Using Counseling Skills and Strategies to Foster a Supportive Learning Environment

Using Counseling Skills and Strategies to Foster a Supportive Learning Environment Oscar J. Salinas University of North Carolina School of Law 4090 Van Hecke-Wettach Hall Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3380 Osalinas@email.unc.edu

Using Counseling Skills to Foster a Supportive Learning Environment • Counseling skills can help us assist students with their academic and non-academic issues. • Help students feel more comfortable in disclosing their nonacademic issues that may be impacting their academic performance. • Counseling strategies and techniques: • Establish a good rapport with students. • Monitor our own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors as we teach or provide assistance. • Ask open-ended questions and focus on listening.

Establish a Good Rapport • Great asset for any long-term relationship. • Particularly important for students seeking academic assistance. • Can help create a safe and welcoming environment where students are free to disclose and work on some of their academic and non-academic difficulties.

Rapport and Basic Counseling Skills • Good rapport can be established by utilizing some basic counseling skills: • Empathy • Genuineness • Unconditional Positive Regard

Building Rapport: Empathy • Try to put yourself in the student’s shoes. • Try to feel or think as the student describes. • Why is the student feeling this way? • How would it feel to be going through what the student is going through?

Building Rapport: Genuineness • Show genuine interest in the student and in his/her well-being. • Show that you are not fake or putting on a show. • You are honest and genuinely want to help the student. • If the students don’t feel like you genuinely want to help them, then they won’t come back. • If you act one way in the classroom and a different way in the helping session, the students may feel like you are putting on a show in the session.

Building Rapport: Unconditional Positive Regard • Show support and acceptance regardless of who the student is and what his/her situation may be. • Try not to judge the student for the mistakes that he/she may have made. • Try to help the student not make the same mistake again.

Monitor Yourself • Monitor your thoughts, feelings, and behavior as you teach and help students. • Our students can tell when we would rather be doing something else. • When we find ourselves disengaging, ask: • “Am I present in this situation?” • “Would I like being on the opposite end of this conversation?” • Take mental breaks and be honest when you are busy or preoccupied.

Ask Open-Ended Questions • Open-ended questions help provide the atmosphere where students can express what they want to express. • Try to limit your “Yes” or “No” questions. • Focus on questions that start with “How” and “What”, rather than “Did” or “Is”. • Try to avoid “Why” questions. • May put students on the defensive and shut them down.

Don’t Be Afraid to Listen • Silence can be very important when working with a student in an academic support setting. • Being comfortable with silence is a critical skill for counselors and therapists. • Allows the student to think. • Allows the students to just get things off their chests. • Allows the student to fill in some of the gaps.

Summary • Try to build rapport with students, so they feel more comfortable disclosing some of their nonacademic issues that may impact their academic performance. • Empathy, Genuineness, Unconditional Positive Regard • Monitor Yourself • Ask open-ended questions • Listen

Thank You Now . . . Case Studies!

Using Counseling Skills and Strategies to Foster a Supportive Learning Environment