PSYCHODRAMA AND CREATIVE COUNSELING IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Abstract

Detroit elementary schools have no specially designated counselors, that role being given to teachers, assistant principals and principals. Several years' experience with sociometric devices** as sociograms, role playing, sociodrama and some psychodrama have given the writer a background and feeling for the uses and values of these techniques in her counseling, one of several administrative responsibilities. In using these techniques the author was ever mindful of her role of assistant principal, and not that of therapist. With such an orientation, psychodramatic techniques were used as often as possible. Administrative limitations made it necessary to vary to some degree the traditional procedures of role playing, sociodrama and psychodrama. For us there could be no stage and seldom even a classroom. A crowded office, the hallway, the clinic, and even the stairway have been the loci of our role playing counseling. Such limitations, far from proving a handicap, served to stimulate more creative effort on the part of the counselor.