Blog 8 Chapter 10
I will
admit it; Consultation was not my favorite course. At the time I viewed consultation as
confusing and clinical. My impression of
consultation was that is created a divide between the students I want to
directly interact with and myself. I now
see many benefits to consultation. I
have also determined which mode of consultation is most attractive to me.
I initially
perceived consultation as a barrier because my first impression was, that I am
not interested in working with a third party between the student and myself, I
simply want to work with the student. It
was not until this course when I began to see all of the roles and
responsibilities of the counselor that I saw consultation as a possible
solution to counselor time management.
Dollarhide and Saginak state, “…consultation is an efficient use of
time, providing an opportunity for the counselor to intervene in a holistic,
systematic way with the school, whole classrooms, students and their families”
(Dollarhide & Saginak, 2012, p. 171).
With so many roles and responsibilities ranging from administrative work
to data collection, counselors must still meet expectations and do so in a
timely manner. No matter how high my
self-efficacy is, the reality is I cannot do it all alone. This is why I am most drawn to the
collaboration mode of consultation.
I sense
some drawbacks to the prescription, provision, initiation, and mediation
modes. The prescription mode is the type
of consultation I utilized in my Consultation course last year. In my scenario the teacher had difficulty
implementing the intervention exactly as prescribed. I felt that any time I saved by utilizing
consultation was lost in the amount of time it took me to teach and reteach the
intervention to the teacher. In the end
I was left with messy data and an unclear picture of whether or not the
intervention was ever fully understood and effective. Perhaps the same aforementioned teacher would
have benefited from a provisional mode of consultation where he could have
watched me implement the intervention first.
Perhaps he would have gained a clearer understanding of the intervention
and more confidence and enthusiasm to implement it. Hypothetically yes this would have helped my
teacher however due to the nature of the student’s behavior I would have needed
to spend entire days in the teacher’s classroom and this would defeat the
time-saving benefit of consultation.
Next, initiation mode seems like a
slippery slope in terms of building trusting relationships with teachers and
colleagues. Dollarhide and Saginak
reference a specific scenario and state, “…a school counselor would enter the
initiation mode if the counselor overheard the teacher complaining about the
classroom situation and the counselor approached the teacher to initiate
assistance” (Dollarhide& Saginak, 2012 p.173). I feel a tinge of discomfort at the idea
basing my consultation methods on a conversation that perhaps was not meant for
me. In class we discussed possible
resistance and distrust teachers may feel towards a counselor interjecting and
imposing his or her beliefs about teaching upon the teacher, particularly if
the counselor has little or no teaching experience.
Additionally the mediation mode of
consultation concerns me for similar reasons.
I believe that counselors should distance themselves as authority figure
and be more of a leader. I would feel
more like a leader and less of an authority figure if an administrator or
assistant principal was involved in the mediation process. After all administration has the power to
enforce the changes brought about by the mediation process and they also have
the right to know if staff are having conflicts.
The even distribution of power is
why I favor the collaboration mode of consultation. Dollarhide and Saginak state, this
consulting relationship and process would be the exact opposite from the
prescriptive mode. “…the counselor and
the teacher would mutually join and work their way through the consultation
process to arrive at a consensus as to what they believe is the best way to
respond to the students’ dilemma” (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2012 p. 173). I believe this is the most ideal way to build
rapport, educate teachers on developmentally appropriate and evidence-based
intervention, and save time. Additionally
I would be inclined to use needs assessments to find common needs among teachers,
group teachers together based on those needs, and teach interventions for those
needs in a group format such as a workshop.
Not only does this save time but also I believe the teacher groups would
become a support network and sounding board.
Dollarhide,
C. T., & Saginak, K. A. (2012). Comprehensive School Counseling Programs.
(2nd
ed.). New York: Pearson, Inc.
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