My goal for this course is to gain a deeper understanding of professional identity and the professional responsibilities of a counselor. Professional identity to me describes the mental role an individual would take on when entering a profession. I will not be able to apply for licensure or certifications when I graduate, but I would love the opportunity to work within my current school district. My goal is to work with both, students, and teachers, to assist them with beginning or improving their state of mental health. 

My professional identity as a counselor is very minimal. I have helped many students work through their emotions throughout my years in the classroom, but never thought of myself solely as a counselor. My favorite part of teaching has been helping my students with their mental health. After lockdown, the need for social and emotional learning took a front seat in the classroom, but this is still not enough. Our students are suffering and need more than what we are currently giving them. I do not have enough experience in the counseling field to have established a professional identity; but I am eager to see the growth and identity I create for myself within this course. 

My strengths in locating resources to help students and families in emergency situations is concrete. I would love to expand on my knowledge of mental illnesses and the skills necessary to help others find the necessary resources to meet their specific needs.  

 

 

I have been married to my husband, Eric for 25 years and we have two children Seth (18) and Rose (16).  We live in Wylie, TX.  I am excited to be apart of the LPC bridge program.  It is something I have always wanted to pursue, but something I struggled with after my breast cancer diagnoses, too many surgeries to count.  BUT…I am here and ready to hit the floor running! I plan to retire from education and hopefully, use my LPC as added income seeing clients after retirement.  

My professional identity would be an accumulation of my personal experiences; as a wife, mom, sister, daughter, special education teacher, church leader, school counselor and student mentor.  I am all of these, not just one and I believe that being aware of my own personal experiences and knowing who I am is the only way to be authentic when working in the mental health field.  I graduated from Amberton University in 2011 with my Master of Arts and School Counseling.  Since graduating I have worked as a school and continued to grow and develop my skills and knowledge in the field of mental health.  My goal is to create a comprehensive counseling program that meets the needs of all students/clients through individual counseling, group counseling, family support while cultivating a positive climate that fosters acceptance, empathy, and self-awareness for all. 

As an athletic trainer, I strive to ensure that my athletes receive the highest level of care in their time of need. Through my training to become an athletic trainer, I received some level of mental health training, but I am interested in expanding my knowledge and skills to best serve my athletes. 

My goal for this course is to expand my knowledge to best treat and support my athletes. I am looking forward to developing a professional understanding of how counseling plays a role in my current professional identity. 

Professional identity, to me, is more than just “what you do.” As a professional, you are much more than just your job title. Someone’s professional identity is an amalgamation of who they are and how they do it. At times, it’s how they communicate with a colleague, or discuss things with a patient. It is also how they hold themselves in both the day to day as well as times of heightened stress. It’s the relationship that is cultivated between patient and clinician and the ability to build trust. 

My hope, upon graduation, is that I can be more confident and sure of my skills in regard to counseling. My education up to this point has been incredibly minimal in the realm of mental health. As of now, it is difficult to view myself as a counselor due to my minimal training. Though I try my best to use what skills I have to best serve my athletes I believe my patients and athletes deserve the best care I can give them. As of now, I am confident and sure of my role when it comes building relationships and trust with my patients, and I believe one of my strengths is my ability to lend an empathetic ear and communicate concerns with families but I am looking forward to developing the skills and knowledge to improve my ability to respond to a mental health crisis for my athletes.

I am hoping through this course to have a clear view of the role of a counselor outside of a school since my current experience is school related only. To me professional identity is the blend of title, areas of specialty, and population served. 

I feel that I have a definitive professional identity as a school counselor because it is defined by the district. Professional school counselors offer a variety of services to students including but not limited to social emotional learning, short term counseling, student advocacy, scheduling, connections to outside services, academic planning, crisis intervention, and other duties as assigned. We also work very closely with other counselors in the district, take professional development classes together and collaborate with other professionals in the mental health field such as social workers. Our roles do overlap at times, especially in high need situations but I feel that it is all in support of each other and the students.

Currently I feel very comfortable in my role working with students and their families. I would like to expand on my current skill set so I can transition to working with clients for a longer period of time. As a school counselor we focus on more short term and do not spend large amounts of time with students in the day because we really try to get them back into the classroom setting. 

I have been an educator for over 17 years, and, in my time as a middle school and high school teacher, I have worn many hats with my students. I have been their teacher, mentor, coach, and someone who listens. I am also a mom to two teenagers of my own – one who graduates in a few months. It is because of my experience working with teens that I sought to earn a Master of Arts in Human Services Counseling: Life Coaching a couple of years ago. After graduation, I plan to alter my career path and serve others through counseling. I came to ASU to continue my journey toward becoming an LPC-Associate. 

