Chapman "Big Ideas"

I am thankful for classes like Introduction to Counseling and Mental Health Interventions and Introduction to Educational Research that incorporated research-based writing into our assignments. CSP 500’s Resiliency Paper was incredibly challenging for me but taught me how to write a high-quality research paper. Through that project, I also developed my own methods for collecting research, tracking citations, flow, and a better understanding of how subsections can be created. 

I believe that Multi-Tiered Systems and Supports for School Counselors fully commits to this big idea throughout its curriculum. The class did so well to show a variety of examples of how we could best listen and implement effective and data-driven supports for students who might previously not have been identified for help. When considering graded assignments, I also was enthusiastic about the MTSS Design project that placed us in charge of creating our own tiered support system for a specific problem. I felt that this was very useful and I can see myself using this skill as a counselor encountering a specific problem. 

Our Human Development course covered various complexities of the developmental processes children undergo throughout life. In this course, I was first taught about Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, which broadened my understanding of how the domains in every person’s life intersect. We applied this concept in our Developmental Analysis project, where we interviewed families and presented our findings on real-life youth development. 

Most of our projects that dominate the curriculum are executed through groups. We experience a range of disciplines and background areas especially when we are in mixed classes made of school counselors and psychologists. One such project that comes to mind when considering a group effort made of diverse members is our Mental Health Toolkit from Mental Health in Schools. We collaborated weekly in order to create a lengthy handout document for parents and had to reach out to other disciplines to learn more about certain topics like mental health testing. 

All courses that we have completed thus far have had various components to practice oral speech and presentation etiquette. The project that has had a lasting impression on me was our DSM-5 Presentation from our Psychopharmacology course where we had to explain complicated mechanisms involved in neurobiological processes and medication. The presentation was expected to span over an hour and a half and the subject matter was new to most of us, requiring a lot of thorough preparation. 

All of the classes I have taken thus far have driven an appreciation for the complexity of working with youth in an environment with multiple stakeholders and agencies. Working through an actual case in that class by completing the Case Study assignment was great practice for real-life situations, in my opinion. My group had a great time sourcing our own information and becoming the “experts'' on specific codes and laws and returning to our meetings to problem-solve. 

It is my opinion that all courses that I have taken thus far have demonstrated how children are participating in multiple systems, all with varying affect. Mental Health in Schools had us complete a case study for a student who was participating in school refusal behavior. This case study placed us as counselors or psychologists and required us to examine every component of that student’s life, including their home life. From the background that I gathered in my student’s story, I realized that his parents were actively acting as barriers to his re-entry into school and extending or exasperating his refusal behaviors.

I would like to say that graduate school as a whole is a test of time management and organizational skills, being that most of us currently are balancing jobs, practicum, classes, and homework. An assignment that previously demonstrated dividing tasks to teammates is the Comprehensive School Counseling Plan project from the Introduction to the Ethical Practice of Professional School Counseling course. The project had us design a CSCP for a local school of our choosing with the specific task of improving the school standards with current data to determine relevant needs. This project took course over several weeks and had us splitting tasks among our “counseling team” in order to meet deadlines.