Does Your School Need a Student Counselor?

By Sharron Leonard

Each new class of massage students comes with a plethora of backgrounds and experiences. Ages can range from 18-60 and past careers may include nurses, housewives, business professionals, physical therapists and recent high school graduates. Because of their numerous differences, these students possess diverse skills in managing communication problems, approaching school assignments, behaving appropriately in a classroom and facing emotional stress.

Because of these different backgrounds, students arrive at school with different expectations for and approaches to learning, and for that matter, life. In addition, the bodywork itself conjures and releases emotional baggage stored in the body. In this unique teaching scenario, cultural beliefs about touch, intimacy and even sex can spark reactions that need to be addressed before a student can achieve success in the massage field. This begs the question: Does massage training necessitate a trained counselor to deal with these issues? Colorado School of the Healing Arts (CSHA) in Denver, Colorado, and Bellevue Massage School in Washington are two examples that have successfully utilized counselors.

An Independent Office

According to CSHA's Director of Education Chris Smith, the goal for having an on-site professional counselor is to ensure that instructors have time to teach academic coursework rather than getting involved in emotional therapy sessions. Consequently, ten years ago, the school contracted with a nearby university to provide interns to counsel its student body. The massage school committed to pay for the licensed professionals necessary to supervise the interns.

This experiment proved so successful that about two years ago, the school contracted with a permanent, on-site licensed therapist, Brenda Lucero. She is a graduate of Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, with a master's degree in somatic psychology. "Brenda is uniquely fitted to this position since her focus is body-center psychology," Smith says. "Her specialty brings the body, body processes and body experience into the foreground of psychotherapeutic intervention."

For reasonable fees, Lucero offers CSHA's students and graduates private counseling on personal and school issues. At a discounted rate, she leases school office space and holds scheduled office hours. Lucero is not a staff member, but has two classroom duties: monitoring grief discussions during oncology classes and attending new student orientations. In the orientations, she helps students get acquainted, emphasizes the need for support systems and self-care and describes her specific services.

"Usually massage therapy students are a high functioning and motivated group; only a very small number are dysfunctional, emotionally unstable or disordered," Lucero says. "For the most part, I deal with issues where the students only need guidance and support." She explains that coming to massage school is a personal and career risk for many students and facing life transitions is sometimes a catalyst for facing other problems. "The most common ones are concerning non-working relationships, unresolved grief and low self-esteem," Lucero says.

As Part of the Curriculum

Like Smith, Bellevue Massage School owner/director Jim Schmidt also wanted an outlet for students' emotional issues as well as an avenue for improving their communication skills. "I got my idea from a student who praised a previous school's policy of providing a student advisor to facilitate a weekly time of sharing in the classroom," Schmidt says. "I wanted our students to have the opportunity to talk about their problems and share their successes." His implementation was quite different from CSHA's approach. Schmidt decided to implement counseling time in the classroom and began searching for a licensed professional who would partner well with the administration and who had strong group therapy skills. Schmidt formalized the process by using the counselor's services as part of the school's communication requirement.

On an hourly basis, he hired Pat Huggins, licensed professional counselor, author and professor at the University of Washington, to write and teach the curriculum. "We want the classroom to be a laboratory for communication learning," says Schmidt. "If students are heard and problems are solved, minor issues never turn into major issues." For a severe personal problem, a student would meet with Schmidt and Huggins at the school's expense. If, however, the student needed additional one-on-one advising, Huggins would refer out to a counselor who accepts the student's private insurance or offers services on a sliding scale.

Using the classroom as a learning laboratory, Huggins spends significant time improving such interpersonal skills as the ability "to access caring for someone who's not immediately endearing by looking behind the person's facade." In addition, her curriculum includes how to listen attentively, handle a difficult client in an honest, but kind way and appropriately show assertiveness. Huggins also addresses varied classroom conflict issues. "Many times students come to school with inappropriate classroom behavior which is annoying to others," Huggins says. Since students may be paying for their education for the first time, some have very high demands and treat teachers as "indentured servants," she explains. Occasionally the conflict is an internal struggle: How do students - 80 percent of whom are visual or kinesthetic learners - survive in a learning environment requiring considerable memorization? "For the most part, I utilize my professional skills to smooth out rough edges in the students' communication processes, to offer mentoring for personal growth and to broaden learning skills," says Huggins.

Onsite professional counselors can provide a win-win-win situation for the therapist, students and the school. Lucero, CSHA's counselor, feels the situation offers the therapist a consistent referral base while building her career; it provides students with a therapeutic counseling atmosphere and the self-healing vocabulary to discuss issues; and the school has an avenue for responsibly dealing with the mental health of its students. "The school benefits by having students with improved emotional well-being and multiple strategies for dealing with difficulties," says Lucero. Mostly, Bellevue Massage School owner/director Schmidt appreciates that his counselor, Huggins, releases him from the time-consuming responsibility of counseling students. "I am not a therapist, so these problems are best delegated to the appropriately trained person," says Schmidt.

"Having an on-site counselor could also be an asset, if a school is dealing with one of the accrediting entities serving the massage field," Lucero says. "It connotes a professional attitude and a dedicated interest in supporting students." Similarly, Schmidt adds that Bellevue Massage School received many commendations on its student advisor program when the State of Washington did its four-year evaluation of his school.

Is it time for your school to consider comparable student services?

Reprinted from The ABMP School Connection (Vol. 1, No. 2), with permission of Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals. Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.