Teaching Philosophy

Teaching

I believe that my teaching, research, scholarly interests, and experience working with diverse populations are all integrally tied together in each aspect of my academic and clinical career. I will attempt to delineate how each area is inter-related herewith. Over the course of the past 15 years I have had the opportunity to teach coursework in several areas within the CACREP master’s core at Mississippi State University (MSU), the CACREP doctoral program at MSU, the CACREP clinical mental health program at Walden University, the counselor education and Supervision program at Walden, and the counselor education program at Lamar University. Over the course of the last 15 years, I have taught most of the courses in counselor education at the master’s and doctoral levels. I have also taught courses in criminal justice, social work, human services, and special education. My philosophy of teaching has evolved with my teaching experience.

I have had the opportunity to teach a variety of types of student learners and have spent the last few years specifically working with the on-line student. These students are typically first generation college students and adult learners from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The students at Walden were often employed full-time and have active family lives. As a result, their graduate school life was only one facet of their day while traditional graduate students are often able to dedicate a large portion of their lives to their graduate training. Because of my experiences with adult learners, I have an appreciation for flexibility in instructional approaches.

Regardless of whether the student is traditional or nontraditional, I realize that all students have unique learning styles and I attempt to vary my instructional approach and activities to be able to accommodate as many learning styles as possible. In the realm of counselor education, I believe it is essential that students receive information in a manner that can be translated into counseling practice. In order to measure the effectiveness of my approach, I include invivo demonstrations and student practice into my classroom. I believe that students must be able to practice and demonstrate skills as part of learning outcomes for a course. While minimum competency is acceptable performance, I strive for student mastery through continual feedback and opportunities for skill development.

In counselor education, most student achievement is measured through rote memory tests such as the National Counselor Exam (NCE) or the Counselor Preparation Comprehensive Exam (CPCE). I believe that counselor educators must prepare students to master the material related to these exams but also must serve as gatekeepers to the profession by requiring demonstration of counseling skill proficiency. In this regard, I see the process as collaborative with my students. I take a constructivist approach to counselor preparation in that I present the students with a variety of perspectives on course content and encourage critical thinking about the content and how it would apply in a real world scenario. Through open dialogue and debate, new knowledge is created for students and they can then move from knowledge to demonstration of skill. I find it important for all students to actively participate in the learning process. In an online environment, this is easily managed through required discussion board posts. However, in a live classroom, active class participation is directly related to the energy, enthusiasm, and skill of the instructor. I think a key ingredient of creating active participation and cooperative learning is maintaining and openness to differing points of view and a high level of respect for the prior experiences of all participants.

While I enjoy teaching a variety of courses in counselor preparation, I developed specific interests in courses related to assessment, research, and statistics. I taught master’s-level and doctoral assessment courses at MSU each term for 10 years. An example of my teaching philosophy can be seen in my approach to an assessment course, I typically teach students about the various theories of appraisal in intelligence, aptitude, achievement, interest, personality, and behavior. For each construct, I present similar and differing ideas and engage students in discussion about them. I present research related to each construct and help students to process the research. As a culminating project, I provide students with assessment data in each area and require them to construct a comprehensive psychological report. I also require them to videotape an interpretation session related to the assessment data. I require these projects because I believe that we must train our students to be scholar-practitioners. In order to do this, there must be a combination of theoretical orientation and practical application in our coursework. Regardless of the courses that I would teach, I would emphasize the scholar-practitioner model and ensure that students get a balance of theoretical and practical experience in their preparation to become counselors.

Research

I have developed two overall lines of research over the past 11 years; attachment and child/adolescent behavior. To some degree, these lines of research have overlapped (see my Journal of Mental Health Counseling article on the Development of a Protocol for Assessing Reactive Attachment Disorder). I use the results of my research as material for the coursework that I teach in the realms of assessment and research. I conducted a longitudinal study that relates maternal symptoms and coping styles during pregnancy to the emergence of behavioral problems in the child. My research team spent the last few years developing a protocol for working with pregnant women in Head Start Centers. Our initial research demonstrated that pregnant women in high risk areas demonstrate high levels of mental health symptomology and poor coping response mechanisms. We have presented aspects of this research at various national conferences.

