career counseling

Part One
I am currently a middle school math teacher who works with kids that have emotional behavior disorders. To advance my career, I am currently pursuing a Master’s degree in school counseling. My short term goal is to be a high school guidance counselor, and I have long term goals of staring a full-service consulting group that helps underprivileged or underserved students access resources and tools for personal and professional development.
As a middle school math teacher, I started to work with students with emotional and behavioral disorders. I started working with students with special needs because of my background in psychology and my interest in working in education. Teachers need an abundance of different skills and abilities, perhaps more than any other field. Communications skills help us to speak to a class collectively while also reaching individual students. We also need to interact regularly with administrators, colleagues, and parents. In addition to the communications skills teachers need, we also need organizational and planning abilities, so that we can prepare and execute lesson plans. Teachers need to be methodical in the way we work, but we also need to adapt those lesson plans and be flexible in our approach to education. Pressured to teach for standardized tests and assessments, teachers are often constrained in what they do and rarely feel we are reaching our potential or helping students do the same. One of the reasons I am shifting to counseling as a career is that I believe I can empower others through this line of work.
I see my career as a counselor as progressing in stages. First, I want to continue working in the school setting. I want to work in high school in particular, at the exact time most students start to think more seriously about their futures. Most students are frightened about the future when they do not have good guidance. Their parents might mean well and give them emotional support, but what they really need is a professional who takes into account the students’ performance in school, personality, dreams, talents, and unique opportunities. It would be my job to investigate all of the resources available to students, including resources for special populations. I also want to help students understand themselves better, by using personality tests and not just making assumptions based on their body language or behavior. Especially in high school, teenagers can be guarded in front of adults and they are also changeable. I view my role as counselor as someone who sees each student for who they are, and for who they want to be.
Long-range goals will be a continuation of my work as a high school guidance counselor. I might continue to work in the public school sector as a leader or policy analyst, but I also would consider starting my own guidance counseling company that provides consultation and services to schools, parents, and especially to underserved and underprivileged students who might not otherwise know what opportunities they have and how to pursue them.
Part Two
A) My path of career development started as a young child who was influenced by peers, parents, and my teachers. Since I was old enough to answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I have always been interested in being a teacher. Being a teacher to me means so much more than regurgitating facts and figures. I knew that being a teacher meant that I could have an impact on the ways kids thought about themselves and the world. In addition to what we learn from our friends and family members, we are also exposed to our teachers’ unique ways of solving problems, looking at the world, or understanding reality. Teachers can be mentors and even friends in some cases.
With parents of Bahamian descent, I also learned the value of community and recognized teachers as part of our community. Our family had strong spiritual beliefs and while some of our relatives were religious, our culture was more important to preserve than the trappings of ritual. We as a community believed in compassion for others, selfless service, and the importance of personal growth and development. Being a good person was more important than making money, and pursuing a rewarding or fulfilling career that helps others was also more important than salary or the size of our house. As a middle class family, we did not struggle but we did honor the value of a good education in advancing our careers. I graduated from Miami Northwestern Senior High and went on to receive a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from FAMU.
Even if my immediate family had not supported me in my choice, I believe I still would have pursued the same path I did. The overall values of my culture and community, plus the role models I had in popular culture, all helped solidify my decision to go into education as a career path. My personality is fairly well suited for both education and counseling, and I do not have any psychological or emotional barriers that would come in the way of my success. I cannot recall any specific events or transitions in my life that would have affected my career trajectory, other than the fact that I had good teachers throughout my life. One specific event that might have further inspired me to now go into educational counseling was that I had a strong mentor in college. My mentor became instrumental in showing me the specific steps I needed to take to be successful. Research in the role of personality in adolescent career planning and exploration shows that exploration is associated with “goals and social supports,” whereas career planning was associated more with self-efficacy, goals, and personality,” (Rogers, Creed, & Glendon, 2008, p. 132). Reflecting on how much my counselor helped me, I became more determined to pay it forward as a school counselor myself.
