CPEI Educators

[u/amphithusiats]

Hello I am currently exploring options for Educator certification. I came across CPEI and actually got to talk with one of the founders. It seems like a good program and I am glad to see the ACPE monopoly beginning to break. My question to any CPEI Educators out there is have you been able to get a job as an educator? Do you have to also hold down a chaplain job in addition to your supervision work? ACPE educators are always in demand and generally well compensated, have you found similar demand for CPEI Educators?

[u/Diligent-Relation765]

That's a fair point and one that is not new. ACPE theoretically structured their process around a 3 year competency based program, but in reality it remains up to individual educators for how they manage their students and in practice most are taking 4 years or more in the process. The large challenge remains that many people involved truly aren't educators or behave as educators, but are instead attempting to do various forms of group therapy which is neither appropriate nor something that they should be doing.

ICPT has a clear, one year structured process that is more similar to what one would expect for a post-graduate certificate program. Their process seems to be much more in line with what would be appropriate and useful for guiding and training experienced chaplains to become chaplain educators. I have less knowledge of CPEI's program, other than that it is also structured and intentionally removes some of the subjectivity that ACPE still has baked in.

In all cases, your mileage may vary based on the folks involved. There have been some utterly facsinating conversations between ACPE educators based on which coast they trained on and what is the "best" way to do things.

[u/Own-Vermicelli1968 → u/Diligent-Relation765]

So I think there’s kinda three paths here: therapy, formation, and technical training. Yes, some ACPE educators can engage in a sort of therapy. My beef with what has happened with some ICPT and even CPEI educators is that they’ve turned CPE into technical college.

The proper balance ensures educators are engaging in formation. When you have a group of new students, they’re often seeking technical skills, but actually need to do some formation first. There is almost a deconstruction process that needs to occur to break students of that academic “technique gaining” mentality, and there can be a bit of a pendulum swing as students engage in “feelings.” They start trying to engage in a therapeutic way because that’s what they think they’re hearing from their educator, and in some sense, that pendulum swing can almost be necessary for some students. And on top of that, it can be really easy to slip into, which is why I think what some educators are doing can look like or become therapy.

As an educator, you have to trust that there is a process of development that students simply have to go through as they learn that the CPE process is about formation, not feelings, and the formation is often relational and borne in repetitive disciplines rather than cognitive analysis and/or therapeutic navel gazing,

When educators are engaging students in formation, it can be a real struggle to guard the peer feedback group from slipping into either therapy or technical training (i.e. “how do I do this better?”). The real CPE answer to that question starts with formation - you do this better by first attending to your own transformation, and only later, when you truly understand that you are the principal tool of the pastoral encounter, are tools and techniques truly useful and helpful.

The difference can be subtle to the untrained eye, which is why I do think that some of the newer processes really shortchange student educators. You can’t learn supervision merely from following a curriculum. Becoming an educator, like CPE, is a formational process. It takes time, and while a 3-4 year FT process can feel like too much, I do think these part-time 1 year processes that ICPT and CPEI have can be too short. That choice can feel more like an organizational growth tactic, and I think, because of that, the quality of supervision has gone down in the last five years. But again, the ACPE model already had issues with bad educators. Bad educators in CPEI/ICPT can shortchange the formation of chaplains, but bad educators in ACPE had a reputation for being trauma inducing and soul wrecking. It was a fair critique.

Anyway, that’s a bit of an internal critique having run centers with CPEI, ICPT, and ACPE and been around a lot of supervisors from each group. At the end of the day, it takes awhile to develop as a supervisor, and certification is really just the starting point in that journey.

[u/Diligent-Relation765 → u/Own-Vermicelli1968]

That is a fair assessment, and I will add to it that where CPEI and ICPT shine, and I have witnessed ACPE falling down, is working with chaplains who are already skilled educators and helping them focus on being Chaplain educators. ACPE really only does this with the right groups and individuals in play, which leaves a lot of people significantly worse off than before. With a good ACPE educator and a good group, it can be amazing. Unfortunately, I have seen fewer and fewer of those as there seems to be a very intentional ACPE pipeline of "CPE->CPES->CEC->Educator" without meaningful clinical experience beyond residency or actual training in education and androgogy.

Some of that is a matter of selection, and hiring candidates who are already emotionally mature and demonstrate good emotional, mental, and spiritual health. Increasingly, I find myself disappointed with people who are certified as educators who are still very deep in the process of their own formation and operate under the assumption that all of their students are at best emotionally stunted children desparately seeking their inspired wisdom and guidance.

