The Child Development and Future Counselor - Essay Example

? Future Counselor Future Counselor Counseling is a fundamentally essential component of school life, particularly with regard to high school, which consists of children undergoing adolescence. During this time in the children’s lives, hormonal changes, as well the formation of identities creates profound needs for counseling (Santrock, 2007). My future professional aspiration is to be a high school guidance counselor. My desire to assist adolescents deal with ongoing body changes, as well as psychological developments, pushed me to choose this career path. Working with children within different contexts helping them cope with their day to day stresses can present numerous complex challenges. These challenges include appreciating the role of trauma on adolescent functioning, as well as acknowledging how a child’s development stage can influence the role of counseling. In order to tackle these challenges and give leeway for the effective and efficient performance of my future responsibilities as a high school counselor, I undertook a child development course as a prerequisite for the masters in counseling program. This paper will examine how taking the child development course has been personally beneficial and meaningful, as well as relevant to my career choice. The prerequisites to counseling high school-going children are; understanding children’s development stage and building rapport, as well as establishing trust with the children. These factors are quite significant throughout counseling. The child development course comes in handy when considering the aforementioned factors. The course facilitates the understanding that, while all children develop in unique fashions, primarily as a consequence of both environmental and hereditary influences, there exist certain patterns of development, which apply to almost all children (Vernon, 2004). This understanding from the child development course will be quite valuable in enabling me to establish rapport with students who come to me for assistance. This rapport will center on the understanding of the characteristics, as well as theories of child development as taught in the child development course. It is paramount for the modern age high school counselors to have an in-depth appreciation for this development. The school environment today plays a relatively significant role in child socialization. Therefore, it is critical that counselors, as part of the school system know how to socialize their student patients. A thorough appreciation of basic human developmental stages, which is part of the child development course, will prove valuable in gearing my counseling plans (Vernon, 2004). This primarily aims at maximizing success of students’ social and psychological development in both social and academic realms of their lives. This understanding will also prove valuable in minimizing problems within the school environment. For instance, I can effectively reduce or eliminate the incidences of bullying through understanding provided by the child development course, which looks at children’s psychological and emotional development, or the lack of development, which produces adverse tendencies such as bullying. The child development course created the understanding that human development is perhaps the greatest contributing aspect to the formation of human behavior. As children undergo different stages in their development, they approach different aspects of their social and academic lives in different ways. When I as a counselor have an elaborate understanding of human development, I can make use of this understanding to make effective assessments of the behaviors of children who I come across in my work. This is an effective tool in deterring the occurrence of problems associated with adolescence, for instance, early pregnancy, truancy, drug abuse and adverse sexual behaviors (Lindon, 2005). The child development course has proven particularly valuable for creating the intricate understanding that the aforementioned problems, as well as other negative high school behaviors primarily emanate from normal developmental acting out tendencies. The course also imparted the understanding that adolescent problems can occur as a consequence of having a minute number of children, within a family or classroom, who are at dissimilar developmental stages in their lives. This is largely because such children lack an effective socialization environment in which they can establish and affirm their identities efficiently. The role of a high school guidance counselor is primarily to work cooperatively with students and parents in order to provide proper guidance for students’ behavioral, social and academic growth. On the other hand, a central part of the child development course focuses on understanding the characteristics of child development through various stages beginning in childhood through adolescence. The course focuses on appreciating the implications of community, school, family, as well as other factors that influence student development ultimately affecting their growth. As a high school guidance counselor, my mandate will include helping students solve their academic, social and personal problems. This involves the identification of problems, for instance, family violence or abuse, or inter-students issues that affect their growth either academically or socially (Santrock, 2007). In order to achieve this, I will utilize an array of counseling strategies, as well as conflict resolution skills to resolve the problems. However, these actions would be relatively difficult of I did not have an intricate appreciation of developmentally appropriate counseling practices learned during the child development course. Part of the course focuses on practical training with regard to appropriate guidance techniques effective in children, in the high school-going age bracket. The child development course also proved personally beneficial since it involved the attainment of advanced field experience in guidance and counseling (Lindon, 2005). Throughout the course, the scholars underwent several hours of supervised practical experiences in a child development laboratory and institution as part of a credit program. This also involved weekly seminars, as well as conference time allowing for discussion regarding various issues that affect children, not only with regard physical development, but psychological development, as well. I gained first-hand experience working with adolescents and children in various contexts and through my interaction with child counselors who also took the course. This experience is invaluable since it will facilitate a smooth transition into the world of high school guidance counseling. Therefore, although a master’s education in counseling is vital to gain acceptance as a high school guidance counselor, I strongly believe that the child development course is also equally as valuable since it forms the backbone of appreciating child growth and development. References Lindon, J. (2005). Understanding child development: Linking theory and practice. London: Hodder Education. Santrock, J. (2007). Child development (11th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Vernon, A. (2004). Counseling children & adolescents (3rd ed.). Denver: Love Publishing. Read More