B) Personality profiles and theories reinforce my career choices. The six-type personality model proposed by John Holland identifies the following personalities: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. Holland’s model has been substantiated by empirical research (Holland, Johnston, & Asama, 1994; Walsh & Holland, 1992). In fact, Walsh & Holland (1992) found that the six types interface well with other personality inventories. To measure my Holland type, I used the Holland Personality Word List, which asks me to self-rate on the six different scales. I ended up marking every item in group five (enterprising), which shows a strong predilection for this personality. I also selected ten items in group two (investigative), and seven items in group six (conventional), as well as six items in social and realistic. I scored lowest on the artistic measure. On the Holland Code system I am an EIC.
Surprisingly, I did not score highest in the Social factor. I have gravitated towards careers that involve reaching out to others, connecting with them, inspiring them, and teaching them. However, I also scored fairly high on investigative and enterprising, and in conventional. The reason why I am methodical and organized in my approach to work now makes sense. It would seem that my recent decision to switch careers might have been related to my being more of a persuasive, resourceful, and confident person who is determined to advance my career while also helping others do the same. Now that I see how enterprising I actually am, I may come to see myself differently and eventually pursue a more actively role in starting my own business or becoming a leader.
My Holland Code did correspond well with the results from the more involved Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI reveals personality types along four axes: introversion/extraversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perception. I am an ESTP, which is almost as unsurprising as my Holland type. An ESTP is extraverted, sensing, thinking, and perceiving. Both the MBTI and the Holland test confirm that I am an energetic and sociable person. My outgoing and energetic persona has shaped the way other people react to me, which also reinforces my self-image as an optimistic person who is actively engaged and interested in the world around me. I like solving problems immediately, and do not get caught up too much in my emotions. Others do tend to see me as being adventurous and fun loving, but also a good person to have around in a time of crisis. This has helped make me a good teacher, because I do not take setbacks personally. I have strong pragmatic and practical sides to my personality, which balance out the gregarious and free spirited side.
However, I can also see why I am shifting towards school counseling with ambitions to become either a leader or to have my own counseling business that helps students, parents, and schools access information about higher education and career planning. One of the features of my MBTI type is a dislike for too much structure or rules, which does conflict somewhat with my Holland word scores. I generally prefer not to have to work with a rigid lesson plan and feel I do better winging it, which will help in a counseling setting where I can be more spontaneous when responding to individual needs and administrative demands. At the same time, I cannot stand ambiguity and do prefer structure in my work environment. Because I am generally a logical and rational person, I am also able to resist getting caught up in drama and remain detached. My personality has shaped who I am, the careers I have pursued, and my attitudes towards my work environment. Because I have naturally gravitated towards the careers that actually do suit my personality, I have been relatively happy with my work life. I can even see why I thrive specifically as a math teacher, due to my analytical mind, and a teacher who has the unique personality type suited to working with kids with special needs. Now I see my role shifting more towards someone who sees the big picture while taking specific action to achieve their personal and professional goals.
As my MBTI results do show, I do have a tendency to neglect intuition and feeling. I believe most people assume that aspiring school counselors would score higher in these areas, but I do not view the role of school counselor as being similar to the role of a psychologist. The school counselor needs to be more rational, because she or he is giving specific and concrete advice about setting goals, planning, and growing more self-aware. If I had access to personality tests when I was in high school and college, I might have realized more about my own needs in a work environment. I intend to help students with personality inventories like the Holland model and the MBTI. As my own MBTI results show, an aspiring school counselor may need to cultivate a greater sense of emotional intelligence. It will be important for me to take a kinder, softer approach with students who are struggling emotionally or who see the world through their feelings. With greater empathy, I can help students take the steps they need to take to reach their goals, just as my mentor did for me. As a professional educator, I have already developed the discipline I need to meet important work deadlines, even though it was challenging at first.
(C) My family and my colleagues have been tremendously helpful to me over the years. Likewise, my schools have always provided me with the support I need. I do believe that factors like age, gender, and ethnicity may have impacted the ways others react to me, how I set my own goals, and what career paths are deemed more “natural” or “appropriate.” I have never been directly or consciously influenced by self-image, but I do know that the subtle cues around us have a bearing on our self-concept and especially on our career trajectory.
