Think Outside the Box: Essential, Creative Techniques for School Counselors

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Think Outside the Box Essential, Creative
Techniques for School Counselors

• Ed Jacobs, Ph.D.
• West Virginia University

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The Brain Likes Novelty

• What did you learn?
• Talk / Listen Counseling
• Focus on Feelings
• How Creative Are You? 110 Scale
• What Advertisers Know
• Talk to the Students Eyes

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Common Mistakes of School Counselors Your BOX

• Reflect more than necessary
• Listen to too many stories
• Rarely interrupt student
• Take too long to focus the session
• Is not theory driven
• Is not creative
• THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

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The Four Ms of Impact Therapy

• Multisensory
• Motivational
• Marketing
• Maps

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What Kind of Player Are You?

• Friday Night Player
• Saturday Player
• Sunday Player - has courage and thinks outside
  the box

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Essential Creative Techniques Props

• Cups
• Rubber Band
• 1
• Shield
• Eyore and Tigger
• Fuses

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Essential Creative Techniques Using Chairs
Creatively

• To represent goals
• Holding on to chair
• To represent choices
• To represent people
• To represent parts of personality

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Essential Creative Techniques Using Small Chair

• The small chair is the prop that I use the most.
• Sunday players will get a small chair (elementary
  counselors already have them).

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Using Chairs for Gestalt Technique

• There is tremendous power in presentizing a
  discussion about someone.
• Clients benefit from dialoging with themselves
  (changing seats).

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Essential Creative Techniques Creative Use of
Writing

• Ratings1-10 Parents, Effort in School, etc
• The power of the sentence
• Thoughts cause feelings..

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Not True----------True Grid

• Not True ______
  True_______
• I am a failure I made a B which
• I am never going to which means I have
• amount to anything. to study more.
  One B does not
• determine the rest of my
  life
• _______________________________________
• Bad Better

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WDEP

• WWhat do you want?
• DWhat are you currently doing?
• EEvaluate How is what youre doing getting you
  what you want? (This is always it is not.)
• PPlanLets work on a plan to get you what you
  want.

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WDEP

• WI hope to be a doctor.
• DIm smoking dope, skipping, school, not
  studying, and I dont turn in assignments. I hang
  out with people who have no college aspirations.
• EIts not working for me. Im failing.
• PPlanGo to school hang out with positive
  people do homework right after school.

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Creative Use of Drawings

• Small boxBig Box

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Enmeshed Circles
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Timelines
10
x
x
x
x
x
x
1
2yrs
1yr
6 mo
3mo
now
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Essential Creative Techniques Creative Movement
Techniques

• There is value in getting students to move out of
  their seat.
• Being held back
• Moving to other (better) seat
• Going in circles
• Counselor stand in chair

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A KEY FOR EFFECTIVE LIVING

• Get
• your expectations
• in line
• with reality

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Questions Regarding Thinking Outside the Box

• Are you a Sunday Player? Do you want to be? It
  takes Deliberate Practice
• What are you going to do differently next week?
• What keeps you from being more creative?
• What will be the hardest thing for you to
  overcome regarding using some of the ideas
  presented.

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More Information

• To contact me for workshops, information, etc
• Ed Jacobs, 457 Broadway Avenue, Star City, WV
  26505 304-599-0109
• Ed.Jacobs_at_mail.wvu.edu
• edjacobs_at_impacttherapy.com
• Book/CDs orderswww.impacttherapy.com
• Summer workshopwww.impacttherapy.com

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What You Need to Know

• Grief Counseling
• Stages of Change
• Parenting models
• Drugs and Alcohol
• Counseling theories
• Panic Attacks
• OCD

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Which Kid Are You?