Students complete Beginning Couples, Family, and Group Counseling and, for those who finish all three, In Your Own Words (its advanced follow-up) on their own before class. Class time is for what a simulation can't give them: live, unpredictable human interaction, feedback from you and their peers, and a chance to process the experience of being in the room. Use the breakout activities as the core, and the question bank and Think-Pair-Share prompts below to review and debrief. Timings are for a 75-minute online session and scale up or down easily.
Online, roughly 75 minutes
Click any activity to expand setup and online-delivery notes
Keyed to the coaching categories — ask observers to note one concrete example of each, rather than a rating
Pull what fits your time. Move from experience, into concepts, then into their own growth — you won't need all of them.
One prompt per therapeutic model, grounded in the simulations. Think ~1–2 min (cameras optional) · Pair ~3–4 min (breakouts of two or three) · Share a few minutes (two or three pairs report back). Post the prompt in the chat before opening breakouts.
A first session is not where anyone solves the problem. The whole task is a safe, respectful beginning: make room for every voice, understand before you fix, and close well. Let that lower the stakes for your students, too.