Blog8

        As I was reading Chapter 4 I kind of had a realization of how important it is that we really follow the ethical guidelines so we do not harm our clients. I mean I know I would never intentionally set out to do harm to one of my clients but I never really thought about it occurring when a counselor may accidentally interject their own advice or interpretation of a client’s survey (Brown, 2012). I mean it is really important to allow client’s to discover their own resolution to a problem, but I didn’t realize how harmfully it could be to them if we interfered in this. I think this is especially important to remember when we are working with students. In our culture I know we often look at children as unable to make important life decisions, but this is untrue. As their counselor it is important for us to be their support but allow them to arrive at the final decision. This way they can have that experience and if the decision does not work out they can look at themselves instead of the counselor to blame. Reading about all the ethical issues and competencies it just really sank in for me how important our jobs are, and how crucial it is for us to be on our A game at all times.

            Then, in chapter five I thought there were a lot of good points made about what to consider when you are counseling an individual from a different cultural background of yourself. I have to admit I am going to really need to look at myself and see how many different biases I bring to the table. I know to be an effective counselor I am going to have to really immerse myself in different cultural tendencies and beliefs. As I was reading through the table I did not know half of the items mentioned for the different cultures. I was also thinking as I was reading this how it is going to be difficult to deal with student’s parents whose cultural belief it is to make the career decision for their son or daughter, but their son or daughter does not hold this same value. It is going to be really hard helping the parents to realize that even though their child grew up in the home where these values were held they have also been influenced by the culture in their school. It seems like as counselors we are going to have to respect the wishes of our client and make sure that were serve their needs the best that we can.

            Finally, I found the article to be very interesting and it really tied into this week’s chapter reading very effectively. I really found the section on metacognition with the counselor to be very interesting. I think that in order for us to be a successful counselor it is going to be crucial that we area able to think about how we have arrived at some biases and cultural ideas. If we can do this we will be able to better serve our clients and also know maybe when it would be best if we did not help an individual, but had them meet with someone else. I also found it very interesting that little research has been done on how cultural identity, sexual orientation, and gender impact career development. I think this would be an amazing area of research and should be looked into us as future counselors.

Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10^th ed.).        New York: Pearson Education Inc

Byars-Winston, A.M., Fouad, N.F.(2006). Metacognition and multicultural competence    expanding the culturally appropriate career counseling model. The career development      quarterly, 54, pp. 187-201