My Career As A School Counselor

The choices we make early in life have an enormous impact on our future. I have always known that I wanted to directly impact people’s lives and my personal experiences have set me on the school-counseling path. In the future, I would love to influence another generation of students to soar for their dreams.

Throughout the many years of the educational process, students are often met with different challenges that will test abilities and skills related to cognitive status and learning. The United States places much importance on education for children and young adults to move forward in order to ensure continued prosperity of the nation

It was during my senior year of college that I decided I wanted to become a school counselor. Up until my senior year in college at Penn State I did not know where I wanted to take my career but I knew I wanted to work in a school setting and I knew that I wanted to work with kids. When it came time to choose an internship site for my last semester, I chose an alternative school called Buxmont Academy in Bethlehem where I would be shadowing two of their school counselors as well as engaging with the students themselves. I got to work with these children on a more personal level, gaining an understanding of their emotions, experiences, and difficulties, as most of these children came from broken homes, and drug and alcohol related settings. I am interested in becoming a school counselor because I want to help. When I become a counselor I want to make a difference in a child’s life whether that be by simply giving them support that they might not have in their lives or helping them make changes to better themselves and their futures. A counselor has such an important role in helping to shape young children and that is something that I want to be a part of.

My name is Courtney Torok and I am currently a senior here at Kennesaw State University. I am graduating this December with a degree in psychology. I am originally from Michigan and moved down here to Georgia with my family just before starting at Kennesaw State University. I started off majoring in chemistry with the intent of applying to some kind of medical program, but eventually found that my passion was psychology. I have always wanted to work in the “helping” field. After graduating, I plan on applying to graduate school for school psychology programs where I will earn both my Master of Science in School Psychology and Specialist in School Psychology degrees. Ideally, I would love to be accepted into a graduate school in Florida, as

With basketball completely out of the equation, my quintessential career path would be to become some sort of counselor. Before jumping to conclusions assuming a counselor is someone who just sits back with a pen and notepad all day giving the occasional “how does that make you feel”, a lot of things need to be taken into consideration about how much time, and effort and strenuous work is required to pursue this career path. A counselor (depending on what field) is typically someone who uses therapeutic techniques to help patients strengthen existing qualities and skills used in everyday life. Ideally I would like to become a school counselor to begin coping with the minds of the youth, then hopefully move on from there. In order to do so

My career goals are to become at license professional counselor, license chemical dependency counselor and a certified crisis counselor who specializes in trauma and career counseling. The steps I will take to achieve my career goals are, finish my degree and pass the required exams required by the state of Texas. In addition, I have to take 3, 000 supervised hours for the state of Texas to be license as a professional counselor. Since, I already have my LCDC-I, I just need 4,000 supervised hours to complete my chemical dependency counselor license. My personal growth is; I would like to growth as a professional counselor. I want to be able to be knowledgeable in the different approaches that I uses doing my practice. I believe the best way

As a counselor, being aware of the theoretical approaches and which ones best suit your perspective on human nature, complications, and change for an individual is vital. Not only is understanding the approaches important, but the counselor’s own values and personal philosophy are equally fundamental for the counselor to do their job efficiently.

As I generalize and outline my reasons for becoming a Counselor, I am reminded of the things on life in which I am passionate about. Throughout every aspect of my life, helping others has been the most prevalent attribute that is revealed in my life. Being in service as a minister for over twenty years has placed me in positions to offer service to those that are hurting, lonely, depressed and literally have lost their ability to hope. As a Counselor, I would be able to assist students with daily challenges that may have blocked their path of making logical decisions for their lives. I find it rewarding in helping others find solutions to their problems or to support and encourage them if their results are not as promising as they have imagine it to be.

In order to pursue my dream career in being an addictions counselor, I require a higher level of schooling to ensure that I will be doing a good job and be the perfect fit for my clients. There is a lot of courses that one can take in order to be an addictions counselor, but for me I got my eye on three. Firstly, I will need to have more studies in maths, this can be about any high level math class like algebra or business mathematics. For example, Indeed shares that you need to use math to understand how to build successful statistics (Ring). Thus, as an addictions counselor, I must be able to calculate factors like a drugs dosage and what it means to my client quickly in my head. Secondly, I will need to know about alcohol and drug abuse to be an effective counselor, this class is essential to be an addictions counselor.

Counseling is a relatively young profession when compared to other mental health professions. In my brief personal and professional experience with the field, I have come to define counseling as a process of engagement between two people, both of whom are bound to change through a collaborative process that involves both the therapist and the client in co-constructing solutions to concerns.

Through my graduate studies, I hope to develop profound and purposeful relationships with fellow students and faculty members. I am seeking an educational environment that that is both challenging and supportive, as well as a program that offers hands-on experiences to apply counseling theories, interventions, and techniques. Pursuing a graduate degree at Pennsylvania State University will provide me with all that I am wishing to seek in my graduate work and help me prepare to be a School Counselor by giving me the opportunity to learn in a multifaceted way. The specific secondary school emphasis will provide a more focused curriculum that matches my interests to assist middle school to high school students. Furthermore, the CEDAR Clinic located

The first time I went to counseling was in 2003, I was nine years old. My counselor 's name was Julie, and we played together. She had a room filled with toys that became my safe haven after my parents ' divorce. She would sit with me while I played and ask me questions about whatever activity I had chosen that day. I didn 't know it at the time, but the impact that Julie had on my life was tremendous. She gave nine-year-old Ashley a place to focus her emotions and make sense out of words like “divorce”. She helped me make a smooth transition into life in two homes and later helped me through the death of my father.

The goal of a school counseling program to help all students reach academic success by providing supportive services that addresses issues or concerns comprising of academic, career and social/personal development. School counselors are not only concerned with students who are succeeding and motivated to learn, they also aim at encouraging students who are at risk of failing or dropping out of school to continue striving for success and setting goals that encourage productive citizens in communities. In order to create a comprehensive school counseling program, one must first recognize their own assumptions, perceptions and stereotypes regarding students’ behaviors, values and beliefs. One should also have a willingness to accept and understand

With the diversifying population in America’s schools, a profession school counselor should be culturally competent to meet the needs of all students. “The transformed professional school counselor is culturally competent, respectful of human diversity, and a school leader in ensuring that oppressive systemic barriers to academic, career, college readiness, and personal/social development are removed (Erford, 2015, p. 173).” A school counselor needs to have a deep understanding of a variety of cultures to meet the personal, emotional, developmental needs of a student using individual and group interventions while being aware of their cultural and spiritual needs.

School counseling as always caught my attention. When I started my higher education, I had a focus on studying Elementary Education. However, after completing a college assignment for one of my psychology course, I found a very interested area in Psychology which is counseling. Since then, I have falling in love with counseling, and have spent a lot of time researching the career. I have conducted different interviews and have engaged in different counseling events that have helped me get to know the career. Therefore, when given this assignment, I felt more than prepared because I have spent a lot of time researching this career. However, I used the given source, ONET, to have more of a broad understanding about School Counseling.