“The Call to Teach” and Other Supervision Reflections

            I’ve been operating as a teacher, educator, or instructor in some capacity for as long as I can remember.  Being the oldest sibling in my family, I think it came naturally to me.  However, outside of my family, I’ve served this role as a camp counselor, a swim coach, a youth mentor, a teaching assistant (TA), an educator for different community organizations, a consultant, and finally as a professor for undergraduate and graduate students.  Though each of my roles were different in these positions and required a variety of skills, there was a common theme of feeling “called” to teach that was present for me and eventually led me down the path to opening CORE’s clinical training program and serving as the training director.  I wanted to provide a supportive space for mutual exchange of teaching, learning, and growing. As we look towards the next training year, I cannot help but reflect on what teaching and supervision means to me.  After all, there must be something to explain why so many of us may spend lots of our free time reading notes and reports, grading papers, and putting other things on pause to be able to give our students what they need.

            Launching and running a training program is no easy feat.  As co-founders, our mission in doing so was to expand students’ knowledge, understanding, and skills in providing family systems and multicultural approaches to therapy; something that we had been mentored in but found few training sites that specifically emphasized this approach.  In being connected to the training community in Chicago, I know that good training directors and supervisors work extremely hard to try and provide their students/trainees with powerful and unique experiences and opportunities to grow in ways that they have not yet had the opportunity to grow in.  This involves looking at each student or trainee’s individual needs as well as looking at the collective needs of all those training together in a cohort, since community, school, and life circumstances change year after year (something the COVID pandemic will never let us forget).

            I am a true believer in “supervision”; what it is intended to be.  What I mean by this, is that I take this role very seriously and I see it as both a responsibility and a privilege.  Don’t get me wrong…anyone who has collaborated with me knows that I like to have fun in my work, but I do like to be active and intentional.  Vulnerability for therapists, no matter what stage of learning they are in, can be challenging, and what is more challenging is when therapists-in-training do not have the safety of supervision to help them explore themselves in their own context and their identity as a therapist.  All therapists need to access this in order to best help their clients to explore, grow, and heal.  We hear stories all the time from current and former staff, supervisee, students, and colleagues about the lack of attention, consideration, and guidance they have received in past supervision experiences.  While hearing these stories can be disheartening, it is actually not surprising given that most therapists leave their graduate program in a mental health discipline (i.e. clinical psychology, counseling, social work, etc.), without being required to take a course on how to best provide clinical supervision.  Although, I really think the marriage & family therapist community got it right by encouraging clinicians to become AAMFT Approved Supervisors by doing additional training and meet standards for supervision set by the profession and requiring these standards of supervision for those seeking licensure.  Generally, high quality supervisors seek out their own coursework and education on how to best show up in this role and they receive ongoing consultation (no different than other clinical work).  This was an important benchmark for me as a supervisor.

            While no supervisor is perfect, those who have success in the role tend to have guidelines and values that they use to build a positive supervisory relationship.  I strongly believe that these essential components can help set the relationship up for success:

·        Clear expectations for the supervisee and supervisor in their roles as well as what is expected during supervision meetings.

·        Building safety in the relationship, to allow room for mistakes, growth, and self-awareness.

·        Goal setting, to make sure supervisors know what is most needed by the supervisee.

·        Review of live clinical work (ideally including video tape review) as well as notes.

·        Active and regular feedback (both positive and constructive), to have supervision be a consistent dialogue.

·        Showing leadership by example – because supervisors must show in practice what it means to work through clinical and personal difficulties.

·        Awareness and attention to multicultural factors and a discussion of how they integrate into the clinical work.

Consistency and thoughtfulness is key.  We are our best selves when we are intentional in our work, and it helps to build confidence and security.  This is no different for supervision, and it’s important to make the work meaningful through living by our own clinical values.

One of the most rewarding parts of my role as a clinical supervisor is to see the needs of my supervisees change over time.  When supervisees start to build autonomy and begin to better understand themselves as clinicians, as people who can impact this world, and can ask directly for what they need in supervision, I know that they are embarking on new developmental milestones in their training.  This fills my heart with pride, and it fills my spirit with a sense of true accomplishment.  Maybe that’s what the “Call to Teach” is all about.  The work we do is very hard and while it is extremely rewarding, I feel compelled to do my part in helping the current and next generation of clinicians to gain the confidence they need to be successful and to help their clients in meaningful and profound ways.