CACREP Competencies
Counsel for Accreditation of Counseling and other Related Educational Programs
Professional Orientation and Ethical Practice
This area is an understanding of the professional school counselor and the ethical practice. I hope to go into a school system and make an impact, help students create goals for themselves, and help them reach those goals. I want to be an advocate for students and also someone they can trust and turn to. Having good self awareness is important as a professional school counselor because you understand your own biases and beliefs. Being able to put your own thoughts and feelings aside is important. Also, knowing and understanding the student’s personal needs, strengths, weaknesses, and motivations can help counselors work with their students to the best of their ability. Being a student in a CACREP accredited program, we have learned from national standards. I have good self awareness; I am a hard worker and take pride in doing things to the best of my ability. I am open minded and value my own opinions and beliefs, but at the same time I am very understanding of the people around me as well. Knowing ethical standards is important, as a professional school counselor the students safety always comes first. Knowing your school and state protocal can help school counselors know how to handle issues such as confidentiality, abuse, suicide, threats, and more.
During my last semester at my internship I am committed to creating my personal identity, networking, and professional development. Currently I am a member of MASCA (Massachusetts School Counselor Association) and ASCA (American School Counselors Association). Through College Board I will be attending professional development such as “new school counselors” in October, and attend South Shore Guidance meetings. By following your schools protocol and the ACA (American Counselor Association) code of ethics school counselors can make the right decisions to help students.
The CACREP standards have helped me continue to learn and develop new counseling skills. The following artifact is from the course Legal and Ethical Issues for the school counselor. It is a brochure I have created on suicide prevention. This is a growing issue across the country and most school counselors will have to work with students who are suicidal. This artifact shows I understand legal and ethical issues in the school, as well as rights and responsibilities of a professional school counselor.
Social and Cultural Diversity
This area is an understanding of the different social, mental and physical development stages throughout childhood, as well as the many different cultures. You have to be able to maintain a culturally diverse population’s perspective as a professional counselor. During my time in the school counseling program at Bridgewater State University multiculturalism has been incorporated in almost every single course and there is a course dedicated all to multiculturalism. Through all my courses we discussed many different cultures and how they may be affected when it comes to counseling. It is important to understand not all cultures are the same, especially while working in a school, and to know your own potential barriers. Students may interact differently because of their culture.
Having good self-awareness has made me a better school counselor. Coming into this program I knew how important multiculturalism is from my undergraduate program. While in this program my views have not changed on cultural diversity but they have become more educated, meaningful and broad. I have achieved competency in this area from classroom and practicum experience.
To show my competency of the multicultural CACREP area, the artifact I chose is a video of my grandmother, Mimi and I. I interviewed my grandmother for my multicultural project on the Asian culture. This shows that I understand you can’t “judge a book by its cover”. I do not look Japanese but I am, and it’s important to understand students may look a certain way, but have beliefs and values you would never know of. The following video has received consent to be posted on this online portfolio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXW-iKx4big
Human Growth and Development
This area is an understanding of the different mental and physical developmental level from ages 0 to adulthood. As a professional school guidance counselor, I have knowledge and education on human growth and development which I have applied in the school counselor setting. There are multiple theories for human growth and development. Different types of developmental areas are cognitive, moral, sexual, physical, educational, career, emotional, identity, and much more.
Some of the well known theorists in human development are Freud, Erikson, Piaget, Vygotski and Kohlberg. One theory which shapes my work is Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, developmental stage theory. There are four main stages of development a human goes through, sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. As children grow they move from one stage to another eventually getting to formal operational thinking.
I hope to provide all students with a quality education to help them develop into reflective citizens and contributing members of the global community who can think logically and perform tasks independently. In order to achieve this I will have to work with students all on different developmental levels and know and understand how to work best at each stage.
Artifacts that show my knowledge and competency of the human growth and development CACREP area are an ecomap and genogram. These have been created of my own personal life and experiences. The reasons I have chosen these two projects is because they show my growth and development, as well as you can use these with students in the classroom or in counseling. This can help students learn about their past and what their future might look like. It can also explain a lot about a student’s personality and where they currently are in their developmental growth stages.
Career Development and Career Counseling
The career development area of CACREP is an understanding of how to work with students towards career plans, use career development programs, life planning and decision making. The career developmental course and my practicum at the high school level have both helped me gain the knowledge and understanding for this CACREP area. In a high school career development and planning is extremely important. Counselors work with students from their freshmen year to help them plan for their future, whether it is college, post secondary training, military, or work. One of the main goals for professional school counselors is to help students grow into independent young adults who can continue on after high school successfully in the community and worldwide.
For a successful career planning developmental plan to work counselors have to follow through every year. If an activity is done freshmen year and not looked at until senior year, the student won’t even remember doing the first part. It’s important for the program to be ongoing. There are many different career developmental theories and tools to use in a school setting. Some examples of tools I have used are the Holland Code, and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Both of these assessments give results for a student to understand their personality types, and jobs which correlate with them.
The artifacts I am using for my portfolio are my career journey paper, career resource brochure, and a photo from the career fair I set up an ran at my practicum. These three artifacts all show a different aspect of career development. The career journey paper is a look at me and my background to see where I am today. The resource brochure is an example of different types of tools/programs you can use to help guide a student to create their career development path. The career fair is a program I spent a lot of time on, working to get 16 different professionals into the school to talk to students about their careers. Because all of these tools are different I have been able to learn about career counseling from different views. This has helped because as a professional school counselor having more views and being more open minded will help when working with students.
