...And That's What Little Girls Are Made Of.

            This year, my TSS job finds me in a kindergarten class every afternoon.  This is my first time in kindergarten (besides of course that time I was the one learning my ABCs).  Sitting in the classroom as mostly a silent observer, I’ve been privy to in vivo observations of the child development that was conceptualized in our graduate courses.  This year has been especially exciting because of the rapid rate at which learning occurs for the students and the overt expression of that growth.  Besides the educational growth, I have found the development and expression of gender within the classroom to be especially intriguing.  

Differences between the genders appear to be apparent to the children but it does not lead to self-segregation.  During free time they engage in mixed gender play, opposite gender friendships and partner choices.  Where gender is made obvious, in classroom rules, routines, and lessons, adults have imposed it.  Common expressions heard from the teacher include: “Girls repeat first, then the boys; If you’re a girl, then stand up; or the girls get pink and the boys get blue.”  There seems to be a distinct cyclical nature of gender socialization.  From day one, adults teach children, directly and indirectly, what it means to be a girl or a boy according to gendered characteristics that are assumed to be natural.  When that child grows up she teaches her own children or students similar lessons about gender.  Her children will eventually teach their children gender-norms, and on and on.  In my opinion gender equality is contingent on an understanding of gender differences based in biology and ones that have been imposed by the culture. 

            Here in kindergarten, it’s safe to assume that even if a kid can dress himself independently, the parents are the ones who have ultimate control over what makes it into the closet.  The exact nature of this phenomenon certainly varies with the economic and cultural make-up of a community.  The school where I have spent the last two months is a rural-suburban community in Lancaster County.  The teaching staff is entirely white and the student majority is white and middle class with the resources for more material goods than their urban neighbors.  The boys wear an unofficial uniform of jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers.  The girls, however, vary widely in their style of dress.  Some wear clothes similar to the boys while others come to school everyday in a dress and sparkly sandals.  I had not recognized the implications of the differences in dress until gym class a few weeks ago.  The class was taught a passing/running game to work on functional motor and cognitive skills.  One girl, in a skirt and red velvet flats had to sit out of the game because of the impracticality of her outfit for the activity.  It occurred to me then, that this brand of isolation from the group is very rarely imposed on boys; they are always dressed in clothes that facilitate activity.  Girls might have more variety in clothing choice, some more gender enforcing than others, but not all of those options allow for equal participation. 

            Could there be an additive effect to this brand of gendered segregation?  Over time, these students will witness many other instances where their female cohorts will be set apart because of practical limitations of their clothing.  Each time that red velvet shoed girl comes to school in an outfit unfit for gym class and has to sit out, she is being indirectly taught that she is less fit for physical activity and that gym-type activities are not feminine.  Furthermore, the male students see only girls sitting out, possibly leading to the adoption of standard social acceptance of women as uninterested in and less fit for physical exertion.

            According to Linda Gottfredson’s Theory of Circumscription and Compromise, career choice involves ruling out jobs deemed unfit based on stereotypes of the job and the individual.  In adulthood girls might discount careers that require physical exertion or masculine qualities.  Do little girls want to wear dresses and pretty shoes because of a natural proclivity or only because adults have reinforced gender standards? Is it even possible to tease out these separate influencers? 

Woops.

Hello!  Here I am again, posting twice in the same night!  Why am I doing this?  Well, you may notice that I neglected to post before the due date last week, so here I am making up for it now!  What the heck happened last week, self?!

Always lurking around the corner is a big, furry, purple, polka-doted monster and he's waiting for the moment when it seems I have my life organized.  About once a semester, at the perfect opportunity he will strike by disrupting my routine with a life curve ball.  Last year was when my roommate left the house to seek drug treatment.  The year before I was battling depression.  Every year I try to make things different but the monster is just so sneaky!  I know, I know, I didn't hand in my work in time and here I am now doing a blog post a whole week after it was due!  In the past I have not been able to pick myself up from this type of stumble very easily but this time was different.  I don't know if it is because of the counseling I am getting, the medications, or both (probably both), but that lug of a monster wasn't so quick and I could see him coming.

Over the week of Labor Day I was just starting a new job and had my days thrown off because of the Monday holiday.  All week I basked in the plethora of time I had to complete my work and was feeling mighty good about it.  On Thursday a failed root-canal and pain medication that put me to sleep was the monster's trick to steal my focus.  Unfortunetly, that week he succeeded in distracting me from responsibilities but this time I was able to shake from his grasps before the consequences began to escalate.

