The Open Compass: Visualizing Counseling and Education Careers through Creative Arts and Community Practice

“The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is- it’s to imagine what is possible.” -bell hooks

Counselors, Social Workers, and Educators often rely on a similar set of essential questions to guide their practices: How do we remain authentic, and even creative, as we face the many challenges posed to humans now? How do we find and maintain ethical frameworks that will guide our work in humane and just ways? And finally, how can we sustain vital communities in our world of work?

One way to begin engaging the big questions above is for us to consider what accountable listening and attending can entail.  Recognizing that each person brings with them a lineage to the work at hand, we will work together to engage with the above questions while also developing communication skills and thinking styles through witnessing labs founded in systemically oriented counseling practices. Through this work we will engage two goals: (i) to learn and practice using relational and multisystemic frameworks (rather than an individualized ones); and (ii) to work toward a professional identity – one that is aligned with our authentic and creative selves – by developing an understanding of ethical role theories in the helping professions.

We will use art to create spaces for thinking and meaning-making in our academic work. Through exploring several mediums (paper making and watercolor painting) the program will integrate a guided therapeutic multimedia arts module.  Along the way we’ll engage theory and practices of expressive arts therapy and arts integration in education. No previous art experience is required, as we will all be working to cultivate a beginner's mind with these essential mediums to use them both independently and as a part of a creative community.  The program will emphasize and model strategies of community care and engagement while working creatively in the program's own expansive art/maker studio space on the 4th floor of the Communications Building. During the building’s open hours, each of you  will be given access to the community art studio for the entire quarter.

Throughout the program, you’ll have opportunities to use both written word and a variety of art methods to make sense of and show what you are learning:  You’ll begin the quarter by writing a set of principles for listening and attending that are worth practicing.  You’ll then engage with a range of texts, workshops, presentations, community based learning and labs to examine and reconsider your principles with an eye towards an area of work you are curious about.  In keeping with the programmatic themes, your final work will be a multimedia synthesis of salient learning from the quarter.

We will host several alumni and working professionals in health, education, and psychology,  and interview them using our student-driven essential questions. This program will also intentionally support students in the development of their own emergent callings and career paths. This applies both to students who are well on their way toward a specific career, as well as those who are still exploring the next steps in nurturing their vocation. Those who have felt a call towards careers related to the above helping professions, public health, education, law, human resources, or any other public service orientation that rely heavily on a strong inner compass, will benefit from the practices and observations made in this program.

Students should take note that this program will include five (ninety-minute) sessions of community-based learning throughout the quarter that require participation at a local art space (Hummingbird Arts) where community members and adults with disabilities engage in artful practices together. These sessions (which can be remote or in-person) will be scheduled individually across the quarter, and should be regarded as pre-professional field experience and a resume-building opportunity for graduate-level work.

Anticipated Credit Equivalencies:

3 - Foundational frameworks for ethical and cultural responsiveness in social work, counseling and education

3 - Theory and Practice of Art Therapy

2 - Accountable communication orientations for practitioners