Brief and SolutionFocused School Counseling

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Brief and Solution-Focused School Counseling
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Eight Characteristics of Solution-Focused
Counselors

• Informed Practitioner
• Intentional about Time
• Resourceful Pragmatist
• Preoccupied with Possibilities

• Eye for Exceptions
• Salutary Constructivist
• Generous with Commendations
• Cultivator of Cooperation

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Informed Practitioner

• Guided by counseling theory and outcome research
• Can justify services provided

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Intentional about Time

• Can work naturally and effectively within time
  restrictions
• Creative with use of limited amount of time
• Brevity a natural by-product of intentional
  counseling

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Resourceful Pragmatist

• Use of what is available
• capacities, talents, strengths, and abilities of
  students

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Preoccupied with Possibilities

• A vision for what can be
• Options, choice, selections
• Always doable

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Eye for Exceptions

• Able to detect and highlight non-problem
  occasions
• Able to cultivate exceptions to the rule
• Always prone to reframing

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Salutary Constructivist

• Health promoting
• The presence of what is positive, not the absence
  of what is negative
• Solution construction, not problem-solving
• Creating and amplifying what is positive

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Generous with Commendations

• Genuine (legit) cheerleading
• Not warm fuzzies
• Encouragement
• Empowerment

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Cultivator of Cooperation

• Instigator and mediator of collaboration and
  cooperation with clients, parents, and school
  staff

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Specific Solution-Focused Strategies

• Genuine Inquisitiveness
• Speaking the Language
• Utilization of Strengths and Resources
• Commendations
• Counting on Change

• Highlighting Exceptions
• The Great Instead
• Specific, Concrete, and Measurable Goals
• Tipping the Domino
• Scaling Questions

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Genuine Inquisitiveness

• Counseling process
• intrigue
• not knowing stance
• mutual puzzling
• Curious Columbo approach

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Speaking the Language

• joining with client
• catching glimpse of and appreciating their world
  view
• matching their language
• allows for a collaborative rather than a
  combative relationship

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Utilization of Strengths and Resources

• Detecting positive attributes previously
  unacknowledged by the client
• Reframing or reinterpretation
• Benefits
• building on something already known to student to
  work
• more efficient
• more durable

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Commendations

• Recognition of genuine and authentic material
• Compliment template
• providing normalizing statement
• restructuring statements
• providing affirmation of competencies
• providing bridging statement
• providing simple and possible suggestions

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Counting on Change

• Nothing is always the same
• Learning to be optimistic by viewing problems as
• temporary, not permanent
• contained, not pervasive
• manageable
• Presuppositions

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Defining Exceptions

• Problem irregularities
• occasions when the problem is not a problem
• times when the problem could have happened but
  did not
• Ingredients and building blocks of solutions
• Yeast of goal formulation

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Highlighting Exceptions

• Self-observation of exemplary behaviors
  contributed significantly to a reduction in
  stuttering (Bray Kehle, 1996)
• Coached to model own non-problem behavior

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Types of Exceptions

• Past -- relived accomplishments
• New -- have only recently begun to happen
• Recurrent -- occur periodically without warning
  and unpredictably accidental exceptions
• Future -- projected, planned, or imagined

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The Miracle Question

• Projecting self into the future and imagining
  what it will be like when the problem is no
  longer present
• Magic Wand
• Dream Question
• Encourage children to draw or act out their
  miracle or dream scene

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The Great Instead

• Positive substitute or alternative to problem
  behavior
• What could you do instead of?
• Introduces the possibility that there are other
  ways to think, feel, and behave

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Specific, Concrete, and Measurable Goals

• beginning with the end in mind
• specific, not vague
• behaviorally-oriented (can be replicated)
• able to measure and track progress
• presence of something positive, rather than the
  absence of something negative

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Tipping the Domino

• Change in one area may naturally instigate change
  in larger areas
• May require only a small baby step to get the
  process going
• Ripple or Snowball effect

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Scaling Questions

• Quantify feelings, attitudes, motivations
• Able to conceptualize present situation and
  future goals
• Help explain the previously unexplainable
• Assess how much progress made so far
• Focus on achievement and solutions
• Foster sense of student being in control

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Scaling Variations

• Percentage Questions
• Probability Questions
• Use of symbols
• thermometer
• faces
• colors
• Clarify what the symbols stand for

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Solution-Focused Applications in Group Settings

• Its All in the Name
• Common Language
• Co-Conspirators
• Clearly Speaking