Since this is one of my first courses at ASU, one goal I have is that I hope it will help give me more clarity on my starting point as a counselor outside of education. To me, professional identity is telling people who I am within the context of my job. Siobhan Neary notes that it “is not static but fluid; it is strongly influenced by how we see ourselves, how we perceive others perceive us” (2014). In my role as a teacher, I have tweaked my professional identity many times over the years from a middle school teacher to a high school educator to a secondary team leader. In the past, if I knew I was speaking to someone who might react negatively to “7^th grade English teacher”, it was easy to declare that I am a “secondary English teacher” and place the focus on what I teach, not who I teach. The choice of words quickly changed the direction of a conversation. 

I am still identifying who I am as a counselor outside of the classroom. I know my strengths are in working with teenagers and parents because of my years in education. Upon the completion of my degree, I am confident I want to work with pre-teens and teens ages 12 and up, as well as single parent families. I truly enjoy working with students, and my experience in understanding how to listen and communicate with teenagers will be helpful in a counseling role. I am also very passionate about the dynamics within single parent families as I have been a single parent for many years and have worked with other single parent families of students. As such, I understand my values and goals, but I look forward to increasing my understanding of the responsibilities associated in a counseling role and learning to separate from who I have been and what I have known as a teacher to who I want to be as a counselor. 

 

Siobhan, N. (2014, June). Professional identity: What I call myself defines who I am. Career Matters, 2(3), 4-5. 

To the best of my understanding so far, professional identity is about how I represent myself and describe myself and what I do. I think this will be very important for me to develop because I have worked so long in a certain role, that I will need to learn how to change how I think about myself and what I offer. During this course I hope to understand what it means to develop my professional identity, and begin to work on that. I want to learn more about what it means to be in the counseling profession, and how I can better describe what I do and who I am in the counseling/coaching field. 

I am just at the beginning of developing my professional counseling identity, but I have taught some art and spiritual classes and workshops so I have worked on developing my identity in that way which I used in creating marketing materials for classes. I hope that I can use some of my experience with that as well as my current work experience to contribute to developing my new professional identity in counseling. 

For strengths, I feel that I am very caring and empathetic person that truly wants to help others. I try to be approachable and people feel comfortable talking with me. I am good at communicating and enjoy helping others to think of solutions and find ways for them to overcome obstacles on their path. For improvements, I would like to be able to solidify my professional identity and talk about it in a way that is more professional, and develop something that I can put on resumes or websites. 

Thanks so much, and best wishes with the class. 

Professional identity helps define you as a counselor to your clients.  The combination of your values and beliefs along with the code of ethics and laws help guide/shape all counselors.  The CACREP standards and the ACA Code of Ethics provide counselors with guidelines that help develop their identity.       

One of my goals during this class is to learn more about professional identity from my classmates.  Each person brings various life experiences that can add to developing a more complete counselor.  As a teacher and school counselor my identity has always been defined by the school district requirements.  My counseling identity was defined by school assessments, short classroom lessons on mental health, and interacting with teachers, parents and students.  

In this class I would like to develop my own identity outside of the classroom.  As an empathic person I enjoy listening to others and see this as a strength in the counseling profession.  Throughout this class I would like to improve critical thinking skills and computer/online skills (I have already asked my teen daughters for help on making a slide).               

Professional identity is how a person defines themselves and their career.  My professional counseling identity seems to change drastically from month to month. Sometimes I am a guidance counselor while other times I seem to be a data entry specialist. I have been struggling this year with my role as a school counselor. My goal for this course is to refocus and rediscover what my counseling identity is. I know the who, where, and what in my counseling identity. I want to continue to be a school counselor in a high school setting helping students with their academic, emotional, and social needs.  The how is where I struggle in my counseling identity. I am hoping that continuing my education in this field will also help with determining the how.

With the constant fast pace during the working day, I hope that this class is going to help me to slow down and focus on the new skills I hope to gain throughout this course.

Professional Identity to me means exactly that. Who I am as a professional, and how others see me as a professional. I would hope that others see me as a professional that is wholeheartedly invested in this profession and that I do my job with passion. My identity would demonstrate to others that I am a person that cares for her clients’ well-being and that my ultimate goal is to empower them to find solutions and peace in their problems and concerns that originally brought them to see me. 