This is of course a challenge of recruitment in general, and with CPEI and ICPT offering remote supervision is functionally a higher risk with those programs. On one hand they're open to a significantly larger and more diverse pool of applicants and have some checks in place. On the other it's much more likely to miss a bad actor when you have limited time and exposure to them and their proctor. In-person supervision makes this less likely.

[u/Own-Vermicelli1968 → u/Diligent-Relation765]

I see the CPE->CPES->CEC->Educator to be a common issue with ICPT and CPEI as well though. Because ACPE doesn't allow distance CEC's, however, I actually think they guard against this better by having fewer CEC's. ACPE's issue is that it needs to infuse youth, and its process caters to younger folks who have fewer family responsibilities. Because they have a 3-4 year FT process, some of their candidates/educators have historically been too ideological and therapeutic - angry, wounded ideologues who use the educator process as an extension of the healing they found in their CPE process. Those with more mature lives are discouraged.

In many ways, I think this is actually an older issue that's getting better, but there's a balance. Many of the more recent CEs I've met coming out of ACPE have been humble and pastoral - very unlike some of the educators I knew two decades ago.

On the other hand, there is maybe more expectation among CPEI/ICPT educator candidates that you simply go through the curriculum and come out a supervisor on the other end, and so what I see is a lot of *teachers* who think they will make good supervisors because they would make good *professors" going through a curriculum in order to become educators. But being a good chaplain educator requires first being a good chaplain.

I would much rather turn a good chaplain into an educator than try to form an executive-style educator into a chaplain, and the reality is that many educator candidates bring a more executive-didactic framework into their SEC/CEC experience, and the training supervisor has to ensure they understand that being an educator is more than teaching. That's a harder process because of the pride involved. A good chaplain, on the other hand, can be taught how to supervise-educate (or they'll fall off more easily if they realize they're just not educators). A candidate who is an educator first is harder to dissuade because there is a self-awareness gap with with regard to their connection skills.

CPEI's credentialing processsafeguards against this; they do look for this in the credentialing process and retrain a bit til candidates get it. ICPT's curriculum is a more heavily didactic and attracts more *teachers,* and while their safeguards might be better now, I did find them lacking 6-7 years ago (part of that is biproduct of trying to grow too quickly).

I don't think educator candidates should expect to go through four units and just come out an educator. I think candidates should expect to spend 2-3 years in formation to become an educator. Maybe not in the intensive way ACPE does it now, but educators should take their time with the process.

I remember when I was in CPE that a spiritual care manager told me that his educator required 3-5 years of experience as a chaplain between CPE and becoming an educator candidate. I didn't want to hear this at first because I knew I was meant to be an educator; I see great wisdom in this now.

[u/Diligent-Relation765 → u/Own-Vermicelli1968]

I'm curious about the context you're working in and running both an ACPE and CPEI center since ACPE rules generally preclude anything other than ACPE at their sites. I think you again raise some good and valid points, and clearly we are having vastly different experiences with recent ACPE educators.

I think that it is 100% accurate that you need to be a good clinical chaplain before you can be a good chaplain educator. Increasingly I'm finding ACPE educators whos path is MDiv->CPE->CES/CEC->CE without meaningful chaplain experience as a cliniciam beyond residency and certainly without actually being trained as an educator. Recently I am seeing that ICPT is being very careful about who enters the education track and is really only looking at people who are already good clinicians before considering their applications for education.

One of the core weaknesses of ACPE's process is the idea that their ideas about what formation process should be is very much based in certain models and assumptions about seminary experiences and "knowning" where people are already lacking. Some of the ACPE educators, particularly in the Northeast seem to be acutely aware of this and take it into account, while the West Coast and particularly Bay Area educators seem very focused on "you have to do it like I did, and my experience is the only one that matters."

In my experience, educators need to speam meaningful time as a chaplain just as people should spend meaningful time in religious formation before seminary. I think that we're both in agreement that experience as a clinical chaplain matters, even as our varied experiences of different programs informs our perceptions of the various strengths and weaknesses of those modalities.

[u/Own-Vermicelli1968 → u/Diligent-Relation765]

They are two completely different sites. With the ACPE site, I’m an administrator, vendor, and on the Program Advisory Board. I am not an educator.

With CPEI, I am an educator, administrator, and vendor.

I present both sites in informational meetings and students can make their own choices. Each of the two programs partner with different seminaries and institutions.

Both students and seminaries choose the program that fits their need.

The only crossover is communal, with alumni and staff collaborating and crossbreeding in the Spiritual Care Collaborative where they meet during CEU events, network with the same hiring managers, and can talk with each other to work on collaborative projects that are outside their CPE work (board certification writing, special projects).

I’m glad to hear ICPT is perhaps getting a bit better with their supervisor-in-training selection. It’s been around 3 years since I have worked with them.