personal and professional reflection

Final Paper: Personal and Professional Reflection
:
For your final assignment, you will be asked to write a reflection paper on how you
anticipate applying several aspects of adolescent development in your work as a mental
health counselor, school counselor, educator (or another role). If you have current or
previous experience working with adolescents, you may choose to write your paper on how
our course changed how you think about that work. If you have not yet had experience
working with adolescents, you may write your paper on how you anticipate applying what
you learned in your future work with this age group (or children/adults, they go through
adolescence, too!) Given the page limit, I recommend choosing only 1-2 topics from the
course around which to focus your paper.
Among the topics you may choose to focus on are:
• The adolescent brain (i.e., biological and cognitive changes during this period;
how these changes affect identity, decision-making, risk-taking, self-regulation)
• Self-regulation (e.g., how it develops, contextual factors associated with it)
• Social-emotional learning (SEL) (e.g., curriculum development, transformative
social-emotional learning)
• Gender socialization (e.g., as it applies to working with adolescents with any, or
one particular, gender identity—boys, girls, trans, non-binary, etc.)
• Racial identity development (e.g., how you imagine working with White
adolescents and/or adolescents of color at different stages in their racial identity
development; how you imagine addressing race in therapy/the classroom)
• Sexual identity development (e.g., how you anticipate talking to adolescents about
sexuality-related topics as it is relevant to your professional role)
• College preparation/transition (e.g., how you might consider the points made by
Savitz-Romer and Jack in working with high school or college students)
• Mental health in adolescence (e.g., how will you approach diagnostic biases
(ADHD, autism); how will you approach working with adolescent substance use)
• Traumatic stress (e.g., how might you apply what you learned about the impacts
of traumatic stress in your work with adolescents with prior/ongoing trauma, or
adults who experienced trauma during adolescence)
Paper Requirements:
1. Please include the following sections in your paper:
• Introduction: Describe your professional role and the context(s) in which you
work or anticipate working with adolescents (i.e., ages 10-25) in the future. You
may also talk about prior work with adolescents, to the extent that it is relevant
to your paper. In summary, please introduce your prior, current, and/or future
work with adolescents!
• Personal Reflection (min. 2 pages): Please reflect on how your understanding
of adolescence has shifted over the course of the semester. In this section, you
are welcome to discuss how the course has shifted your understanding of your
own adolescence, as well as adolescents who you work/will work with. You
may choose to focus this section on how your perspective has shifted about
adolescence as a whole, or one particular aspect of adolescence.
• Professional Application (min. 3 pages): Discuss how you plan to apply 1-2
topics from the course in your work with adolescents. Please be as specific as
possible (e.g., how might you apply Helms’ racial identity models in working
with White students and students of color in the classroom; how will your
knowledge of gender socialization inform your work with adolescents in
therapy/the classroom). I recommend focusing on one topic (e.g., racial identity
development) and going deeper into its potential applications to your work.
o Conclusion: Include a conclusion that summarizes main points of the paper.
2. Please cite a minimum of 3 course readings and a minimum of 3 outside readings
(i.e., journal articles, book chapters) in the Professional Application section. The
outside readings should inform/support your discussion of how you plan to apply
the course content in your work with adolescents. You are welcome to provide
examples of clinical/school interventions that you have identified through your
research.
Paper Format:
• 6-8 pages, double-spaced, 12 pt. Times New Roman font (not including references)
• References: minimum 3 course readings and 3 outside readings
• APA style in-text citations and reference list.

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