Chapter 8

            In this weeks readings in chapter 8, I found the section “Developing Your own Theory” to be interesting. I figured that most counselors had their own way of doing things because even just talking to different counselors it is interesting to see their own way of doing something. Reading about it in the book was interesting because there were actually 11 questions that we could ask ourselves when thinking about formulating our own models. Some of these questions were helpful when I was doing my case study this week because it was like I actually had a client that I was working with. I asked myself some of these questions, especially number 9 (how do I motivate unmotivated clients.) It is not that my client is lazy, it is just that she is 50 years old and the only thing she was looking forward too was retiring and I think she felt as though it was too late to make major changes about her career path. I was trying to think of ways that I could motivate her to even look at different options based off of her interests. In Brown chapter 8, Strohmer & Newman, 1983 say that the foundation of most counselors’ “theories” probably stems from two sources: formal theory and informal theory of human functioning. I found this to be interesting because Brown says that we as students in training are left to integrate these formal theories with our personal beliefs. It was really neat having our own client and trying to pick a theory to use with our client. It was harder than I thought but after I chose a theory it was great to get to work with it. I think it was hard for me to pick a theory because I was trying to match it to my client perfectly but that is not going to be the case.

            For the second part of my blog I wanted to talk about the discussion post we did and how helpful I feel O*NET is. O*NET has so much information and most of it is all on one page and I feel after using it a lot this week, it is already easier for me to navigate around on it. I was talking to someone I know that is an OT in a school and I told her that I was using O*NET for my class and she chuckled and said she would be surprised if the teachers and counselors in the school she worked at knew what that was. That was surprising to me because it is such a great and helpful tool that counselors should be using all the time! I liked reading other peoples comments on classmates discussions about how helpful they found O*NET to be as well. It is important as future school counselors that we are comfortable with using sites like this and making sure that we spread awareness of these helpful tools.

Brown, D. (2016). Career Information, Career Counseling, and Career Development (11^th ed.). New York: Pearson.