TPC Journal-Vol 10- Issue 2-FULL ISSUE

280 The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 2 The current study used a culturally responsive classroom-based intervention that honored students’ cultural knowledge and trusted youth to guide the studio construction process. Youth reported on the importance of the opportunity to use the hip-hop studio to positively impact their school, their peers, and themselves. Counselors need to design social and emotional development supports within their schools that adhere to the cultural realities of their clients (Ponterotto & Austin, 2005) and are thus encouraged to utilize the studio co-creation approach. Beyond hip-hop, however, the current study suggests that youth-driven construction of an ancillary social and emotional support space should be considered for all students from marginalized populations, including youth identifying as LGBTQ. Implications for direct school counseling practice exist as well. For example, Levy (2019) demonstrated effectiveness of a series of hip-hop–based cognitive behavioral and person-centered counseling interventions on students’ social and emotional development. However, few studies have detailed the cultural importance of the hip-hop studio and how its creation might support the future use of culturally competent interventions. Although this study did not explore the use of lyric writing, recording, or performing to address counseling outcomes, students participating in the studio construction process reported wanting to use the school studio to support their peers and their own personal self-development. These findings suggested it is important for schools to consider co-creating school studios as places for school counselors to deploy hip-hop–based interventions for group and individual counseling with urban youth. The findings in this study can be expanded upon with future mixed methods research that examines a larger sample of students. Quantitative analysis of students’ social and emotional development (examining variables like stress, emotional regulation, and executive functioning) during the studio co-construction process is recommended as a direction for future research. Qualitative researchers should consider case studies of students and counselors who engage in the construction of hip-hop studios and small-group work within counseling studies, using more in- depth interviews (lasting longer than 30 minutes) to ensure rich data is collected. There is also value in exploring the multicultural and social justice competence development of both school counselors and teachers who engage in hip-hop–based school counseling interventions. Conclusion The goal of this exploratory action research was to illuminate the experiences of urban youth of color who were part of a classroom-based school counseling intervention in which they co-created their own space for social and emotional support in an inner-city urban high school. As described in this article, a limited number of studies have explored clients’ opinions and perspectives on changes made by school counselors to a counseling environment (Pearson & Wilson, 2012). Additionally, most studies focus on designing counseling environments outside of schools, and the school counseling profession lacks research on multicultural office design (Benton & Overtree, 2012). Furthermore, ASCA (2019b) advocates for the use of indirect counseling interventions to support the needs of all students, while others urge school counselors to use multicultural and social justice–oriented interventions to identify and address barriers to student development (Ratts & Greenleaf, 2018). This article highlights the value in using hip-hop studio construction as an innovative approach to a culturally sensitive, indirect, classroom-based school counseling intervention in which students themselves engaged in the construction of an ancillary space to support their social and emotional development.