The Helping Relationship
The helping relationship area of CACREP is an understanding of how the professional counselor demonstrates effective counseling skills, support, valuing, and respect for the clients in order to help them grow and reach their goals. The professional school guidance counselor promotes and advocates for students while guiding them along the way. As a professional school guidance counselor it is important to be able to know different stages of growth, cognitively, emotionally, physically, socially, morality and spiritually. Students throughout a school are at different stages in each area, so understanding a wide variety of growth stages and theories will enable counselors to help their students more successfully.
Some of the strengths I have as a school counselor are empathy, being open minded, good listening, ability to relate to students all on different age levels, knowledgeable, and I am trusting. When working with students I am able to sit back and listen, while reflecting back showing students I am listening, also I am not afraid to ask any clarifying questions to the student in order make sure I understand correctly. Getting to know students will be the only way to understand their developmental growth and progress.
One of the artifacts I have included in my portfolio is a video of me working with a client. In this video I show knowledge of the subject area, open mindedness, listening skills, and a good relationship between me and the client. The video is a great artifact because it shows me in the school setting, and my personal style of counseling. The anti-bullying presentation was a power point I created for one of my courses. This shows my knowledge and understanding of a very important area in schools today, as well as my capability to do classroom activities to help a large group of students at once.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1MBSUCynj0&feature=youtu.be
Group work
The group counseling CACREP area is an understanding of knowing when clients will need group or individual counseling, understanding group dynamics, theories, stages of development and roles. As a counselor it is very important to know what type of counseling would be most helpful for the client, group or individual. A group can be considered to be anything that is a helping process with more than one client working together. Some examples of groups are social skills, anger managements, bereavement, anxiety, and more. At this point in my program at Bridgewater state I feel comfortable working with students in groups, and also putting a small group together.
I have worked with an 8th grade transitional group, and a girls group. The 8th grade transitional group consisted of five 8th grade students who would be going up to the high school and may have anxiety or nervous issues. The girls group I participate in consists of six girls in the high school level. These six students are all students at high risk. The girls come in once a week and discuss any current issues they may deal with that week. It is also a time to work on other important areas such as self esteem, anger, social skills, bullying and more.
When working with a group, it is important to know and understand where clients are, and the roles they take in the group. In a school a behavioral cognitive approach works better for me, then a clinical perspective. I also feel it is important when working with a group to make sure everyone feels equal, and safe. As the facilitator I try to make the students feel they are in control, rather than me. I believe group work is a great contribution for school counseling. It gives the students a chance to feel independent and listen and learn from their peers. It also is a way to reach more students in a time constrained school day. Sometimes having rules in place can help with this, such as there is no leader, confidentiality, and everyone is allowed to say what they feel without being judged. When the members feel equal and safe, they can begin to have a sense of belonging and acceptance, and cohesion is important for the group’s success.
The artifact I chose for this CACREP area ia a group paper. The mock group I facilitated was for middle school girls with low self-esteem. At the termination of the group each girl got one color and 8 short strings. Each girl went around and handed one of their color strings to the other members. Each string was tied onto the bracelet as a reminder of the group and all the great memories, growth, and friendships they are taking away with them. This artifact shows I understand the importance of group work, and different stages throughout the process. Also I am able to understand when clients will benefit from a group counseling style, rather than individual counseling. As a counselor it is important to always do what is most beneficial for the client.
Assessment
The Assessment CACREP area is the understanding of how a professional school counselor is able to assess students, describe their needs, identify individual differences, record and understand data, and recommendations. As a professional school counselor it is important to know and understand basic assessments, measurements, records, and also how to administer tests. Some examples of testing which can be done in a school are psychological, career, prevention, standardized, and non standardized tests. As a school counselor I know and understand the difference between many different assessments, as well as how to administer them and interpret results.
The purpose of an assessment is to know and understand more about your students. Assessments can help counselors see where a student’s developmental level is, their interests, and help students create a path for their future. Assessments can also be used for comparison, or to see if a program was successful or not. Assessments can be used to help everyone grow.
The artifacts I chose to show my knowledge and skills in the assessment CACREP area are my foundations project, a mock results report, and a mock ASCA guidance curriculum. The foundations project was a school assessment where I went and compared a local middle school to the ASCA national model to see if their guidance curriculum followed it. The mock results report was done in order to work on assessments and interpreting results. The mock ASCA guidance curriculum is to show how a guidance department works with students, which domains they cover when working with students, and how they will assess and evaluate their program. All of these artifacts show my competency in the importance of assessment and my knowledge on it. I fell that I am very strong and capable of the assessment CACREP competency.
Research and Evaluation
The understanding of research and evaluation by the CACREP competency is the ability to conduct research, interpret results and data, to use data in evaluation to help develop and revise programs. While at Bridgewater State University I was able to gain knowledge about research and evaluation, and while at my practicum I was able to apply that knowledge and become competent and in research and evaluation. Research is extremely important as professional school guidance counselor because you want to know the programs you have are making a difference, and evaluations are important because you want to be able to understand the results of your students testing, and know when your student needs and evaluation.
The artifact I chose for my portfolio is a copy of some notes from my research and evaluation course. The notes are part of the binder I created from the course. They show some different definitions, formulas, and examples of what I have done in class. This artifact shows the actual knowledge which helped me gain my understanding of the CACREP area research and evaluation.
