School of Education

Program Review Rejoinder

for

Counselor Education

December 2008

The 2008 review of IPFW’s Counselor Education Program by the Indiana Department of Education was approved with one condition. This condition was based on a 50% approval rate, with one reviewer stating the program had met the criteria for question nine and one reviewer stating the program did not meet the criteria. The information received from the DOE was:

9. Does the program offer a variety of field experiences for candidates?

XYESXNO

Rationale:

(YES): Number of hours required for both the practicum and internship, with appropriate distribution of experiences, provides the framework for students to be provided with opportunities for a broad base of experiences.

(NO): Although the candidates do participate in two practica and a 600-hour counseling internship, it is not clear there are is any diversity in these experiences. This would include different grade levels, socio-economic status, rural/urban, etc.

Although not requested in the original DOE report format, the following information is provided to add clarity to the issue of diversity in our field experiences.

Practicum

School counseling candidates take two semesters of practica during their second year of our three-year cohort program. This takes place either at our campus-based IPFWCommunityCounselingCenter or at one of the local schools. The purpose of this experience is to solidify sound clinical skills through a low client load, high supervision experience. Live supervision is provided through the use of video technology at both sites allowing the supervisors to provide immediate feedback using our “bug-in-the-ear” system (similar to what a newscaster wears) or a text messaging system to a computer in the counseling room.

Campus-based CommunityCounselingCenter

The IPFWCommunityCounselingCenter is a free community mental health agency. As such, the majority of our clients are families who either do not qualify for mental health benefits or cannot afford services in the private sector. Our clients are most often referred to the clinic by word-of-mouth, local school counselors, and the juvenile probation office. The clients are generally middle or low income and could be described as multi-problem families. Due to Fort Wayne’s large, urban, minority population, our clinic serves a diverse client base. In addition, the IPFWCommunityCounselingCenter is the only facility in the county that provides free mental health services to Spanish speaking clients in Spanish.

Off-campus Urban School Setting

For the past two years we have also experimented with an off-site extension of the IPFWCommunityCounselingCenter based in a local urban school.The purpose of this off-site experience is to give non-teachers an experience in a school setting prior to their school counseling internship, with the same training structure and live-supervision benefits of our campus-based training clinic. The “clients” in this setting are both students and families from the school. Previously, this field experience was based at Brentwood Elementary and this year it will be in WaynedaleElementary school. Brentwood is 5.9% Latino, 59.8% white, 27% black, 6.3% Asian, and 1.1% Native American. Waynedale is 4.9% Latino, 66.1% white, 28.4% black, 0.5% Asian, and 0.5% Native American. The free and reduced lunch data, a proxy for the level of poverty for these two schools, are, respectively: Brentwood, 68%; Waynedale, 73%. Each school has students whose primary language is not English: Brentwood, 10.4%; Waynedale, 1%. At the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year, there were more than 80home languages for students in the Fort Wayne Community Schools, and some of that diversity is reflected in both of these schools. Furthermore, Brentwood serves as a center for Special Needs students in its administrative area of FWCS. Since only one section of this off-campus urban school experience is offered, and due to the logistical and technological complexity of arranging this experience, it is offered in only one school per year.

Internship

Internship is a 600 hour field experience which requires candidates to obtain diverse experiences at all three developmental levels (elementary, middle, and high school). While the candidate may have one primary site for the majority of their work, they must include work from the other two levels as well.

Excerpts from the contract we use with schools, called the “Internship Activities Guidelines & Contract,”document the requirement for internship experiences at all three developmental levels:

“The following is a list of counseling and guidance activities that to be completed over the course of the internship year. If you are unable to complete any of these activities at your primary site, please make arrangements to do them at one of the other sites you will visit to cover all three developmental levels.”

“Experience at all Developmental Levels: Per state licensing standards, interns must have experience in elementary, middle, and high school settings. Therefore, in consultation with the site supervisor, the intern must make arrangements to visit schools at the levels other than that of the primary site.”

Our candidates do their internships in a number of school districts across Northeast Indiana. Therefore, the diversity of the student population served during internship is based largely on the school system that the candidate chooses to work in. For example, Fort Wayne Community Schools (FWCS), the second largest school corporationin Indiana (by population) with more than 31,000 students, is largely urban with 54% white, 26% black, 12% Hispanic, 3% Asian, 1% Native American, and 5% multiracial. Of the FWCS student body, 50% receive free lunch and 10% receive reduced lunch. In contrast, East Allen County Schools (EACS), another school district in Allen County which is rural,suburban, and urban,is one of the largest corporations by land area, encompassing more than half the townships in Allen County, but only has approximately 10,000 students. It is 73% white, 17% black, 4% Hispanic, 2% Asian, 0% Native American, and 4% multiracial. Of the EACS student body, 28% receive free lunch and 8% receive reduced lunch. While FWCS serves children from 80 different language communities, the greatest growth in the student population in EACS during the last few years have been Hispanic and Burmese students.

The Counselor Education program offers a variety of field experiences for our candidates. With a total of two years of field experience, one year in practicum and one year in internship, these experiences introduce the candidate to working with diverse populations,defined by ethnicity, race, non-English speaking, special needs, geographic setting, and socio-economic level, at allinstructional levels.

We hope this further clarifies the variety and diversity of our field experiences, as we continually seek to serve diverse community needs, and, at the same time, the needs of our candidates in the Counselor Education program to have richly varied experiences in preparation for their profession as school counselors.