Anyone who has ever worked in the school system has probably heard a complaint or two about students’ disruptive behavior. These behaviors interrupt the educational process not only for the students displaying them, but for those around them. The topic of this paper is an article by Lola Vollaire-Thomas, Jamilah Hicks, and Roslin Growe (2011) called “Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: An Interventional Approach to Improving Negative Student Behaviors”. The authors of this article discuss a program called Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports, or PBIS, which is meant to create a school-wide environment in which positive behaviors are valued and encouraged.
As a future school counselor, I will likely need to be well-versed in ways to …show more content…
In fact, it made me interested in learning about ways to use SFBT with students who display disruptive behaviors. The particulars of the research design, however, do not immediately seem achievable for a school counselor alone. The authors suggest that teachers and parents be heavily involved in the therapy process. For example, parents will attend parenting classes held by school psychologists or counselors and teachers will keep reflection journals of the process of implementing SFBT practices in their classrooms. Without strong buy-in from administration, asking teachers to keep journals on top of their long list of other documentation tasks seems like an impossibility. Furthermore, the article states that the students at the third, or individual, level are the most likely students to be in special education classes and have Individual Education Plans (Vollaire-Thomas, 2011). It is my personal experiences that the teachers of students with special needs are often the teachers with the most paperwork to …show more content…
How is the integrity of the SFBT approach going to be maintained? The article states, “The counselors and psychologists will conduct the necessary workshops to train the schools’ teachers in how to deliver the social skills lessons and how SFBT works” (Vollaire-Thomas et al., 2011). My issue with this is that I do not feel someone can successfully learn how to do SFBT in a couple of days of workshops. Learning how to do counseling is something that takes a couple of years to learn. I would not attend a workshop on algebra and then assume I understand the classroom pedagogy that goes into teaching math. It takes a certified expert to teach algebra. Likewise, I do not think teachers could successfully counsel children using SFBT. I think what they would actually be doing is repeating little tricks or adages they picked up in the
As a future school counselor, I will likely need to be well-versed in ways to …show more content…
In fact, it made me interested in learning about ways to use SFBT with students who display disruptive behaviors. The particulars of the research design, however, do not immediately seem achievable for a school counselor alone. The authors suggest that teachers and parents be heavily involved in the therapy process. For example, parents will attend parenting classes held by school psychologists or counselors and teachers will keep reflection journals of the process of implementing SFBT practices in their classrooms. Without strong buy-in from administration, asking teachers to keep journals on top of their long list of other documentation tasks seems like an impossibility. Furthermore, the article states that the students at the third, or individual, level are the most likely students to be in special education classes and have Individual Education Plans (Vollaire-Thomas, 2011). It is my personal experiences that the teachers of students with special needs are often the teachers with the most paperwork to …show more content…
How is the integrity of the SFBT approach going to be maintained? The article states, “The counselors and psychologists will conduct the necessary workshops to train the schools’ teachers in how to deliver the social skills lessons and how SFBT works” (Vollaire-Thomas et al., 2011). My issue with this is that I do not feel someone can successfully learn how to do SFBT in a couple of days of workshops. Learning how to do counseling is something that takes a couple of years to learn. I would not attend a workshop on algebra and then assume I understand the classroom pedagogy that goes into teaching math. It takes a certified expert to teach algebra. Likewise, I do not think teachers could successfully counsel children using SFBT. I think what they would actually be doing is repeating little tricks or adages they picked up in the