TPC Journal-Vol 11-Issue-1

128 The Professional Counselor | Volume 11, Issue 1 9. For future school counselors, what advice would you have regarding their involvement in advancement and future development of the profession? My advice for future school counselors is to never settle. We are living in a time where the landscape of school counseling will be changing over the next 5–10 years. I think you will see a greater importance placed on student well-being and student supports. We are understanding more about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), trauma, brain development, and more. The need for school counselors is higher than ever. It is up to us, and future school counselors, to step up and take on the challenge. When there is a greater importance placed on a need, it will be closely watched and monitored. If we settle in our roles and keep doing the same things, we won’t be successful as a profession. School counselors have a great opportunity right now to change the landscape of our profession. We need to allow ourselves to learn and be open to new things. It is so easy to settle into what you are used to, especially when it is working. Working in the profession, you can get into a rhythm, which isn’t always a good thing; sometimes we can get so used to doing the same thing that works that we keep doing it, but we aren’t challenging ourselves to see if there is something else out there that works better. My go-to as a primary orientation when working with students is choice theory. I am good at it, and I could probably use that for the rest of my career, but I also know that I can’t and shouldn’t. Just because it works doesn’t mean it is the best for everyone. There may be something better, and we need to allow ourselves to be open to that. One of the things I’ve been really proud of is a mentoring program that I started. It mirrored Big Brothers Big Sisters, but I used high school students to come to the elementary school. I trained the students and matched students up based on their shared interests. It was very successful and worked for 3 years. Going into my fourth year, I could have kept things the same, but I knew my results could be better. I changed the age group and some of the activities and had better results. I didn’t keep doing something just because it worked; I looked at how to make it better. Another thing I used to always tell my interns is to not be afraid to take risks. Whenever we are open to trying new things, it opens up a door of possibilities. It makes us even better at what we do. We need to allow ourselves to get to that point. When I was building my program, there were a lot of risks that I had to take. Failure is okay. It means that you tried something. Too many times our fear of failure stops us from trying, but I encourage not only future but current school counselors to take risks and see where it takes you. This concludes the sixth interview for the annual Lifetime Achievement in Counseling Series. TPC is grateful to Joshua D. Smith, PhD, NCC, LCMHC, LCASA, and Neal D. Gray, PhD, LCMHC-S, for providing this interview. Joshua D. Smith is a counselor at the Center for Emotional Health in Concord, North Carolina. Neal D. Gray is a professor and Chair of the School of Counseling and Human Services at Lenoir-Rhyne University. Correspondence can be emailed to Joshua D. Smith at jsmit643@uncc.edu.