Counselors

How Can MIDAS Benefit Counselors? ** Understanding a student or client's MI strengths and limitations can have many implications to benefit counseling. In schools, MIDAS is generally employed to help students with career planning and maximizing study skills, but it can also be useful to address behavioral, attitudinal and motivational issues.**

The following is an excerpt from an example dialogue between a student and a counselor. To read the full example.



**MI-Inspired Behavioral Interventions** by Branton Shearer "Most people think that multiple intelligences theory is only useful for enhancing academic or career success, but this is not true. A multiple intelligences assessment can also be used to guide behavioral interventions. Understanding a student’s MI strengths can provide useful information to establish rapport and also to structure the nature of the intervention. A strengths focused intervention can bridge the gap between you and the student and direct his or her attention to very practical follow up behaviors that appear to the student to be “doable.”

**Interviews with Guidance Counselors**

**The following are excerpts from two interviews conducted with secondary school guidance counselors. Samantha is new to the MIDAS while Maureen has been using it successfully for more than six years. To read the full interview with Samantha and to read the full interview with Maureen .**

**Interview with New MIDAS User Samantha Ryan, Guidance Counselor** **in County Wexford, Ireland** "I am a guidance counselor in a secondary all girls school with 550 students in an urban environment. We’re in an average area with families from all walks of life. I use the MIDAS with students mostly on a one-on-one basis. They get some understanding of the multiple intelligences during their SPH (Social-Personal and Health) class. I don’t do large group presentations or classroom instruction. This is my first year using the MIDAS. It is my goal that students will begin to think more deeply about themselves than what they already do in a normal school day. So much of career choice is self-awareness and self-assessment. I see the MIDAS as a starting point for guiding students to think deeper and increase their self-knowledge about their own aptitudes and abilities.

Students take the DAT (Differential Aptitude Test) during their third year. I always feel that the students who aren’t good at the logical or mathematical thinking or mechanical reasoning get a raw deal. I think it is important that students have a more rounded picture of themselves and their abilities. MIDAS helps to give this to them by taking into account areas such as the Inter and Intrapersonal intelligences that aren’t measured on the DAT, but are just as important. That’s the biggest reason for using MIDAS."

**Interview with Maureen: Guidance Counselor** **at a Co-ed Post Primary School in Greater Dublin**

"I work in a co-educational school with 650 students with very mixed abilities from autistic spectrum to gifted and talented. We are in a working to middle class community. We have one and half guidance counselors for all of our students. We’ve been using the MIDAS for about six years with our Transition Year students who are about 15 – 16 years old. This is an optional year after Junior Cycle and before entering the final 2 years.

Students take the DAT (Differential Ability Tests) during their 6th year so we use an Interest Inventory and the MIDAS during the Transition Year in order to help them develop self-awareness and more knowledge about how they learn and what their strengths are. This also helps students to gear themselves toward possible future careers.

My advice to other counselors is that MIDAS is a very useful exercise in personal awareness. It assists students to understand the value of the different intelligences. It helps to move them away from the notion that IQ is the be all and end all. It helps students to understand that people can be of value in different ways. I think that’s very important. It is also a very useful way to help them understand the best way for them to learn so they can develop their unique study skills, rather than expecting to survive on the traditional study ways that they grew up with and their parents grew up with also. The MIDAS is very useful to get them to diversify and try the various ways of learning. To accomplish this however, takes time working with the students, which too often I just don’t have. I might be able to get more support from the teachers, but we haven’t done much with that.

MIDAS is different from interest inventories because it genuinely helps them to look at the way they learn and move outside the boundaries and accept that maybe they learn best in a different way. For students who need to do something beyond the traditional academic approach to learning and career planning, the MIDAS helps them to try different ways to be successful."