However, I also know how to ask for help. If I did not, I might not have received guidance or advice when I needed it. When I ask for help, I do so clearly and expect the same from others. My personality type lends itself towards being assertive and direct, asking others for help or advice. I also like to give advice in a straightforward and concrete way. Therefore, I do not really understand when people give up before they try, or assume things about themselves or their abilities. As a counselor, I need to be more aware that other people may not be as comfortable speaking up for themselves as I am. If I do embark on an entrepreneurial path, I intend to provide the means by which less assertive individuals can tap into their inner strengths and overcome their weaknesses.
I became aware of the structural and institutional supports available to ambitious students while I was in high school and again when I was in college. Knowing how to access funding and career placement services, I was able to make my dreams come true. There might have been some areas of my education that might have better assisted me in developing a career direction, such as more information about the gamut of roles that educators can play. I only knew I wanted to work with children to help them thrive, but only recently determined that I am much more suitable for a counseling role than for teaching. Using personality inventories has encouraged and inspired me to think big about my career plans, and not limit myself to specific work environments. I might work in the public school system for some time yet, but I might also start a company that delivers quality educational counseling services to underprivileged and underserved communities.
Part Three
The specific skills I entered into the Occupational Information Network (ONet) included active listening, critical thinking, coordination, complex problem solving, judgment and decision-making, and monitoring. Although I knew I was embarking on a specific path towards educational counseling, I decided to explore other options that aligned with my skills, my personality, my knowledge and abilities, and the work activities and environments I prefer. Receiving Chief Executive as one of the career choices, I focused then on the tasks required for this path. The tasks included directing and coordinating budgets to maximize a firm’s profitability, appointing department heads to improve company leadership, analyzing operations, planning and directing company policies, and preparing budgets. Corresponding knowledge required included administration and management, personnel and human resources, and customer and personal service. The abilities included various types of oral and written communication and comprehension, as well as deductive reasoning and speech clarity. Chief executives do need some of the same skills and abilities as school counselors. Likewise, I learned that the work activities of a chief executive include making decisions, solving problems, communicating, gathering information, working with people inside and outside the organization, and building teams. The information I learned form the ONet search helped confirm that my career will be a good fit for my skills, knowledge, and abilities.
Exploring the interfaces between counseling and other career paths helps me to forge my own destiny. “Individuals impose meaning and direction on their vocational behavior,” (Savickas, 2004). Our careers become extensions of ourselves, and just as we change over time, so too can our careers. My current job as a teacher still reflects who I am, and my interest in helping others. I have a lot of energy, and the work environment suits me even though it is restrictive and bureaucratic. In the future, I will recognize different ways of combining critical thinking, judgment and decision making, reading and listening comprehension, and active listening into my ideal workplace environment.
References
Holland, J.L., Johnston, J.A. & Asama, F. (1994). More evidence for the relationship between Holland’s personality types and personality variables. Journal of Career Assessment 2(4): 331-340.
“Holland’s Six Personality Types.” Career Key. Retrieved online: https://www.careerkey.org/choose-a-career/holland-personality-types.html#.WgEWKxNSyRt
Occupational Information Network (ONet, 2017). Website; https://www.onetonline.org/
Rogers, M.E. & Creed, P.A. (2011). A longitudinal examination of adolescent career planning and exploration using a social cognitive career theory framework. Journal of Adolescence 34(1): 163-172.
Rogers, M.E., Creed, P.A. & Glendon, A.I. (2008). The role of personality in adolescent career planning and exploration: A social cognitive perspective. Journal of Vocational Behavior 73(1): 132-142.
Savickas, M.L. (2004). The theory and practice of career construction. In Career Development and Counseling. John Wiley.
Walsh, B. W., & Holland, J. L. (1992). A theory of personality types and work environments. In W. B. Walsh, K. H. Craik, & R. H. Price (Eds.), Person–environment psychology: Models and perspectives (pp. 35-69). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.