Counseling II: Problem Solving and Support (NE)

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Overview

Every day, educational counselors in ABE programs help students negotiate issues that affect their abilities to pursue their goals. These significant issues provide logistical, motivational, interpersonal, social, financial, and psychological barriers to student success. Counselors build relationships with students, boost morale, provide support and guidance around educational barriers, and help them to cope with crises, often utilizing strong referral networks that they have established. The skills, strategies, and techniques involved in these problem-solving situations are often taken for granted. Counselors are often naturally resourceful, but they can benefit greatly, as can their students, from gaining specific training in recognizing and expanding their problem-solving methods.

Details

In this four-hour training, counselors will learn how they can further support students’ learning, retention, and achievement of goals, through the application of problem-solving techniques. As counselors learn new techniques through practice in experiential problem-solving, they will increase their capacity to help students who come to them with a range of issues and abilities. In addition, as counselors become more aware of the problem-solving strategies they, themselves, already employ, they will also improve their ability to teach and model for students the skills and attitudes of successful problem-solvers, thus empowering students to use these methods at their workplaces, with their families, and in other aspects of their lives. Participants will learn to help students identify their own problems, needs, and strengths as well as the most promising courses of action to address them. Participants can then help their students learn that acquiring problem-solving skills likely will make them better learners. Problem-solving ability is also one of the most important skills that employers look for in a candidate; as counselors learn how to articulate their range of problem-solving skills more clearly, they will be able to help students learn to articulate their own problem-solving skills to employers. There will be a 30 minute lunch break during this workshop. Please plan to bring a bag lunch with you. In case of inclement weather the snow date for this workshop will be: Thursday, Feb. 5 from 1:00-4:00pm

When

February 4, 2009 from 10:00 am to 02:30 pm

Where

• Northern Essex Community College- Lawrence
• 45 Franklin Street, Lawrence, MA

Click for map and directions

Topics

ABE, ESOL, GED, Counseling, Trainings for Directors, Volunteer Coordinators

Multi-session attendance required

no

Contact info

Carol Bower
cbower@necc.mass.edu
978-738-7301

Indicators of Program Quality

IPQ3 - Student support services

Learning objectives

After completing this workshop, participants will be able to:

·  approach problems and problem-solving from a variety of perspectives

·  understand how attitudes and emotions may have positive or negative effects on the problem solving process

·  develop a deeper awareness of their strengths and skills as problem-solvers while identifying areas for further development

·  apply and model problem-solving techniques with students so that students can apply them on their own

·  identify the most effective problem-solving approaches and techniques for the most common problems faced      by the students in our programs (including, for example, preventive problem-solving; prioritizing and sequencing; perspectives and assumptions; and entry points

Presenters

Laura Kranis

Presenters Bio

Laura Kranis, ABE Counselor at SCALE in Somerville, has worked in Adult Literacy since 1999. She has also worked as a psychotherapist, writing coach, learning styles consultant, life coach, crisis interventionist, family therapy team member, university instructor, and hospice intern. Her studies have included literature, psychology, linguistics, arts therapies, psychoanalytic theories, and existential philosophy. Thank goodness she’s also a comedy writer, or she wouldn’t be any fun at all. Patricia A. Pestana, Case Manager at JFYNetWorks in Boston, has over 20 years of experience in human service and education programs. She has been a counselor in an ABE program for over 5 years and has also worked as a career advisor for dislocated workers.

Host RSC

Northeast Massachusetts Region

PDPs

no

Snow Date

Feb 05, 2008 at 1:00 PM