Teaching and Training

“Learning is the making of meaning..”

-Robert Kegan

Robert Kegan suggests that as humans (both in the instructor and student role), learning new things is making personal meaning about shared concepts. Counselor educators know that no two counselor educators teach the same topic, technique, theory, developmental model, or research method the same way as one another, as we all have the human capacity to make meaning of every concept we encounter. As an educator, I take an integrated trauma and developmental foundational approach to the classroom, allowing me to view each student within the era so that they can establish the meaning of the concepts presented to them throughout lectures, experiential activities, group work, reflection, and case studies. Personal and teaching values play a significant role in the developmental meaning-making process. As an educator, I have my personal teaching values seen clearly throughout my classroom in several ways while still considering each student’s developmental level and relational and cultural considerations. Throughout teaching, I personally find the most meaning in teaching courses that encourage students in their thinking processes and provide them with exposure to theories, relational building skills, group concepts, trauma and crisis intervention, and creative modalities.

Within the teaching holding environment, four values are seen throughout my classroom: empowerment, creativeness, curiosity, and authenticity. My primary goal as a counselor educator is to provide students with a safe enough holding environment to learn, develop, and interact in a setting where they can begin to be present with not only one another and future clients but ultimately become present with themselves. Relationships are crucial for individuals, and one of the most important relationships students can grow to understand is the relationship they have with themselves as they learn new concepts, theories, skills, and areas of counseling. While still providing a safe enough holding environment for students, I strive to provide them with a level of contradiction to support students in developing their counselor identity and advocate identity. By viewing my classroom through a developmental lens, I can tailor my teaching, lectures, assignments, and reflections for students while providing contradiction to help them reach a new level of personal growth thought. My research and clinical work within the field of trauma serves as the foundational piece of teaching.

The Developmental Classroom

My teaching philosophy is viewed often through the developmental helix proposed by Robert Kegan (1982) in The Evolving Self. This model can be used in many scenarios, both within and outside the counselor-educator lens. I will identify which era students in my class are in and which eras they are most comfortable with. Through identifying comfortable eras, I can provide students with a vast experience of exposure to class material to allow them to become more in tune with the various eras they have or have not experienced in life. There are opportunities in the classroom to allow students to experience situations within each of the eras while highlighting empowerment, creativity, curiosity, and authenticity.

Authenticity

Authenticity is at the top of my list of values as an individual who values consistency, individuality, humor, and each person’s unique capacity to create meaning. Authenticity is required to view many of the concepts of human relational science from multiple lenses. Working with people (clients and students), we must recognize that lived experiences differ, and

because of this. However, we come to the situation with our own perceived biases and opinions of individuals; we must also present with curiosity and open heart to seek to understand the lived experience of the individuals we work with. This could present for students as classmates who have a different experience with privilege and repression or clients for students who come from a different cultural background or race that will ultimately impact the counseling or classroom relationship in some way if not addressed. Rogers (1969) defined the core tenets of our profession as respect, trust, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard. Aligned with these beliefs, my teaching philosophy begins with a relationship to self, with each student individually, the class, and then the program.

At the start of the semester, I build the working relationship through experiential activities and strive to set the tone for a secure working relationship. I utilize creating a class compact, which is similar to group norms in the sense that students are encouraged to identify what a good learning experience would look like for them and what they need from both me and their fellow classmates. I do this by both verbally allowing responses and allowing students to reply via online platforms if they don’t feel comfortable speaking. I then use this time to explain my beliefs about learning with students and how I will not know everything because I do not know everything but am encouraged to, as Ms. Frizzle in the Magic School Bus says, “take changes, make mistakes, and get messy” throughout class activities to find their personal meaning with the concepts. By setting the tone of the class this way, students can take responsibility for their development. Students can co-construct the course based on their interests through a collaborative effort when appropriate.

When students work with instructors and supervisors, this is often their first experience with a secure working relationship (Bergers & Quiros, 2016; Knight, 2018). A secure working relationship includes collaboration, evaluation, multicultural dynamics, and gatekeeping. In my classroom, openness is modeled to students through these lenses, providing students with an example of the core tenets of humanistic approaches, which will hopefully transfer to the counseling room for students. I explain how I approach learning with students and provide them with examples of various play therapy modalities that I will implement throughout class. An example of this would be utilizing the “crucial-c” sticker activity in a theories course with students. Students were encouraged to reflect on the elements of the theory and identify stickers that modeled this for themselves. After this, students then reflected with peers and shared how they see these qualities in the classroom throughout learning.

Empowerment

As humans, we all have at least fleeting moments of self-doubt or self-worth. The biggest gift we can ultimately give ourselves is the give of self-confidence, but often, this is hard without a holding environment that fosters experiences for us to notice qualities within ourselves first. Empowerment is the action of creating an environment for individuals to learn these things about themselves and give them the tools to foster inner strength and confidence to not only advocate for themselves but for others in both little and big ways.

