Interview

RUNNING HEAD: INTERVIEW WITH SCHOOL COUNSELOR

An Interview with School Counselor: Greg Graves

CON 5200 Introduction to Counseling

March 9, 2006

On Wednesday February 1, 2006 at Fox Road Elementary, I Interviewed Mr. Greg Graves the School Counselor. Mr. Graves has been a School Counselor for the past 10 years. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education from the University of Maryland. Mr. Graves obtained his Masters degree in Counseling from North Carolina State University. He participated in a two-year full-time program. He is certified to work with in the State of North Carolina school system. He felt the need to accelerate his career by taking the National Counselors Exam to become a Licensed Professional Counselor.

Mr. Graves started his educational career as a 3rd grade teacher. He was inspired to become a School Counselor out of pure frustration and lack of participation with prior counselors. Throughout his five-year tenure of teaching, he had to overcome various obstacles dealing with children and the counselors. Mr. Graves noted that some of the mistakes that were made were not making themselves available for students or teachers emotionally and socially, inactivity within the children's educational life and was not assessable for classroom assistance.

Mr. Graves stated that there are three components to become a competent counselor. Those skills are to be organized, flexible and good social skills. Working in the school system requires plenty of lot of paper work. One needs to analyze and prioritize to get the job done. Being open-minded and flexible as a school counselor is real imperative. There are plenty of days that he has his day planned, with what students he is going to see, classrooms he will visit. However if he comes in and two students have had an emotional meltdown he would get called to resolve the issue at hand. He had to learn to be flexible with his schedule and understand that everything that is planned may not get done. He admits that it can be difficult task telling the students that you had commitments with that you are sorry, that something came up and you will have to reschedule the session at a later date. Good communication is key factor. How one gets along with people is extremely important. You need to make people feel comfortable enough to open up and share with you.

A typical day for Mr. Graves would include responding to emails and making telephone calls. There is a lot of consultation with teachers about different students that he works with. He checks in to see how certain students are doing, and follows- up with student's teachers to see if any progress has been made. On a given week he would teach half-dozen classes, one grade level at a time. He meets with groups of students that have extreme social skills needs. On the daily basis he receives notes and counselor grams from children on a variety of issues. He gets back to them within 24-48 hours.

At North Carolina State University Mr. Graves was taught to use an eclectic approach to counseling, which means to use bits and pieces of theories that make sense and to which you can relate. However the behavioral approach most of the often-in response to teachers' complaints about students' behavior. Mr. Graves incorporates behavior modification techniques such as using contracts, incentives, positive reinforcement and rewards. He also tries to use a cognitive behavioral approach. He tries to get the students more aware of what they are thinking when they are in a situation where they don't feel comfortable. He likes getting them to be more aware of their negative thinking and tries to get them to think in a more positively. Mr. Graves incorporates the control theory into his approach. He feels that with kids there is a need of belonging and fitting in. Kids act out because they don't know any other way to get attention. He also uses Unconditional Positive Regard, being there as a "sounding board" as he calls it. Showing a lot of empathy. He uses this with personal issues that students deal with like domestic violence or death of a family member. An example of that are the students of the Hurricane Katrina evacuees. He felt that there was not a lot that he could do to make the situation better. He was there merely for support and to listener. The cognitive behavioral approach is the theory he likes the most because he thinks, that there is a strong link between the ways we think, and the way we feel and the way we behave. He stated, "If you think in a positive way, then you tend to feel better, and therefore interact better with other people". He uses cognitive behavioral approach mostly with the upper grades. For instance he uses play therapy with kindergarteners and first graders. The above-mentioned theories are those he uses frequently. Mr. Graves's feels that they are very popular to use in schools because you can use them in short term counseling sessions.

There are many pros and cons to school counselors. The first pro that he stated was the ability to help people. At the end of the day if he could think back to at least one student,