My current research has shifted to neuroscience and autism. I am working in cross-disciplinary efforts with mathematics and engineering to examine the EEG patterns of children with autism. Our work is geared toward understanding changes in neurological functioning during intensive behavioral intervention.

I have also been conducting research related to effectiveness of services, development of appropriate preschool behavioral measures, and teacher/child interactions among the Head Start population. As part of this research, I developed a scale to measure disruptive behavior (e.g., internalizing and externalizing) among Head Start Children. For this scale, I had a normative sample (n = 2,000) of children. I have also developed a process for conducting functional behavioral assessment at the preschool level. I plan to continue my efforts within the Head Start system in an effort to provide the best chance for enrolled children to be successful in their transition to the K-12 system.

Scholarly Interests

As you can see from my vita, I focus my writing efforts on children, attachment, and assessment. I have published numerous articles and book chapters on these topics and have additional material in press and in process. I have published numerous textbooks, Fundamentals of Clinical Mental Health Counseling, for Prentice Hall and am under contract to complete a textbook, The Handbook of Counseling Research, for SAGE.

I have been able to develop multidisciplinary collaborative relationships with regard to research and publication. I have published several chapters in books including The Handbook of Professional School Counseling, The Counselor’s Guide to Clinical, Personality, and Behavioral Assessment, The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of School Psychology, and Fostering Our Youth’s Well-Being: Healing the Social Disease of Violence. I have also presented or published over 100 papers at professional conferences or in professional journals, book chapters, and training manuals. In addition, I co-authored The Peace Train: A School Wide Violence Prevention Program. Although I left MSU for an administrative position prior to being promoted to Full Professor, I believe I exceeded the promotion expectations at that institution and fully believe that I will be able to continue this effort regardless of setting.

Aside from publication and presentation efforts, I have been involved in service activities related to the counseling profession at state, regional, and national levels. I am President-elect for the Association for Assessment in Counseling and Education (AACE), Project Manager for the Association for Humanistic Counseling (AHC), a member of the American Counseling Association’s (ACA) Publication Committee, Past Chair of the ACA Research and Knowledge Committee, a member of several national editorial boards including the Journal of Counseling and Development, The Family Journal, and The Journal of the Mississippi Counseling Association. I also have served as a member of numerous other national committees including the ACES Research Award Committee and the AMHCA Professional Issues Committee.

At the state and local levels I served as President of the Mississippi Association for Counselor Education & Supervision (MACES), the President of the MidEastern Mississippi Counseling Association; member of the Executive Board for the Mississippi Counseling Association, member of the Board of Directors for the Mississippi Licensed Professional Counselor’s Association (MLPCA). I have also serve as a member to several interest groups and on the board of several state-wide agencies.

In addition to my publication and service activities, I have also had the opportunity to serve as media expert for the past two years. I worked with public relations professionals to provide interviews to various publications such as Disney Family, Parenting, Working Moms.com, sheknows.com, various national newspapers, and other magazine outlets.

Experience Working With Diverse Populations

I have been a practicing counselor for 20 years. Over the course of that time, I have worked in outpatient centers, inpatient facilities, hospitals, college clinics, and schools. The majority of my work has been with children from lower socio-economic backgrounds and from diverse cultures. Having grown up as the only person of color in an all white school, I discovered the need to celebrate individual differences. As a professional, I strive to provide quality services to those communities that typically receive less than adequate resources. The children I currently serve in Head Start are overwhelmingly from minority backgrounds. As a result, I recognize that they are likely to distrust counselors. In an effort to change perceptions of the community, I involve my company in Health Start screening days at community centers, provide parent group trainings in the local communities, and conduct in-home counseling services for those who do not have transportation.

Summary

Overall, the majority of my work in academia and clinical settings has focused on creating opportunities for success among children and families from diverse backgrounds. I focus my efforts on researching empirical approaches to creating that success and provide information about my findings through my publications. I am interested in continuing this process and look forward to the challenges in a new setting.