How does any of this relate to career development?  The first, obvious, point is that it is neither productive nor sustainable to have a working style that is unreliable and unstable.  Second, I feel there needs to be much better career education in schools.  It's possible that I am having such a difficult time subscribing to the theories we have studied so far because a detailed, in-depth, career education is not something I had ever experienced.  Although impossible to tell, I might have discovered the way to thwart the monster much sooner in life, if my teachers had been focusing on basic skills early in school.  For example, my lack of organizational skills got me in trouble in grade school when I would forget my homework all the time and keep a messy desk.  Maybe I'd be a rich entrepreneur by now if only I could keep my on track 100% of the time.

Girl Gets Ice Cream, Has Revelation

Last night I was grabbing a little late night snack at the grocery store.  I rounded the corner to make a final stop at the bakery section but got caught behind an older woman who was clearly not as hungry as I was.  She looked a little disheveled with a tank top and athletic shorts.  Her dyed hair with roots exposed was gently hanging to one side in a ponytail.  I noticed some scabs on her arms and legs and with her sandals had on thick blue socks with a rubber design on the sole to prevent sliding.  Aha! I would recognize those socks anywhere as the kind you get in a psychiatric hospital when you are not allowed to have shoes.

When I consider this woman in the context of this career development course, I wonder what career guidance services are available to her.  Abraham Maslow was a 20th century psychologist who developed a model for understanding a hierarchy of human needs.  At the bottom, or the most basic, are the necessities of life such as food, shelter, health, etc.  As you move up the ranks, you find needs such as safety and at the very top is self-actualization.  I have found most of the treatment models we have covered in class to focus on the client who is in the upper echelons of needs.  The person who has fulfilled all of their more basic needs, has the psychological space to consider which careers align with their personal actualization.  In contrast, the woman from the supermarket might not have the mental energy to consider such a question when she must devote her focus to buying food, paying rent, and living in a dangerous neighborhood.

Getting a different view

It might only be two weeks into the semester but I'm seeing the potential for an unexpected benefit of taking Career Development and Multicultural Counseling during the same semester.  Sometimes when I am recalling information from the text of either course, the facts from both merge.  If I had taken Career development earlier in my coursework, I might have formed opinions of the topics from the perspective of my life experiences. I might have neglected the influence that the larger social system has on every aspect of our lives, including work. Those who associate with a minority group are too often handicapped by majority social values.  The types of jobs available to them, the atmosphere of the workplace, and average wage, for example, are influenced by the entire span of our culture's history. To only consider counseling techniques and potential client needs from my spot in the world, would be shortsighted and culturally insensitive. No client will find positive change with a therapist who has no sense of how their social orientation differs from people of infinite variety of backgrounds.

What is this?!?!

          Until the first day of class, I had not considered career guidance to be an aspect of Clinical Psychology.  In fact, until the overview of the syllabus I was under the false impression that the course was about how I could expect to develop in my own chosen career.  I have very little knowledge of career guidance and I was never a consumer of the service.  After the first chapter of the text, I feel quite skeptical of the topic.  There lacked a clear exhibit of the foundational theories that propel the need to improve career education and provide more access to career guidance.  In chapter one of Career Information, Career Counseling, and Career Development the authors layout significant events in the history of career guidance and education (Brown, 2012).  Publications like the Dictionary of Occupational Titles in the 1930s cataloged available fields, professions, and job descriptions for the first time but I just can’t seem to grasp why this is so important!

            Intuitively I understand that a person’s daily working life can have a monumental effect on mental health.  I have personally experienced depression triggered by an awful working experience.  For two years I had been working with a difficult client with whom boundaries were difficult to maintain due to his approved treatment hours and the duality of working in both the school and home.  An adult suffering psychologically because of a job can be helped with improved coping skills, alternative cognitions, or motivation to find a new position.  Guidance should come from a professional who is knowledgeable about a variety of careers and educational requirements.  Gender, culture, race, and education all have the possibility of influencing the jobs available to a client.  Therefore, the professional should be trained to conceptualize how those personal factors manifest to bring about the client’s unique circumstances.  The relevance of career guidance to an adult who is experiencing turmoil at work.  High school students are especially primed for career guidance as they get closer to graduation and making educational decisions for the future, but its application to elementary school curriculum is not as obvious.

            Is there any evidence that children who receive career education early in their schooling are more satisfied with their job in adulthood?  Is the goal of career education to expose children to a variety of available professions or to teach job skills?  Can it be shown that the career information provided in elementary school is retained years later?  None of these queries were granted a satisfactory answer in the text and I feel they need to be answered for career education to be perceived as necessary and effective.

 

 Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed). New York: Pearson Education, Inc.