Carolyn’s Path From Teaching to Counselling Children and Adolescents

After a long and happy career as a teacher, raising two families, directing a choir, and governing her local school- Carolyn finally decided it was time to relax and wind down.

Only joking!

Carolyn decided to follow a new dream, continuing her education by studying our Counselling Children and Adolescents Level 4.

“I’ve always loved working with children, I’ve been a teacher, governor of our local school, and a choir director! I actually ended up raising two families, my own, and then the children of my dear friend when she passed away. Her children were only 12 and 14 when she died, so I brought them up.” Carolyn shares, “My daughter is also a teacher at a school in London; and she was the one who encouraged me to take a counselling course to work with kids, as she noticed how many children are struggling after COVID. That’s how I found Association of Learning, and you really fit the bill because I could complete the course in under a year.”

Despite facing technical issues, with the help of her tutor Lee and our friendly student support lead Sophie, she was able to fly through the course, finding the content engaging and applicable to her work with children and young people.

“I thought you presented it very well. So I got stuck in. My tutor, Lee, was very nice. He’s really good because he marked my work really quickly. Sophie helped me quite a bit as well, I was able to contact them about any issues and they explained everything in a way that even someone struggling with tech could understand and work through.”

Technical difficulties behind her, Carolyn began developing an idea of what her life would look like after completing the Level 4 course. With so many new doors open to her, she was weighing up the route that would suit her best.

“As I mentioned, I’ve always enjoyed working with young kids, but I love teenagers. I wanted to get just a certificate to shake at them since they seem to be struggling so much in the current climate. My daughter, who works in a school said: “You know, Mum, come and work at my school any day, spend some time.” Or I could set up in private practice. I’m 62 now, and I would quite like to get on with trying to do it because my understanding is that all counselling is good counselling as long as you’ve got a good counsellor, isn’t it? In terms of life and history with kids, I’ve had a wealth of it.”

As she came to the end of the course, Carolyn was pleased with the progress she’d made, and armed with a wealth of new knowledge, recommends the course to anyone looking to learn more about counselling and having healthy conversations with kids, teenagers, and young people.

“It was fascinating. I loved the reading and research, it was so interesting. On the whole, I thought it was great and covered everything, and certainly, if you want to learn more, it’s a very interesting course.”

When asked what her favourite part of studying online was, Carolyn gave a very different answer to our usual student’s; Looking for references! Despite having all of the information provided to her once she enrolled, Carolyn took it a step further, seeking out different sources and doing her own research.

“I was actually genuinely very interested, so I bought a really enormous book called Psychology and Counselling by John McLeod, because I love having a physical book in front of me. I managed to get a lot of value out of that. There was a wealth of information provided in the course itself, but I was so interested I couldn’t stop there! I also used Google Scholar, and some of the different counselling websites that Lee suggested. It’s the thrill of the hunt, isn’t it, really?”

Now that Carolyn has completed her qualification with us, she’s headed out into the world of counselling children and adolescents. We’ll be following her journey to see where she goes from here, but we’re sure with her genuine compassion and thirst for knowledge, she’ll make a wonderful addition to the youth counselling community.

To learn more about our Counselling Children and Adolescents Level 4 Course, click here.

To explore our course catalogue, please click here.

To read more stories from our alumni, and helpful career guides, follow this link to our blog.