Author: kaymelanie

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Finding an Internship Site

As early as January and February, first year students completing their observation hours begin to think about their internship site for the following year. While focused on the day-to-day tasks on our plate for our current classes, we are also eager and anxious to find an internship for next year. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Suffolk’s pre-practicum observation hours are set up in a unique way that requires students to visit several different types of schools. The purpose of that structure is to allow students a more comprehensive picture of school counseling in different settings but also to help them identify the type of school that they might like to intern at and work in after graduation.

Before even beginning my observation hours, I had my eye on a few different schools where I thought I might want to do an internship. I quickly reached out to those schools to complete observations and enjoyed myself at each one of them. I thought that I would like doing an internship at any of the sites based on the people that I had the chance to meet and what I observed at each one. Knowing that you’ll be spending a lot of time with your supervisor at the school, it is important to feel like you got along with them before signing up for an internship. I felt that way at each of the three schools I was considering. So I had to think a little bit more critically about the best place for me.

The primary reason I was thinking of these three schools was because I work full-time for a non-profit college access program. Many of our students attend these three schools and I thought it would be a nice natural overlap between my job, where I planned to continue to work, and my internship. So I knew that each of these internship sites would be a natural extension of the work I had been doing for the past few years. What I needed to consider next was the school that I thought would have the biggest impact on my future.

I thought about each of the three schools and finally settled on one because I thought I would leave the school and enter the workforce in a year with the most transferrable skills. The school has a diverse population and is an urban public school. It is, however, a relatively competitive school with a focus on college that is represented by the guidance department. I thought that this would give me the necessary experience to work in urban public schools as well as schools with a strong focus on college after graduation. I decided to ask if I could come back for a second observation to make sure.

That second visit confirmed my feelings that I did want to intern there. When I asked about openings for interns for the following year, they said they had already chosen their interns. I was surprised because it was only January but understood that they had already gone through the process. The director of guidance did say that there was one counselor, who was a Suffolk graduate, who might be able to take on an intern and that I should contact her. I did and she suggested that I come back a third time for an observation visit to work out the details of the internship because she hadn’t had an intern before. At the end of the visit, we decided that I would be an intern there the following year. After three visits, we were both sure that this was the right decision.

The truth is that we can’t predict if our internship site will set us up for the necessary experience to get a job after graduation. We don’t know where the job openings will be and exactly what experience employers will be looking for. That said, I do feel that I have found a guidance office with a culture I feel comfortable in and that I believe will provide me the opportunity to develop valuable skills for my future as a school counselor. I am thankful for the opportunity to observe at so many different types of schools and make connections with graduates of the Suffolk program in order to help me find the internship I wanted.

Interested in hearing more about the Suffolk M. Ed. in School Counseling? Attend an info session on April 10 at 6:30 p.m. at the Omni Parker House. Find out more at the Suffolk graduate admission website!

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Final Projects in School Counseling

Working with adolescents allows me to repeatedly hear my students’ exasperated voices ask the question, “but when am I ever going to have to know this in real life?” I try to come up with answers as often as I can, but I have to admit that sometimes they are right. In high school and even college it is sometimes the case that final exams, papers, and presentations are full of information that you may never need to know again. However, as this semester comes to a close at Suffolk, I have reflected on the usefulness of the final projects that I handed in. When I am able to step back from my work, it occurs to me: I will definitely use this again!

In my Child and Adolescent Development course, my final project was to create a guidance seminar on a topic of our choice. We were to present it to our class as if we were school counselors presenting it to the families of our students. My partner and I chose to create a seminar on stress and how families can help adolescents learn to manage stress. Based on the information we had learned this semester, we were able to put together some physiological and developmental explanations for why adolescents may experience stress differently than adults, hopefully helping adolescents and their families understand each other a little better. Though the “families” in this case were our peers, I became acutely aware of our role of educating families and other stakeholders in children’s lives about their development and how to best work with them. After explaining what was going on in adolescents’ brains, we went on to provide some knowledge about typical stressors for high school students and some concrete suggestions for how families could help. At the end of it, I walked away with a true understanding of the potential impact school counselors could have by sharing what they know with families, students, and faculty members. I also walked away with a presentation on stress management that I could give to families tomorrow if I needed to. I can bring this to job interviews to show how ready I am for the job and I feel more confident in my abilities to present to families should I get the opportunity in my internship or in a future job.

