Similar to my clinical approach as a counselor, I approach teaching from an ecosystemic developmental constructivist lens with hands-on, experiential learning embedded throughout my coursework. Essentially, my work as a teacher is guided by a quote by Chickering and Gamson (1987): “Learning is not a spectator sport” (p. 3). I will elaborate on each of these four areas to illuminate how the relational context, growth opportunities, meaning making, and active reflection are operationalized throughout my academic coursework and my mentorship and supervision of students. Relational Context Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory (2001, 2005) has influenced nearly every facet of my professional life, from my time as a K-12 teacher to my time as a school counselor to my time now as a professor. This theory acknowledges that many individual and contextual factors influence development. My personhood and experiences are inextricably linked to the classroom, and each individual student brings their personhood and experiences into the class. Bioecological systems also attends to the ways that social contexts, macrosystems, and time shape developmental experiences. As such, it is imperative to acknowledge the uniqueness of teaching and learning at the University of New Orleans, within the City of New Orleans, and in today’s sociocultural and sociopolitical climates. These elements have as many impacts on our learning environment as the unique characteristics that my students and me bring into the classroom. In the same vein, I have a responsibility to prepare the future school counselors, clinical mental health counselors, and counselor educators learning in my classes to understand the mental health care and educational systems that I am sending them out into. Growth Opportunities My professional experiences range from elementary schools to graduate education, and as expected, learning occurs differently at each level. The contextual differences that students bring into the learning environment necessitate approaching learning from a developmental lens, and this is especially true with conceptualizing students’ counselor identity development (Ronnestad & Skovholt, 2003) and mastery of counseling skill and practice areas (Stoltenberg et al., 2010). Using Vygotsky’s (1978) zone of proximal development and principles of scaffolding (Winstone & Millward, 2012), my role as an instructor then becomes to meet students where they are and create opportunities for them to grow toward their professional goals. I strive to provide rigorous course activities that stretch students from their comfort zones and skill areas while providing considerable support and feedback. As students experience success and growth, I can scale back on the level of support and scale up on the level of expected rigor. Throughout this process, it is imperative to attend to the personal meaning students derive from their learning. Meaning Making Numerous elements of our counselor education program acknowledge learning outcomes that can be measured by objective tests like our Masters comprehensive exam. However, my role as an instructor goes well beyond just presenting objective facts to students through lecture and prescribed readings. Constructivist teaching in counselor education emphasizes construction and co-construction of meaning in the learning environment (McAuliffe, 2011). As the instructor, it is critical for me to remain non-judgmental about which topics students do and do not find to be meaningful and further to normalize that they will have different takeaways than their peers. I strive to build course activities and assignments that place students in the driver’s seat with selecting topics and methods that relate to their own interests, experiences, and goals. Moreover, to encourage students’ metacognition about the meaning they derive from the curriculum, I build in lots of opportunities for reflection, which I will describe further in the next section. Active Reflection Reflection is a key component of Kolb and Kolb’s (2008) cyclical model of experiential learning. Incorporating opportunities for reflection allows students to not only deepen their understanding of content but also to better understand the meaning derived from content and activities. I strongly believe that learning must involve some element of doing. When possible, I build opportunities for reflection into written course assignments in two areas: (a) reflection on learning experiences in the course, and (b) self-evaluation with new skills or tasks learned in the course. Providing opportunities to reflect on learning experiences encourages exploration of how students are deriving meaning from course content rather than solely asking them to regurgitate facts about content. Because much of the work of learning to be a counselor is skill based, I aim to incorporate experiential activities when possible, such as counseling skill demonstrations, group counseling facilitations, delivery of school counseling lessons and teacher trainings, etc. In addition to evaluating the product of learning, I always incorporate an opportunity for students to provide a self-evaluation of both their learning deliverable (i.e., the skill or presentation) and their learning process. In the sections that follow, I will illustrate my teaching responsibilities and outcomes, weaving in evidence of these four components of my teaching philosophy.
University Teaching Experiences:
University of New Orleans
Doctoral Courses:
EDGC 6439: Advanced Theories (Instructor of Record; Fall 2018)
Masters Courses:
EDGC 6993: Advanced School Counseling (Instructor of Record: Summer 2019)
EDGC 6860: Introduction to Play Therapy (Instructor of Record; Summer 2018, Summer 2019)
EDGC 6420: Lifespan Human Growth and Development (Instructor of Record; Spring 2018, Spring 2019)
EDGC 6630: Analysis of the Individual (Instructor of Record; Spring 2018, Spring 2019)
EDGC 6830: Counseling Children & Adolescents (Instructor of Record; Spring 2018, Spring 2019)
EDGC 6450: Group Work (Instructor of Record; Fall 2017)
EDGC 6550: School Counseling (Instructor of Record; Fall 2017, Fall 2018)
University of Central Florida
Undergraduate:
MHS 2330: Career Planning--STEM Explorations (Instructor of Record; Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Summer 2015, Fall 2015; Summer 2016; Fall 2016, Summer 2017)
Graduate:
MHS 6500: Group Procedures & Theories in Counseling (Co-instructor; Spring 2016)
SDS 6620: Coordination of Comprehensive Professional School Counseling Programs (Co-instructor; Fall 2015)
MHS 6803: Practicum in Counselor Education (Co-instructor; Fall 2015)