TPC Journal V7, Issue 4 - FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 4 299 1. What led you to pursue a degree in counseling compared to other helping professions? When I was a high school student growing up in Starkville, Mississippi, and the house telephone rang, my father would jokingly ask, “Is the doctor in this evening?” From an early point in my life, I discovered a great deal of joy from communicating with my friends and acting as a peer counselor. My schoolmates often called for words of advice and encouragement. I knew at a pretty young age that I really liked talking with people and helping them solve problems. My parents found my ability to help others amusing and something to be proud of in my character. Both of my parents were involved in service professions. My father was an administrator with Social Security. He would invite strangers going through difficult times out to dinner with our family. He would often tell stories about people who were living in their cars, and he helped them to be able to move into a home. My father always had kind words and a humble attitude regarding all the suffering he witnessed through his work. My mother was a middle school history teacher. She was the teacher who was willing to take on the difficult students and had an amazing rapport and sense of humor with her class. My parents talked about solving problems and working to help people, so I knew that I wanted to have a career that involved reaching out to others. I learned to talk at a young age and loved communicating with others. I also have always loved children. I babysat and worked in preschools during high school and college. My undergraduate degree is in education, and I spent the first six years of my adult career teaching junior high school English. I began studying counseling immediately after completing my college degree because my students inspired me to become a counselor. I found myself wanting to help students more than I could as their English teacher. During my undergraduate studies in education, my favorite professor was a counselor educator. Dr. Joe Ray Underwood taught me health education. His ideas regarding wellness were cutting-edge in the 1990s during my tenure as a student at Mississippi State University. I am fascinated with the field of counseling and have been a lifelong learner. In 2008, I pursued a specialist degree in counseling from the University of Mississippi. I am currently enrolled in the doctoral program and hope to be finished in 2018. The opportunity to pursue my doctoral degree is fulfilling a lifelong dream of being a counselor educator. The program has empowered me to improve my work as a school counselor and publish papers regarding good practice; it also has fueled new ideas and techniques to bring to my school counseling. 2. In an article from The Oxford Eagle (November 13, 2015) you mentioned, “Many school counselors face a number of constraints preventing them from having enough time to work with students on a small group or individual basis.” Could you elaborate on this statement, as well as other challenges and barriers that you have experienced as a school counselor? In 1999, when I first became a school counselor, I was serving as the records clerk and testing coordinator for my middle school. This position required being responsible for 600 records. The clerical work involved with my job at that time made it difficult to accomplish my direct student service hours. Occasionally, I would get “in trouble” for not being quick enough with records, but I always put my students before paperwork. Paper does not suffer, but students do. I advocated for a clerical assistant to help with managing records and convinced the superintendent’s office to allow me to document my time in student-related services. I spoke before the school board, and by 2002, the following school year, I had a full-time clerical assistant. Being able to practice within ASCA’s guidelines is what every school counseling student expects upon graduation. Documenting the actual counseling work is necessary to advocate for best practices in our current professional setting. It is important to not be afraid to speak up regarding the best practices of school counselors. I took the