In another course, Action Research, we were charged with the task of conducting research at our internship sites or jobs and presenting our findings to our peers. In the current landscape of education, school counselors (among other educators) are being asked to become more accountable for their work. They are expected to show how their work has impacted the school or the academic achievement of the students by using data. This was a perfect opportunity for us to practice so that we could enter the field with the appropriate research and analysis skills. I chose to analyze the impact of a summer intervention on summer learning loss in the middle school students that I work with. The content of the Action Research course gave us all of the knowledge that we needed to set up a research design, conduct the research, analyze the results, and share them with our peers. I appreciated walking around the room and hearing about the results of each of the research projects my peers conducted at their internship sites. It allowed me to see just how important data is to our work and how prepared we will all be to use it to benefit our future students and schools!

These are just two examples of the practical skills that I have gained in my Suffolk classes. I also have an entire curriculum that I created in my Groups in Schools class, videos of myself completing a counseling session, and will soon have sample college recommendations after completing my summer classes this year. A few people have asked me if I think I will be prepared to enter the field after my graduate program. I suppose I can’t say for sure until I get there, but I do feel ready based on the work I am doing. Finals week is a little more bearable when you know you are gaining valuable skills that you’ll need in the future!

Please feel free to contact me at mkay@suffolk.edu if you have questions about the program at Suffolk!

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School Counselor Observations

My name is Melanie Kay and I am a part-time graduate student in the combined M.Ed School Counseling and College Admissions Counseling Certificate Program at Suffolk. Because I am completing the program part-time, it will take me three years to complete and I am currently in my second year. Though it is sometimes difficult to balance, I am so grateful that I am able to complete the program part-time, while continuing to hold a full-time job. This requires a little bit of flexibility on the part of my job, but the schedule of the Suffolk classes also makes this possible.

Now, in my second year, I am in the process of completing my pre-practicum observation hours. The Suffolk program approaches the 75 hour pre-practicum component required for licensure in Massachusetts in a different way than many programs and I feel as though I am learning quite a bit as a result of that. Suffolk requires students to observe at a variety of different school sites rather than setting up a regular weekly placement at a school (that will come next year when I complete my internship) in their first year. So far I have had the chance to observe at an three urban public high schools – two in Boston and one outside of Boston, two independent high schools, and a charter middle school. It has become apparent to me that the guidance department is a clear window into the culture of a school.

I find it so interesting to be able to observe the real life application of concepts that we have discussed in classes or heard about in the news. At one observation, I had the chance to observe a freshman guidance seminar where students were learning about bullying. Because of the new Massachusetts state law, schools are required to have a bullying policy. Though much of the attention can be on the consequences of bullying in schools, I was glad to have the opportunity to witness some of the prevention programs that schools are employing. This school was addressing bullying in the seminar but, being aware that students had been inundated with bullying information lately, they reframed the lesson to be about respect. It was so encouraging to be in a few classrooms of freshman who were so eagerly discussing the concept of respect and brainstorming very real situations and potential solutions within their own school community. In that same freshman seminar, the counselors took a few minutes to make sure the freshman remembered the limits to confidentiality when they talk to a counselor and to remind them of study habits they had discussed in previous seminars. It reminded me of the wide range of areas that the school counselor is involved in at a school and in the students’ lives.

As I continue to observe at different schools, I look forward to picking an internship site for next year where I will spend 2-3 days each week. With the knowledge of the schools that I am gaining, I feel confident that I will pick an internship site that will prepare me for the type of school I want to work in after graduation. I look forward to posting more updates as I continue to observe at schools and explore the career of school counseling! Please feel free to contact me at mkay@suffolk.edu if you have questions about the program at Suffolk!