48: Deborah Offner, PhD – Clinical Psychologist, Adolescent Development Expert, and Author Shares Insightful Advice and Discusses Her Book Educators as First Responders

Masters in Psychology Podcast

Dr. Deborah Offner grew up in the Boston area and after attending Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT for her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Sociology, she applied to a number of PhD programs in clinical psychology and was accepted to Boston University. She really wanted to return home and live in Boston and BU had what was called the “scientist practitioner model” where you learned how to do research and use statistical methods but also spent a significant amount of time in clinical training sites where you applied what you have learned and gained important clinical experience. When Dr. Offner started college, she was drawn to the social sciences and she loved sociology. In fact, she thought she might become a sociology professor but after breaking up with her college boyfriend and seeing a therapist, she discovered her love for psychology as “it’s more applied than sociology.” Therefore, she changed her major to psychology and sociology and eventually applied to graduate schools in clinical psychology. Before attending graduate school, Dr. Offner worked as a research assistant at a teaching hospital in the psychiatry department. She shares that she didn’t apply to graduate school right out of college because if you were going to get a PhD in psychology, especially clinical psychology, “they want you to have some work experience.” Though there was a professional school in the Boston area that had a PsyD program, she wanted a PhD because she wanted to have the option of becoming a professor in a psychology department. Dr. Offner served as a consulting psychologist, teacher, and Dean of Students at the Commonwealth School, a co-educational college preparatory school in Boston. Dr. Offner knew that she wanted to start her own private practice early in her academic and professional career. She states, “I think I always thought I would have a practice. I never anticipated it would be my full-time job or my primary occupation, and it really never has been. So I always knew I wanted to do it because I like the luxury and freedom of time to sit with people and have a long conversation and get to know them.” While discussing her practice, she provides a recommendation to anyone who is looking to start their own private practice…”don’t quit your day job.” You want to build up your practice gradually. When discussing how she decided on pursuing clinical psychology instead of the many other branches of psychology, she states “I decided on it because it had a practical applied aspect to it and a profession associated with it.” She also loves social psychology and developmental psychology so being a psychologist allows you to practice both of these areas of psychology. She also shares “I wanted flexibility and work life balance. There’s an income aspect too. If you can have a private practice, which I always have, you can augment whatever else you’re doing, and I really like that idea.” In addition to her private practice, Dr. Offner also serves as a consulting psychologist at Beacon Academy in Boston, which is “a 14-month program between eighth and ninth grade that prepares students from communities with limited resources for entry into independent day and boarding high schools.” Dr. Offner and I discuss her recently released book, Educators as First Responders: A Teacher’s Guide to Adolescent Development and Mental Health, Grades 6-12 (Routledge, December 29, 2022). While she was working at a private high school in Boston for 14 years, she learned that kids will generally go to their favorite teacher if they have a problem or an issue, rather than talking with a parent or going to a school psychologist or school counselor. She states, “a teacher will notice when a kid is struggling because the teacher is the one who sees them every day and can tell if something is changing.” Dr. Offner says that she “wrote the book really for all teachers at the middle and high school level who are de facto, you know,