Communication and technology

I check my emails from Monday to Friday. You can expect a response from me within 24 hours (except on weekends). If I don’t respond, please resend a message.

A lot of our communication will happen via email: make sure you consult your email regularly and at least 24 hours before each class. Change the email address associated with your Blackboard account in order not to miss any announcements.

To access Blackboard, you need to log in with your CUNY First account.

 

Class meetings and discussions

This class meets in person twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:05 P.M to 6:20 P.M. All other activities will happen on the course website and on Blackboard: group discussions and text annotations, assignment submissions, grades, etc.

 

Disability Services

Students who have a documented disability or suspect they may have a disability are invited to set up an appointment with the Director of the Center for Student Disability Services, at 718-951-5538. If you have already registered with the Center for Student Disability Services, please send a message. 

 

Course Goals

This course will provide an introduction to the most important theoretical systems of psychotherapy and their technical applications for the treatment of individuals with a variety of psychological problems (calling for modification of behaviors, cognitions, and/or emotions). 

By the end of this class, students will be to:

• Name 3 schools of thought in psychotherapy
• Identify internal obstacles to psychotherapy from the therapist’s and patient’s sides
• Cite the 3 important changes or movements in the history of psychotherapy
• Cite the main elements of the methods in individual, couple, and family therapy
• Utilize the appropriate vocabulary linked with the field of psychotherapy.

 

Class material

This is a no-cost class: materials are uploaded on the website for you to read or watch. Some are password protected for copyright reasons. You should set aside 2 to 3 hours to work on this class every week besides our time together. 

 

Attendance and participation: you are expected to attend each class and I will worry if neither the person you are paired with nor I am informed of your absence. We are still dealing with a pandemic: please send me a message if you are worried about being exposed or of exposing anyone. 

 

Class rules (class agreement)

-opinions/ controversial  should be private on the website vs academic being public

– personal stories stay within the group/class

– not attack people for their opinions, respect

– listen, hear the person first and then respond 

– check on each other as a group, be mindful of each other

– use the “ball” to indicate who is talking, has the priority to talk 

– raise your hand if you don’t have the “ball”

– respect for one another, no one talks over someone else

– try not to be judgmental 

– safe space

 

Grading Policy (class agreement)

Attendance	19
Text annotations with Hypothe.is	16
Paper: wellness toolkit	20
Facilitate discussion	12
Weekly survey	19
Words of week	14
Total	100

 

Grade and grade description: 

A+, A, A- : 90 – 100

B+, B, B-: 80 – 89

C+, C, C-: 70 – 79

D+, D, D-: 60 – 69

F: Failure

INC : Incomplete

WU : Withdrew Unofficially

 

Assignments: 

• Vocabulary words of the week: contribute to at least 4 entries to the class’s vocabulary page over the semester.
• Annotations of texts or websites: at least one annotation on the readings of the week and one comment on one classmate’s annotation. 

• Weekly surveys: each week you will receive a survey that will help me know how we evolving as a group. It must be filled out before our next class on Tuesday. Send the survey by Monday 11:59 P.M.  
• Introduce Class discussion: starting on week XXX, you will be in charge of introducing the class discussion based on the materials for the week. You will do this in teams of two. 
• Final Paper: the final paper is your wellness toolkit. This toolkit will contain your personal strategies to deal with the challenges of life. The basic elements of your toolkit are your:
  • personal stressors, 
  • the early signs of you not doing well, 
  • your wellness tools and 
  • your post-crisis plans in the case you enter a crisis phase. 

This paper will contain five academic articles linked with the themes we worked on in class. We will talk more about this later in the semester.