Empowerment is such a crucial part of growing for individuals who have experienced relational struggles or trauma of any kind, and it is a crucial value for students to witness. Empowerment shows up as Advocacy in my classroom; by teaching my students different types of advocacies, encouraging them to advocate for themselves when appropriate, and utilizing the helix model, I empower students to reach the next era of the helix through contradiction. Within

the classroom, contradiction looks like assignments that are slightly more difficult than others to allow the students to challenge themselves through Advocacy for themselves and their clients.

Empowerment within the classroom can be done in many ways, but by validating the students, recognizing their struggles, co-creating content (when able), and modeling students’ moments of Advocacy for self and others and how those moments can add up to equal moments of Advocacy for themselves, clients and profession. I invite students to co-construct with me their assignments and their desires within the class. Often, during the first class, I will offer students this opportunity, but then, as the semester progresses, if the class overall has desires that would best support their learning, I strive to implement moments to include this while still balancing course content. An example of this would be during the theories course; I provided students the opportunity after reading prior to class to write three takeaways from the reading and then one question for the reading on a sticky note. After doing this, students were able to participate in an observing role-play between instructors and then practice concepts for that theory with peers and observe one another, offering feedback while asking for help from peers when needed. The next class questions were addressed from the sticky notes, which empowered students to advocate for their learning experience and ask for things that they needed from me as an instructor.

Creativity

Creativity allows students to bring new concepts to the classroom and, ultimately, the counseling room. Creativity is something that should be fostered both inside and outside of the classroom to keep the work of working with people alive. All individuals are different and come to us both in the counseling room and classroom with their own lived experience, which sometimes requires creativity when working with them to meet them where they are. Creativity keeps us in contact with our right hemisphere of the brain and the lower levels of the brain stem, which foster overall greater regulation and deeper understanding of the material. I am increasing the chance of students integrating the information by implementing creative elements such as sand tray, improv, expressive arts, reflective writing, case study design, and collaborative learning. An example of this would be at the end of the theories course; after students have completed the traditional reflection paper of which theory they best align with, I invite students to make their own meaning of that theoretical approach through a creative arts project. Students are invited to create something or bring something that represents what their theoretical approach means to them as a person. This might look like a drawing, a digital graphic, a baked pastry, a picture of a person, something from nature, a collage of things, or a sculpture. By allowing students the space to create their own meaning of the experience and then empowering them to share it with peers, they are better able to approach their experience with curiosity and creatively integrate the experience into both hemispheres of the brain. By activating both hemispheres of the brain in the learning process, a whole-brain learning experience is fostered, modeling the importance of knowledge of interpersonal neurobiology for students in their future practice.

Curiosity

Curiosity is the foundation of learning and personal growth. It begins individual development, as highlighted in several developmental models. The ability to become curious and creative is nurtured from a young age, and it is during this developmental era that we can explore our values through play, creativity, and a curious lens. As individuals become comfortable with their curious minds, they can use this curiosity to shape their learning, hobbies, relationships, and overall impact on the community. Throughout my classes, I often utilize Socratic questioning, which inspires the students to dig deeper into their own lived experiences and the meaning they have made of those experiences. Providing students with assignments that allow them the autonomy to be curious and create the assignment around a topic of specific interest is also very important to me. Role-plays, improv, and sand trays allow students to connect with their impulsive era and explore more creative approaches. Curiosity is also fostered within my classroom, with reflections and assignments created to allow students to explore an area of counseling that they are specifically interested in, thus fostering a curious mind in students. Through honoring both the value of curiosity and authenticity, I remind students that while I am there to help foster their learning experience, I am not the expert in the class and invite students to challenge me from a place of curiosity and ask questions as they arise and if I am unable to answer I work to find the answer and return with it modeling a good-enough learning environment. Case studies are also presented within class, where students can research and look up cultures and races different from their own. While this is a requirement in most of my classes, empowering students to approach these topics with a curious versus judgmental lens is an excellent example of how I provide contradiction from the interpersonal to institutional era.

Conclusion

As a person, I value being authentic, curious, creative, and empowering in all personal and professional settings. I strive to model these perspectives in my classroom by grounding myself in relational, developmental, and trauma approaches. Throughout my classes, I encourage students to remember that “learning is the making of meaning” (Keagan, 1982); throughout my preparation for classes, I evaluate students’ learning and mentor students throughout their experience in class. My goal as an educator is to empower students to have fun and enjoy learning while creating meaning in their experience by fostering a holding environment that utilizes a developmental approach and allows students to travel throughout the helix of learning stages, hopefully learning something about themselves along the way. As a counselor educator, I strive to create a classroom that is welcoming for all students from different walks of life and cultural backgrounds and foster a holding environment that empowers students to collaborate during their educational experience.