My First Supervision Meeting

Today I met with my Art-Therapy Supervisor for the first time. 

It was interesting to initiate, prepare for, and reflect on the meeting. Supervision meetings are important for psychologists and therapists as they offer support and guidance, especially when professionals are new (to the problem, or context, or – like myself – are making their first steps in the field). My main question was to discuss if there is a demand for the skills I have (briefly: yes!), and ask for ideas and suggestions about ways I could get started. 

While I would have loved to enjoy more learning and reflecting time before ‘diving into action’, I agree that learning from experience can teach much more than reading. Well, it sounds very familiar for someone like me doing teacher training for the whole past decade 🙂

The first question I was asked is how I see my potential art-therapy work. I described a dream scenario, which is facilitating groups of (young) adults helping them to activate or (re)discover their self-support and abilities to focus on inner resources and strength, reduce stress, develop coping skills and resilience. 

The second question to discuss was my fears or doubts about getting started. Among the ideas I could think about were my lack of relevant experience (the transition time between education and art therapy work), knowledge gap (as I am now in the middle of the course), and as a result, lower confidence level and being careful with what I can help with, or promise my potential customers. 

The third question to answer was about my previous work experience and expertise. I had to make a list of competencies and skills I think I have, even if they are not fully related to the new area. These were the items in my list: 

• experience in teaching adults (language teaching, teacher training)
• language teaching experience (kids and adults, groups and one-on-one classes)
• facilitating learning online and face-to-face
• international and intercultural teaching, training, team-leading, and project coordinating roles
• management experience (as an academic director/DoS at a language school)
• freelancing/independent work
• ELT-related coaching and consulting
• organising and facilitating professional development events of different scale
• creative approach to tasks and projects (inventing exercises, activities, tasks, etc.)

(I can also add Reflective Practice skills). 

This is the part I think I needed most in the meeting today: to notice how these skills can (all) be used in the new field.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com

The next question was more of a suggestion and advice: what if I start my group practice with teachers as my audience? This looks and sounds obvious, taking into account my previous experience, right? It ‘clicked’ today: I can do more research and reading on Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), Trauma-Informed Teaching, and Psycho-Education. These can be the topics to offer a group training on. Quite possibly, I actually have something to share with others. 

My homework for the coming month is to plan a short course for teachers. These will be 4 meetings each focusing on a set of self-support exercises, an art-therapy technique, reflection, and insight collection. Would you imagine taking a course like this yourself? 

P.S. While making my list, I was reminded of my old-time favorite Confidence Tree Activity from the Mentor Courses: A Resource Book for Trainer-Trainers by Angi Malderez and Caroline Bodsczky (Cambridge Teacher Training and Development). Generally, a metaphor of a tree is truly rich and can be used in various ways in our classroom or training room. Do you have a favourite way for it? I hope to share a separate post about it in the coming weeks.