I feel that I embody most of this identity. Although I am not an LPC yet, I believe my students see these things in me because they share their feelings about me when they see me and remind me how comfortable they feel with me, especially after being able to help them put their worries behind them.  

I feel that one of the biggest strengths in my counselor identity is the empathy I display toward others. Empathy towards others is almost an automatic feeling for me and sometimes, it may be a bit much. While I put myself in others’ shoes, I feel that at times I may feel uneasy about my response or guidance to my student/client if I haven’t experienced what they are telling me. This is something I would like to work on since I don’t want them to think that I wouldn’t understand, when in fact, even if I haven’t experienced what they are going through, I can professionally guide them to a solution that they are comfortable with. 

I currently work full-time as a Communications Specialist for an electricity and internet cooperative. I hope to continue this work as long as I can until I can finish the Mental Health and Wellness Counseling program. 

The main goal I have for this course is to learn more about the ethics that coincide with professional counseling. Not only is it extremely important, but I don’t have much prior knowledge of this topic. 

From what I learned from the material provided in Module 1, a Professional Identity is a cumulation of ethics, legal guidelines, and personal values--given that it is an identity, this cumulation should be unique to the individual. Upon finishing my degree, I want my professional identity to have a foundation of acceptance. I believe that by basing my future LPC practice on acceptance, the patients I support will be inspired to be their most authentic selves, thus gaining clarity and peace. 

In regards to my personal professional identity development, I don’t feel much progress--mainly because I started this program during the Spring 2023 semester, so I believe this is normal. I hope that as I gain more knowledge in the program, my confidence and individuality will grow as well.

Although I don’t feel established in my professional identity, I feel my greatest strength is my motivation to help others. I want to build my career as an LPC based on my selfless nature as well as knowing that my profession would positively impact my community. On the other hand, the aspects I could improve on feel never-ending. For example, I seek to learn more about ethics, legal stipulations, how to teach healthy coping skills, how to identify one’s mental challenges, etc… Ultimately, I want to gain knowledge on everything in hopes of becoming more equipped for my field. 

I’m a school counselor in a PK3-5th charter school; before becoming a school counselor, I taught art for 12 years to elementary students, which was fun! In 2005, I graduated from UTRGV with a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts education with a minor in Spanish. In 2015, I graduated from LAMAR University with a Master’s degree in school counseling. I’m enrolled in the LPC bridge program, and my long-term goal is to become an art therapist. This is my second semester at Angelo State University, and I enjoy every class. It is challenging to continue with higher education when working full-time and raising a family simultaneously, but I'm up to the challenge. Being a lifelong learner is the best!

This course aims to prepare me for my future LPC roles, combine my counseling experience, understand the concept of professional identity, and follow the profession's requirements and ethical standards.

My professional identity as a school counselor is to understand, help and guide students and provide support when needed. Also, my vision is to help students grow emotionally, find their calling and empower them through self-acceptance.
I also find it important to support teachers and help them be successful in the classroom. 
My professional identity as an LPC might change, but I would like to keep one simple motto throughout my career.
"Live the present, love yourself, smile, and celebrate that you are alive!"

My strengths in my professional identity currently are character education lessons. Providing helpful information for daily practices, planning, and helping students with goals. Managing programs that help remove barriers for students that require help from special programs. 
I concentrate a lot on group work and classes, but I'm ready to start working more on a one-to-one.

 

My goal for this course is to gain a better understanding of the practice of counseling and how to better serve the clients. 

 

Professional identity is a person’s viewpoint of who they are as a professional serving in a field of proficiency involving high probabilities in the application of special knowledge and skills. Becoming a school counselor is my professional desire upon completion of graduation.  Entering the field of counseling hopefully will increase my professional identity through growth and skillful practices involving cognitive and moral reasoning.   Entering the field of counseling hopefully will increase my professional identity through growth and skillful practices involving cognitive and moral reasoning. 

 

My professional counseling identity is minimal. Having experience as a teacher I have been able to identify and solve certain issues among my students. I feel that I am still learning and going through the process of learning the important roles counselors have. The role of school counselor may take time for professional identity to develop, and it may require strong mentors who are willing to invest their time and energy not only in teaching but also in leadership and advocacy to solidify my professional identity. 

 

One of my strengths would be advocating for my students. Being able to provide guidance for my students while being a listening ear with my struggling students. Areas I want to learn and grow in will be understanding more about mental health.