SPEC 10
Counseling Skills Intensive Winter 2020

This is not the current course catalog

Whether you want to better support your friends, be more effective as a leader, or pursue a career in the helping professions, good listening and communication skills are essential. This course will prepare you to be a better listener and a more effective, confident communicator. You will learn techniques that help put others at ease while you learn and practice active listening over a variety of topical areas that increase in intensity as we learn and build trust as a group. We will also address what is needed in more charged, personal or urgent situations, exploring our limits, values and responsibilities. You will learn to communicate skillfully about sensitive issues, support others with different experiences/identities than your own, and find your own style in a helping role. Besides improving self-awareness and interpersonal self-confidence, students have found this training applicable to subsequent leadership roles in campus life and beyond. We will meet twice a week for 3 hour sessions. This is an experiential training augmented by relevant readings and out-of-class assignments designed to deepen your understanding and practice of communication, connection and basic counseling skills. Adjunct Instructor Bio: Karen Theiling is a licensed mental health counselor at Integrative Wellbeing Services and has worked at Williams in this capacity for about 20 years. Though she loves the work of psychotherapy, she is passionate about opportunities to teach students to be more skillful in their lives through teaching, trainings, outreach, and group experiences. Adjunct Instructor Bio: Laini Sporbert is a Health Educator at Williams College, focusing on substance abuse education and counseling, mental health awareness, sexuality education, and sleep. She has been at the college since 1997, and been the Peer Health Staff Advisor since 2006. She has an M.Ed. in Counseling Psychology with a specialty in addictions.