The Journey of a Beginner Counsellor

Write about your experience in Practicum so far in relation to how you marketing yourself on various social media to get clients book-in, the increase of your level of anxiety because of having to meet deadline for your practicum HOURS, your self-doubt when you eventually got few clients afterwards at the end of 5^th week, and the need to reflective deeply for subsequent sessions with clients despite other overwhelming schedules and my personal life

The Reflective Journal has a three-fold purpose:

1. Your reflective journals help in the development of the person of the therapist in terms of recognizing and realizing who you are amidst this work, where you can get triggered, and where you may have personal biases that could interfere with your work with a client.
2. Your reflective journals give you a chance to interact with course material including the seminars, self-directed reading and researching, self-assessments and any assignments that have occurred. It provides you with the opportunity to synthesize your internal development with supervision and evidence-based practice.
3. Lastly, the reflective journals give you a place to process through areas of struggle, identify triggers, and ask questions about how to deal with specific populations

GUIDELINE BASED ON RUBRIC:

Students will be expected to produce deeply reflective, highly professional, and relevant journal reflections. It is important to know the line between deep reflection of personal growth and revealing too much information about your personal life. Be cautious about what you share as it pertains to your personal life and attempt to focus the reflection on who you are as a therapist. The person of the therapist is a very important developmental process for beginning therapist. It is a time for students to go deep and get to know themselves and how “the self” impacts and is impacted by the counselling experience. If you are not sure how to write a reflective journal, research it. There is a great deal of good information on the internet that will help guide you

Evaluation:

The following rubric indicates those areas you should be focusing on in preparing for your reflective journals and how the instructor will weigh these components relative to one another.

Content Reflection Reflection always demonstrates a high degree of critical thinking in applying, analyzing, and evaluating professional progress. Insightful and relevant connections made through contextual explanations, inferences, and examples ( 40)

Professional Growth: Conveys strong evidence of reflection. Expresses many ideas, supported effectively by relevant evidence or rationales.Demonstrates significant professional growth and awareness of deeper meaning through inferences made, examples, well developed insights, and substantial depth in perceptions and challenges.Synthesizes current experience into future implications.(40)

Writing Quality: Written at the graduate level. Writing is clear, concise, and well organized with excellent sentence/paragraph construction. Thoughts are always expressed in a coherent and logical manner. No errors in grammar, punctuation, usage, or spelling. No colloquial language used (20)