SPCL 7922 Multicultural Counseling & Consultation in Schools: HOME

Students will be participating in the learning process via a combination of facilitated class dialogue, small-group discussion, case application activities, short lecture, online discussion forums, individual journaling, written assignments, reading assignments, consultation, quizzes, and experiential activities.

Students are responsible to be prepared to express their perspective and insights as well as voicing their questions for material assigned for each class period.

Please note: Because it will assist you in becoming an effective school psychologist, it is important for you to be open about your own experiences and relationships during this course. It is also essential for school psychologists to be aware of their own attitudes, beliefs, biases, and personal challenges. Awareness is key to developing insight and assisting the school psychologist-in-training to achieve the course objectives; yet, reflecting on your own experiences can sometimes cause challenging experiences to occur. The School Psychology Program encourages you to practice self-compassion and care for yourself during this time and to seek professional assistance from others, if needed.

Courageous Conversations within a Community of Respect

Multicultural competence is built on personal awareness. Gaining awareness of our own cultural lenses (and how they influence what we see and how we respond) requires that each of us step outside our typical ways of understanding the world and the people in it. Often this can be more challenging than we first imagine. It is important that the classroom environment be one of respect and of honesty, honesty not only with others but with ourselves. Though it is not necessary for all of us to agree with one another on every topic, it is important that we are able to share our differing perspectives, first so that others can learn from our ideas and second so that we can learn from others.

Confidentiality and Equanimity

As a courtesy to one another and to add to the atmosphere of respect, students are asked to keep their peers’ comments, opinions, and personal experiences in confidence. We work to create an environment in which we hold our own and one another’s feelings and experiences gently and with compassion.

Due to COVID-19, instruction at CUNY transitioned to a distance learning modality for most of the courses. Using this OER website along with Blackboard, Zoom, and other online platforms, Prof. Elizalde-Utnick will use both synchronous and asynchronous strategies to facilitate the class sessions. Cohn and Seltzer (2020) describe these two strategies as follows:

Synchronous: instructors and students gather at the same time and interact in “real time” with a very short or “near-real time” exchange between instructors and students.

Asynchronous: instructors prepare course materials for students in advance of students’ access. Students may access the course materials at a time of their choosing and will interact with each other over a longer period of time.

The class will meet at the scheduled course time via Zoom. Assignments will be submitted electronically by posting on Blackboard.

Students are expected to participate actively in all aspects of the course, both the asynchronous and synchronous components. During the synchronous component, active participation entails working on skills important to counseling - active listening and active participation in small- and large-group discussions. To foster active engagement during the synchronous sessions, all members of the class are expected to turn on their audio and video technology.

We are all learning to navigate this new learning environment, and we are supporting each other during this very difficult, disruptive, scary, and anxiety-provoking time. 

These are SPCL students in a TBL course with Prof. Elizalde-Utnick. They are discussing and deciding on the best seating arrangement when conducting a counseling session with a parent and interpreter.

This course will be using aspects of Team-Based Learning (TBL) pedagogy (www.teambasedlearning.org) that can be incorporated into online teaching formats. TBL increases students’ understanding of course concepts by using them to solve authentic, real-world problems and help them develop their workplace learning skills.

The Rhythm of TBL

TBL courses have a recurring pattern of instruction that is typical of many flipped classrooms. Students prepare before class and then students spend the bulk of class time solving problems together. In SPCL 7922 this term, each session has a similar rhythm, opening with the Readiness Assurance Process that prepares the students for the activities that follow, and then moving to Application Activities that explore real-life case scenarios and apply concepts described in the readings.

Phase 1 - Pre-Class Preparation: Students are assigned preparatory materials to review before start of each module. The preparatory materials can be textbook chapters, articles, blogs, podcasts, videos, or PowerPoint slides. The preparatory materials highlight foundational concepts the students need to begin problem solving, but not everything they need to know by module end.

Phase 2 - Readiness Assurance Test (RAT): Each session will begin with a five-multiple-choice question quiz posted on Blackboard. The quiz will begin at the class section's designated start time (1:00 pm or 4:30 pm) and students have 30 minutes to complete it. The RAT holds students accountable for acquiring important foundational knowledge from the assigned readings that will prepare them to begin problem-solving.

Phase 3 - In-Class Activities: Students and their teams use the foundational knowledge, acquired in the first two phases, to make decisions that will be reported publically and subject to cross-team discussion and critique. The class will use a variety of methods to have students report their team’s decision at the end of each activity. Sometimes students will hold up cards indicating a specific choice, sometimes they will write their answer on Zoom chat, sometimes they will display their work gallery style for the other teams to comment, and other times they will complete short worksheets or surveys, which will be randomly reported to the rest of the class. Students will have the opportunity to work in teams using Zoom’s breakout rooms. The Zoom sessions will begin right after the quizzes at the class section's designated time (1:30 or 5:00 p.m.).

Credits: Header image from Pixabay, released free for use. TBL in-class activity image is a TBL cartoon from Sibley and Spiridonoff at the Centre for Instructional Support, University of British Columbia. Online team image from Pixabay, released free for use. 

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This open educational resource was created as part of the CUNY and SUNY 2017-19 Open Educational Resources Initiatives. Governor Andrew Cuomo and the NY State Legislature awarded CUNY and SUNY $16 million to implement open educational resources to develop, enhance and institutionalize new and ongoing open educational resources across both universities.

Special thanks to the CUNY Office of Academic Affairs, the CUNY Office of Library Services, Brooklyn College Administration and Professor Miriam Deutch, Coordinator, Brooklyn College Open Educational Resources Initiative. Site design and formatting by Colin McDonald, OER Developer.