Reflections on Multiculturalism, Social Justice, and Empowerment Groups for Academic Success: A Critical Discourse for Contemporary Schools.

Writing the article entitled "Empowerment Groups for Academic Success: An Innovative Approach to Prevent High School Failure for At-Risk, Urban African American Girls," I anticipated that there would be mixed reactions, given the unique and nontraditional approach to working with a difficult and typically underserved population. The development and implementation of the Empowerment Groups for Academic Success (EGAS) approach requires operationalizing the multicultural counseling competencies (see Arredondo et al., 1996) and working toward true empowerment and social justice. Although most of the responses supported these notions, there was some questioning and skepticism about actually implementing an approach of this nature in real practice. I would therefore like to begin this rejoinder by addressing five key issues that impede doing effective work with at-risk and marginalized students similar to the student population that was presented in the EGAS article in order to establish a framework for more direct reactions to my colleagues' responses regarding the EGAS approach. FIVE KEY ISSUES INHIBITING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EGAS APPROACH WITH AT-RISK AND MARGINALIZED STUDENTS One critical issue inhibiting school counselors from using the EGAS approach with students identified as being at risk is group work training. Historically, group counseling has emphasized more structured and controlled groups, avoiding difficult and emotionally painful issues that would more easily emerge in a less controlled group format. This is evident in the practice by many school counselors to control group content, agendas, and themes for discussion and to regulate behaviors in ways similar to classroom management, rather than to enlist and engage the group itself to establish and collectively develop and monitor group norms and participate in deciding about group content. One example that I see regularly in my consultation and training in public schools is the overemphasis on group exercises and "ice breakers. " School counselors regularly introduce structured exercises, ice breakers, and prepackaged "guidance" lessons that define the content and process about what should be talked about and how group members should communicate. Many of these activities commonly focus on happy and positive feelings and thoughts, at the expense of allowing an examination of more painful issues. This is especially problematic for disenfranchised and failing students, who, through this type of structure, receive direct and indirect messages from the group structure to not deal with the depths of their pain, anger, frustration, sadness, hurt, anxiety, or fear. This kind of approach is most often supported at the graduate training level where future school counselors do not learn how to apply the effective counseling skills they learn in classes, practicums, and internships with more difficult student populations, thus perpetuating the lack of attention, care, and unique skills needed by at-risk and marginalized students. A second core issue that I have seen with school counselors is confusion and uncertainty about how to work cross-culturally. We are finally in an era where multicultural counseling is recognized as integral to our profession. Our national and regional demographics in terms of race and ethnicity are rapidly changing, there is a national platform and agenda to incorporate multiculturalism into our profession, many of the counseling graduate programs have a mission that includes a multicultural focus and with at least one course in this area, and our licensure standards require coursework in multicultural counseling. Even so, many graduate programs do not infuse the multicultural counseling competencies (Sue & Sue, 2003) throughout the curriculum nor require multicultural experiences in the practicum or internship classes. Rather, the requirement for one multicultural course becomes sufficient, without regard to the relationship of cross-cultural issues to career development, human development, practice in the field placement courses, group counseling, testing and appraisal, and so forth. …