I am a therapist. I am an art therapist. I am a school counselor.
All of these describe who I am and what I do - to some extent. There is much more that I do that cannot be easily explained, but I am going to try.
I work in a school as a counselor. But I am not just an average counselor and I do not work in your average school environment. I work at a nonpublic school, or NPS. Now, most people have not heard of a nonpublic school - and to be honest, until I applied to work there, I had never heard of a nonpublic school either. A nonpublic school is a privately operated, publicly funded school that specializes in providing educational services for students with needs so exceptional that they cannot be met in a public school setting. The CA Education Code states that each nonpublic school must provide "appropriate special educational facilities, special education or designated instruction and services required by the individual with exceptional needs when no appropriate public education program is available.”
So … what does that all mean?
To put it simply (or as simply as I have learned to explain it), my workplace contracts with various school districts (14 in total) to offer an educational setting for students from those districts to attend school and receive services in a non-threatening, nurturing environment that are otherwise not able to attend a comprehensive (or “normal”) school. Classroom sizes get no bigger than 14 students, with a teacher and teacher’s aide in each class. Every single student has an Individualized Education Plan, or IEP, and is provided additional services in the form of counseling, speech and language therapy, and/or 1:1 adult assistance.
So the students that I work with are not your average students. They are not stressing about attending a 4-year university after they have received straight A’s for 4 years and aced the SAT. They are not jamming their applications full of extracurricular activities. They have atypical challenges. Some of the students struggle with emotional disturbances that include anxiety, depression, anger management issues, self-harm, suicidality, schizophrenia, gender identity issues, or other disorders. Some of the students are living with autism, from mild to severe. Some students have specific learning disabilities and are nowhere close to being on par with their peers at the same grade level. Many of the students come from low-income families who struggle with having their day-to-day necessities met. Some depend on attending school every day to receive 2 meals (breakfast and lunch), to socialize with friends, to make up credits lost from previous school years, to find safety from otherwise unsafe home environments or neighborhoods. Many depend on the staff as support in their journey towards high school graduation or certificate completion.
Therapy takes on a different hue when working in such an environment. While we address daily/weekly/monthly struggles, we also look at what their IEP states is their social/emotional annual goal. Each session includes time spent working towards that goal and how it can be reached in the school environment and in social interactions. I combine talk therapy, art therapy, play therapy, and music therapy, so that the students have a variety of means to express themselves. Most will select a combination of activities to help them process and reflect on the challenges they are facing. There are times that I am providing support in the classroom because the student is having trouble focusing or I may be addressing inappropriate behaviors after a verbal or physical altercation. There is not just one simple hat to be worn while being a school counselor at an NPS.
Times have changed significantly since the outbreak of COVID-19. Counseling takes on a new reality through teletherapy. Phone calls and video chats have replaced regularly scheduled face-to-face sessions. It is a new platform to navigate and, honestly, is taking me some time to be comfortable with. The students that I work with depend so much on the staff at school, including me. They depend on the interactions they get to have and the face-to-face relationships that are built. Distance teaching and teletherapy are not appreciated as much as an in-person session or class lesson. But we continue to work towards reaching their goals - one day at a time. These are difficult times.
I leave work (or log out of work) every day, mulling over the information that has been shared with me by my students, and I cannot help but feel blessed that they shared it with me. That they allow me to be privy to their lives, to their deepest secrets and concerns, and help them to carry some of the burdens that are weighing them down. I leave work every day and I think to myself how much I love my job. I love what I do. I love the colleagues that I have. I love the students that I help.
I love my job.
