to finding the best solution to their problems (Gysbers & Henderson, 2014). Over the recent past, I have learned that changing the mind does not mean that an individual was wrong in the first place. It only signals that a better way to deal with the issue needs to be considered. I started showing signs of flexibility when I headed the environmental club in high school. In my capacity as the leader, I had to come up with several strategies that could stop students from misusing the grass in the compound.
From then, I built on my skills and expertise by becoming more creative and accommodative of skills and characteristics. I also learned that showing rigidness during remedy reduces one to an authoritarian whose primary role is to impose ideas on the young children. For instance, when counseling on matters relating to career, it would be wrong for the student counselor to tell a student to be a doctor because they are performing well in science. The role of the counselor here would be to ask the student to consider a variety of scientific professionals such as meteorology and nursing among others. Without this, the entire counseling process would not be helpful to the student.
References
Grunwald, B. B., & McAbee, H. (2013). Guiding the family: Practical counseling techniques. Routledge.
Gysbers, N. C., & Henderson, P. (2014). Developing and managing your school guidance and counseling program. John Wiley & Sons.
Pedersen, P. B., Lonner, W. J., Draguns, J. G., Trimble, J. E., & Scharron-del Rio, M. R. (Eds.). (2016). Counseling across cultures. Sage Publications.
