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From: Cindy Spillers
Date: 13 Oct 2006
Time: 10:26:04 -0500
Remote Name: 131.212.90.190
Kristen, congratulations on enjoying your experiences on the stuttering council. Many students are afraid to work with stuttering because of the emotional overtones that enter therapy. Feelings can be so messy, and they don't lend themselves well to collecting data. Thanks for your question about counseling. I have found my background in counseling to be invaluable for all of my clinical and teaching work. It has been especially valuable when working with people who stutter, and my interactions with clients who stutter have helped me to improve my counseling skills. To your question about requiring students to take a counseling course: I think it's a good idea. I think an advanced education in any human service profession is incomplete without some coursework in understanding human beings. At the University of Minnesota Duluth, where I teach, we have a required graduate course in counseling applications. Our students take this course Fall semester of their 2nd year of graduate school. At this point in their education, they have had some clinical experiences to draw upon, and they will have many more experiences in which to try out what they are learning. I also think our profession needs to look more at spirituality. The journey of inner change, the facing of fears and demons, seems like spiritual work to me.