Reference no: EM133224802
Case:
Nuria, a female Israeli Arab who worked previously as a very successful teacher in her village, is now a counseling teaching assistant teaching mainly Jewish students. She is the only Arab student out of 12 distinguished M.A. counseling students enrolled in a special graduate course at a prominent Israeli university with a dominant Jewish majority. You teach these 12 students (selected for experience and high achievement) via the strategy of Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR), which empowers counselors to understand and act upon unsaid thoughts and feelings. You meet with these 12 students individually once a week. You also meet with them weekly as a group for peer supervision based on mutual respect, caring, and acceptance, self-disclosure in a safe environment, and lack of competition. Both settings are open to professional, emotional, conceptual, and technical issues and problems.
Unlike her enthusiastic peers, Nuria's initial teaching experience leaves her sad, distressed, and detached from the group. Her peers offer to discuss her case right away in group supervision and try to encourage her, but Nuria expresses her disappointment and sense of failure in conducting her first three classes with mostly Jewish undergraduate counseling students. Nuria reports that despite her heavy investment of time and preparation and her high expectations, her B.A. students resisted her, questioned her qualifications to be their instructor, or just ignored her. Each week she tried new approaches but encountered the same responses. In despair, she now says she feels unqualified for such a demanding, prestigious role and plans to give it up.
How can you channel the individual and peer supervision sessions to encourage and empower Nuria and to foster her belief in her own strengths, competencies, and self-efficacy, using a wellness and positive psychology approach?