what does it mean to say that staffers often function as gatekeepers for legislators

Imagine yous are a counselor educator sitting down to read the morning time paper and observe a mug shot of one of your counseling students on the front page. Or perhaps while attempting to complete an assignment for a substance corruption course, one of your students attends an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and steals the spotlight by impersonating someone struggling with alcoholism. Or maybe in your family counseling class, a particular student insists on regaling the class with endless stories near his parents' harrowing divorce.

These are just a few of the many (and more obvious) ruby-red flags alerting educators that non every student admitted into a counseling program is ultimately fit to enter the profession. Simply with school administrators and admissions departments often eager to expand the number of students enrolling in programs, counselor educators tin notice themselves quite solitary in carving out and directing the process of remediation and dismissal of students. Counselor educators hold the unique position of being gatekeepers for their profession, attempting to evaluate what harm a student might practice to future clients if he or she has a deficit of skill or a lack of insight into his or her ain behaviors, values, biases and abilities.

With programs committed to having high graduation rates, kinesthesia members accept begun placing more focus on preadmission practices that tin help them screen out students who are not ideal for the counseling profession. In addition to the standard one-on-i interview and admissions essays, these tactics ofttimes include grouping discussions or even planned social functions with other graduate students who remain on alert for any strange behaviors.

"Nosotros have a vignette blatantly related to social justice issues," says Janee Both Gragg, an assistant professor and chair of the clinical mental health counseling programme at the Academy of Redlands and a member of the American Counseling Clan. "Nosotros enquire them [prospective students] to talk through the vignette, and we just observe when the red flags appear. And definitely some of those biases will come up out; you can feel the hairs on the dorsum of your cervix enhance. You think, 'This is not a good fit for my program, and not a good fit for the profession possibly.' Just you are as well trying to figure out how much of that is ingrained and how open are they to learning and growing."

Even subsequently existence accepted into a program, however, students often notice that counseling course work elicits a desire to explore and share personal experiences. This often leaves counselor educators with the task of distinguishing between students attempting to integrate material into personal exercise and those using classroom time every bit a version of personal therapy.

"The reason these bug come up upwardly more in a counseling world is considering we are all trained as counselors," says Julie Strentzch, an banana professor at St. Mary's Academy and an ACA fellow member. "We're good listeners, and nosotros're good at paying attention to the nonverbals. These particular individuals who are in that location to seek help rather than to learn how to give help are drawn to that ability. And because it is a part of our commitment as clinicians to do no harm, sometimes we get fatigued into helping them earlier we realize that nosotros're almost enabling them. We take to proceed skilful boundaries betwixt what we're doing as educators and what we're doing as clinicians, but those lines tend to blur. I don't call back that people aren't responsible and won't deal with information technology in other [academic] departments. They only may not have the insight to take hold of it early."

Equally documented false pas in the classroom and the clinic begin to accumulate, advisor educators must consider whether to pursue remediation or academic dismissal. With counseling programs oftentimes housed in schools of education, counseling kinesthesia may not find any other model in neighboring departments to pursue this type of combined clinical and academic scrutinization and correction. They must consider which traits and behaviors are correctable, and which proceed to remain entrenched in the student's character.

"A lack of awareness of how others perceive is No. ane," says Scott Tracy, managing director of the graduate programs in counseling at Waynesburg University. "A very concrete example would exist when a pupil in a class conversation is not aware that every other student in the grade is rolling their eyes. The next 1 that is very important is an disability to self-correct. Anybody makes mistakes, just a advisor has to continue to larn and accommodate."

Other advisor educators agree that a deficit in skills is not equally concerning every bit a advisor-in-training's resistance to receive feedback. "Students are going to keep moving forward as long as they are able to sit with the discomfort and hear how they need to shift," Strentzch says. "Because that's as well what we ask our clients to do. Information technology's when we see the resistance and we tin can't break through it that we have to practice the remediation plan."

Historically, in many academic programs, students with behavioral problems accept been passed through past reluctant administrators with the rationale that those students will non be able to find a job in the profession, regardless of their diploma. Counseling faculty, however, must dedicate energy to examining the potential for future damage to clients that each pupil poses, while also managing the frustrations of the present. This position tin can put them at odds with admissions staff, who may encourage programs to admit upwards to three cohorts a yr or aggrandize course offerings.

"In that location is a pull between really high monitoring and quality of a cohort coming in, and the demand and pressures that kinesthesia members have in working collaboratively with marketing and admission," Gragg says. "I draw difficult lines on sure things, but anywhere else I tin can be flexible, I go above and beyond considering I have to sustain the relationship. When I started this program, I wanted to absolutely understand the process of having the pieces in place for remediation. And I'g not going to ever graduate, if I have a say in information technology, someone who'due south not advisable for the profession."

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Kathleen Smith is a family systems counselor and postgraduate trainee at the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family. She is also a doctoral counseling student at George Washington University. Contact her at ak_smith@gwmail.gwu.edu.

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Source: https://ct.counseling.org/2014/02/gatekeepers-for-the-profession/