GCU News Bureau
Dr. Reagan North, adjunct faculty in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Grand Canyon University, was delighted to meet a group of fans at a recent conference, not something an educator encounters every day.
North joined Dr. Robert Pincus of Liberty University to present “Motivation in Crisis: Motivational Interviewing in Hard Times” at the American School Counselor Association Conference in Las Vegas.
The lecture covered the use of Motivational Interviewing to help students and families recover from the trauma brought about by the pandemic.
“Specifically, we discussed using Motivational Interviewing to help people reframe their experiences and to find the positives in otherwise difficult circumstances,” North said.
After his own stint as a school counselor in the Seattle area, North found during his doctoral studies that Motivational Interviewing was a perfect method for school counselors, but no one had written a book on it. So North did.
The counseling approach uses interviewing methods to help student access their motivation to improve grades, grow relationships, kick bad habits and pursue deeply meaningful lives, according to the Amazon summary of his book “Motivational Interviewing for School Counselors.”
For the past four years, he has trained school counselors across the country on Motivational Interviewing, both in person and virtually.
The subject packed the conference room in Las Vegas. Afterward, North was surprised by a group of Nevada school counselors who joined a book club based on his book that was organized by the Nevada School Counselor Association during the school year.
To show their appreciation, they presented North with a replica of the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign, a trophy sure to give North plenty of motivation.
