TPC-Journal-V5-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 1 145 from group activities, and to feel pleased with their progress. Counseling interns also received feedback and advice from their peers; one stated, “I think sharing our experiences, and giving and taking feedback from each other contributed to our development. The school counseling internship course was effective for gaining experience, getting practice and improving professionally.” (S1) Interns’ evaluation of school supervisors and supervision. Two themes in this section were assistance to the practice process and negative impressions of supervisors at schools. Regarding assistance to the practice process, counseling interns explained that school counselors coordinated counseling practice for them by organizing groups of students and scheduling appropriate days, times and places for activities during the internship program. The supervisors also shared their experiences and knowledge, and provided opportunities for counseling students to observe some of their interviews with students and parents. The counselors demonstrated various methods of communicating with students, interviewing parents and other aspects of school counseling, and presented an example for which to learn the job. School counselors gave feedback and advice to assist counseling interns in learning how to be school counselors, provided professional information and prepared them for professional life (e.g., files, meetings, reports, minutes of meetings). Regarding negative impressions, interns reported that some site supervisors, although relatively few in number, were reluctant to share their experiences or communicate with the interns because of time limits. For this reason, these supervisors did not organize individual counseling sessions or time for consultation, application and interpretation of measurement tools, and did not give any feedback. One counseling student said, “I think we did not get enough feedback from our site supervisors/school counselor due to their being busy. This was a negative aspect of our internship at school” (S9). Another intern said the following: I wish I had done more activities like individual counseling, learned more techniques and that the school counselor had shared her experiences more with us. Due to time limitations we didn’t have a chance to do some of the activities. (S1) Roles of School Counseling Internship Programs in Interns’ Professional Development Self-improvement in counseling skills. School counseling internship programs enabled counseling students to build their skills and become productive in the areas of group guidance, classroom guidance, individual counseling, seminars and consultation. These activities were followed by improvements in counseling skills, application of theoretical knowledge, management of behavioral problems and group management skills. Other contributions that counseling students mentioned included gaining professional knowledge, achieving milestones of the profession, preparing for the profession, discovering coherence between their personalities and the profession, and gaining insight into the ways that working with students of different ages and social backgrounds contributed to their professional development. The following quote may be taken as an example of counseling students’ ideas about the internship program: It was full of experience and learning for me. Both the help of supervision and my own efforts have given me good preparation for my career. I believe that the things I learned this year will facilitate my future education and will be milestones in my professional career. (S7) Positive feelings during internship. Being happy ( n = 9) was the most common positive feeling that counseling students experienced during internship. It was followed, in order, by feeling efficacious ( n = 6), confident ( n = 5), eager ( n = 5), proud ( n = 2), and relaxed and good ( n = 1), both personally and professionally. Interns used words such as “like” and “enjoy” to describe their experience. Counseling students expressed that they were happy when they were successful and helped students, received supervisors’ support and feedback, and worked with certain supervisors at the university. They also emphasized that their efficacy and