This chapter covers courses taught in the school counseling tracks or graduate counseling programs. School counselors are certified/licensed educators who aim to improve student success for all students by implementing a comprehensive school counseling program. These courses focus on the professional issues faced by school counselors and prepare students to work with children and adolescents in school environments. These courses emphasize the contemporary role of the school counselor as leader and advocate in delivering school counseling programs to all students. Emphasis is placed on acquiring the awareness, knowledge, and skills necessary to negotiate the cultural, educational, and contextual forces that impact the lives and academic achievement of students in a pluralistic society. The chapter focuses discussion and activities on these topics and others, including school culture, learning, classroom management, structured groups, counseling children and adolescents, and program development.

This chapter focuses on career counseling courses. In this course, students learn how career development theory can be applied to the practice of career counseling. There are three course objectives that are essential to this course: students will be able to identify career development theories and decision-making models; students will understand the roles, functions, and settings of contemporary career counselors; and students will practically demonstrate career and educational planning, placement, follow-up, and evaluation using mock clients or case study examples. The salient career counseling theories that should be touched on in this course are: Super’s life-space, life span theory; Roe’s personality theory of career choice; Gottfredson’s theory of circumscription, compromise, and self-creation; Holland’s theory of types and person–environment interactions; Krumboltz’s learning theory of career counseling; Lent, Brown, and Hackett’s social cognitive career theory; and Savickas’s career construction theory.

The orientation course in counseling programs is called many names: Introduction to Counseling, Orientation to the Profession, or Becoming a Professional Counselor. Regardless of the name, these courses are content heavy and are often placed at the beginning of the student’s journey. The course provides a comprehensive overview of the entire profession. Counselor educators cover roughly 100 years of important historical events, individuals, theories, philosophies, laws, social movements, research, licensure, specialties, and more related to the counseling profession. They also cover future trends, such as social justice issues, technology, social media, politics, and other future directions of our profession. This chapter, like the others to follow, breaks down this content-heavy course. Important topics covered in this course are discussed. A brief review of the recent pertinent literature is examined. Also discussed are different approaches to prepare and teach this course. We share our personal experience when teaching this course. Lastly, course assignments used to cover important topics are described.

Life-span development courses cover the human experience from conception to death. Counselor educators use a holistic approach encompassing the physiological, cognitive, emotional, cultural, and social changes clients experience. These courses cover a great amount of content regarding an individual’s development from conception to death. Human development courses help students view their clients from a developmental perspective with the understanding that development does not take place in isolation; rather human development is deeply embedded within and inseparable from the context of family, social network, and culture. This course is also designed to help counselors recognize the importance of individual and systemic influences on human growth and development. This chapter focuses on theories of individual and family development across the life span, normal and abnormal personality development, addictions and substance abuse, and biological, neurological, and physiological factors that affect human development, among others.

Clients are vulnerable. They seek counseling and put their trust in clinicians to provide effective treatment. Without intentionality and adherence to this profession’s ethical guidelines, clinicians may harm clients. Ethics courses focus on the codes of ethics for professional counselors, marriage and family therapists, and school counselors. Students will also discuss ethical dilemmas they may face that may not be specifically addressed in an ethical code. When faced with these dilemmas, students will be taught to use an ethical decision-making model.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the current literature related to teaching counseling students today. It explains the concept of andragogy and how it relates to teaching counseling students today. The chapter discusses counseling and related educational programs accreditation and what this means for teaching. It discusses some additional topics such as syllabi development, course objectives, evaluation of student learning and progress, classroom management, use of technology, advising, and ways educators evaluate themselves and students day-to-day. Some counselor education doctoral programs prioritize training either effective educators or researchers. The focus usually aligns with the emphases of the university that supports those doctoral programs. There are a great number of universities in the United States, and it is hard to classify these institutions. However, in 1973 the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education provided ways to differentiate between institutions.

In order for students to explore and understand counseling techniques, most counseling programs provide a sequence of courses that build on each other. These courses are called by several different names, but for the purposes of this chapter, we use the following names: Methods of Counseling, Advanced Techniques, and Prepracticum. In each of these courses, the difficulty level increases for the student, and the lessons build from the previous class. These classes provide students with the building blocks for strong relationships with clients as well as help students to narrow their focus on a counselor identity. This chapter consolidates the three courses listed here into a cohesive explanation of the counseling technique educational process.

Diversity courses can go by many names: Cultural Diversity, Counseling Diverse Populations, Multicultural Counseling, or Cultural Diversity and Advocacy. Diversity courses are critical to a counselor’s development. These courses build on the skills developed in other courses and prepare students to work with clients, couples, and families and in school systems on topics such as culture conflict and personal identity, gender and racial issues, sex and sexuality, lifestyle concerns, coping versus personal empowerment, and effective intervention models when working with ethnic and linguistic minorities, including building effective parent involvement programs. This chapter focuses on helping counselor educators teach the aforementioned topics to their students. It provides more in-depth introduction to the course purposes and objectives. Topics that must be broached in this course should revolve around the following ideas: culture being at the center of the therapeutic relationship, worldview, language, leveraging differences, self-awareness, counseling relationship, advocacy, religion, and spirituality.

Some counselor education programs have a Clinical Mental Health Counseling track and either a School Counseling or Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling (MFCC) track. Other programs may have all three and a nonclinical track from which students may choose. This chapter focuses on courses taught in the MFCC track. It summarizes some of the most helpful information to consider when prepping to teach a course in this track. These courses focus on helping students gain the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to work with couples and families and introduce students to the theory, philosophy, and methods of systems work. The chapter focuses discussions and activities on topics such as systems theories, evidence-based interventions, contextualizing families, and cultural factors relevant to marriage. Courses in the MFCC track take a considerable amount of time to prepare. Like marriage, family, and child counseling, these courses are a spider web of processes.

Most programs separate these courses into two distinct ones: Diagnosis and Treatment Planning is one course, and Assessment is another. In this chapter we cover the content as if they were separate courses. These courses go hand in hand. In fact, students often take Assessment before Diagnosis and Treatment Planning. These courses cover what typically happens in the first to third sessions of therapy. Students build rapport with clients and complete informal or formal assessments to identify the clients’ problems and potential diagnoses. Then students use the gathered information and symptoms of the diagnoses to codevelop treatment plans for therapy that meet the clients’ needs. The chapter provides information that can help counselor educators prepare to teach these courses for the first time.