Course overview
While advocacy is a longstanding, core value in the counseling profession connected to the principle of client welfare, counselor educators are increasingly called upon to teach students from an anti-racist, activist framework, a focus that requires a commitment to action and to challenging and disrupting systemic inequities. Many counselor education programs are revising curricula to adopt the active stance needed to teach students how to enact social justice in their practice. The use of reflective assignments has also been a mainstay in counselor preparation and has potential implications for counselor educators who wish to encourage their students to become social justice advocates. Two frameworks that offer a fresh perspective to counselor educators are counter-storytelling and collaborative action research. Rather than perpetuating the majoritarian (or privileged) narrative, counter-storytelling considers and highlights the stories of people whose identities are marginalized in society and whose stories are often untold or overlooked. A methodology that is neither top-down nor expert-driven, collaborative action research is a powerful resource for counselors wishing to engage in meaningful self-study to improve their practice and promote change. Both approaches emphasize a critical examination of power dynamics, a commitment to reflective practice, and the goal of revealing and addressing inequities. This webinar presents unique classroom applications using reflective assignments grounded in counter-storytelling and action research. Counselor educators can use and adapt the projects and assignments presented to provide their graduate students a foundation for thoughtful, intentional, and systematic change that they can carry into their future careers.
Learning Objectives:
- Learn about (or revisit) the principles of collaborative action research and counter-storytelling and how to teach these frameworks in graduate counseling courses.
- Become familiar with several types of classroom applications and consider ways to adopt and/or modify the projects and assignments presented in this webinar into their graduate classrooms, with a special focus on applications for graduate students who will be working in K-12 school settings.
- Gain tools for preparing their graduate students for a future in advocacy and activism and learn about the joys and pitfalls that students may experience in this process.
- Have the opportunity to engage in reflective activities regarding their commitment to advocacy as counselor educators.
Course curriculum
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Using Action Research, Counter-storytelling, and Reflective Assignments to Inspire Advocacy and Activism
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About this course
- Free
Aubrey Uresti, Ph.D., LPCC, PPS
Dr. Aubrey Uresti is an Assistant Professor of Counselor Education in the Lurie College of Education at San José State University. A California credentialed K-12 school counselor and a National Certified School Counselor (NCSC), Dr. Uresti has experience in all levels of K-12 education as a teacher, school counselor, therapist, supervisor, and consultant. She has a background in Sociology, Critical Social Thought, and Counseling and earned her Ph.D. in Education with an emphasis in Learning and Mind Sciences from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Uresti is a licensed professional clinical counselor (LPCC) and a National Certified Counselor (NCC). Her research focuses on the individual, family, and extended family-level experiences of adolescents who have a parent in jail or prison, as well as adolescents’ meaning-making processes regarding parental incarceration. Dr. Uresti’s experience as a K-12 educator, school counselor, and therapist also informs her exploration of urban education and school counseling, school-based support, grief and loss, peer victimization, child and adolescent development issues, and lifelong learning for counselors through qualitative interview, image-based research, critical discourse analysis, and ethnography.
Suzy Thomas, Ph.D., LPCC, PPS
Dr. Suzy Thomas is a Professor in the Counseling Department at Saint Mary’s College of California, where she teaches foundational counseling courses, as well as courses in the School Counseling specialization. Dr. Thomas has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and is a credentialed school counselor (PPS), a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC), and a former middle and high school counselor and teacher. Dr. Thomas is especially proud to be one of the founding members of the Action Research Network of the Americas (ARNA), an international group of educators and community activists dedicated to the use of action research as a tool for social justice and grassroots change. Dr. Thomas is an advocate for school counselors and school-based reform in local, statewide, regional, national, and international venues. She presents regularly at school counseling and counselor educator conferences and has various publications in the areas of mentoring, collaboration, LGBTQIA+ youth, legal and ethical issues in counseling, group counseling, action research, and school counseling reform. She was inducted into the H.B. McDaniel Hall of Fame in 2013 for her contributions to school counseling in California and recognized in 2017 as the School Counselor Educator of the Year by the California Association of School Counselors.
