What Makes an Oustanding School Counselor???

The skills necessary to be an outstanding school counselor begins with having an understanding of counseling theories and human development.  These theories include the Developmental Counseling Model for Illinois Schools and the American School Counseling Association National Model.  School counselors should be capable of planning and implementing individual planning and guidance curriculum activities that promote students academic, career/college and social/emotional development.  

Several other skills that are needed to be an outstanding counselor include:  training and knowledge in crisis prevention and intervention, consultation, collaboration, responsive services and date collection/analysis.  Throughout all these skills, the counselors need to have the ability to plan, design, implement, evaluate and enhance the school counseling program to continually provide services to meet the needs of the entire student body. 

Attributes of school counselors vary, however to be outstanding while working in the student support services many specific qualities are essential.  These attributes include:  creativity, resilience, advocate for students, passionate about helping others, collaborative, patient and relational.  I believe that an effective counselor also needs to continually attend professional development activities.  Education is an every changing field and it is important to have current information to provide the best resources to students. 

Issues, Issues and MORE Issues

Addressing a wide range of issues in groups can be a difficult task.  As a school counselor, I plan to utilize a needs assessment to determine the needs of the students in the school.  The assessment is built around specific competencies that meet academic, personal/social and college/career domains.  The needs assessment evaluates the current status of the program, assesses student needs and takes the information attained and incorporates those specific needs into the counseling program.  The needs assessment equips counselors and administration to make better informed decisions regarding the comprehensive school counseling program to provide services for all students.  Individual counseling, guidance lessons, small-group counseling and peer groups are the delivery systems used to address the wide range of issues.  

Steps to Creating a Guidance Curriculum

Creating an advisory curriculum takes several steps and collaboration.  Planning the program begins with identifying students’ wants and needs.  Distinguishing between what needs are being met from the current program and those that require additional attention (Gysbers & Henderson 2006).  This is achieved through a needs assessment; which evaluates the current status of the program, assesses student needs and takes the information attained and incorporates those specific needs into the counseling program.  The needs assessment equips counselors and administration to make better informed decisions regarding the comprehensive school counseling program.

Guidance lessons are developed as components of the guidance curriculum.  This is not a new concept to school counseling; however, having a developmental, structured, organized and sequential curriculum is.  A systematic curriculum consists of specific student competencies that meet students’ needs in the three domains:  academic, college/career and personal/social (ASCA 2005). 

RtI....what is that????

RTI stands for Response to Intervention; it is a multi-tier approach to the early identification and support of students that are struggling and need additional support.  Each tier addresses three levels of need.  The role school counselors take in implementing RTI is assisting in designing and implementation of the program.  A comprehensive school counseling programs purpose it to meet the needs of all students through specific services activities, including Response to Intervention.  Another role the counselor takes in the RTI process is to collect and analyze data to determine those specific needs and students that require additional services. 

Social Butterfly

The most significant social/emotional challenges that high school students deal with are learning to understand themselves and others.   During this time students discover who there are, how to express themselves and relate to others.  Students’ identities begin to form in how they think, feel and behave.  This is significant because students need help in learning how to relate to other and understand themselves, make healthy decisions, appropriately manage emotions and attain responsibility.  Developing healthy self-concepts, relationship skills, communication skills, values and beliefs equip students to be successful individuals during and post high school.       

Pressure Pushing Down on Me!

In my conversations with high school students, the most common theme that stands out is stress.  Many students today struggle with more than just the typical teen stresses of having the right outfit, break ups, curfews and peer pressure.  However, from my experience I see young adults facing ever increasing grown up concerns.  Two of my students have siblings in jail.   A majority of my students struggle to find their role in their family; which is made up of step-parents, step-siblings and half-siblings.  They worry whether they will be able to afford to continue living in their house.  If both parents are still married, often they both work full-time jobs and have little time or energy to give to their kids. 

On the other hand, they may put all their time and energy into their children.  As helicopter parents, they hover over their children critiquing every move their child makes.  These parents dictate every decision.  They put enormous pressure on their children to take AP and Honors classes and get all A’s.  Stress levels increase as the pressure to excel and succeed increases. 

How as counselors, teachers, parents and family can we support and encourage our children to succeed without putting unrealistic expectation on them?  My thoughts are take time to build a relationship.  Use encouragement and listen to the students’ thoughts, feelings and wants.  Once we begin to understand who they are or want to become; trust and respect develop.  If students know you are there for them, they have hope and can learn to hope with the stress better

Perception is Greater than Reality

Grades are the foundation of academics…right?  Effort, creativity, ingenuity and spirit get left to the wayside for how well students can answer questions on a test.  This week I spent a majority of my time meeting with students that are on what’s called “The D/F List”.  Any student that is getting a D or F in any of their classes at 6 weeks, 12 weeks and 18 weeks is called down to review what is going on academically. 

So often students are frustrated with their teachers and don’t know how to communicate with them.   They see teachers as the enemy; nagging, complaining and criticizing.  Teachers have 150 or more students they are trying to teach each day.  Everyday students have excuses.  I forgot.  I lost my paper.  Teachers become frustrated because they feel like all the work the put in grading and making lesson plans and students don’t make their education a priority.

As students come down to my office we review their grades; which are typically not the greatest.  Then I like to ask them, what do you think about your grades?  We discuss plans for after high school and often the word college comes up.  So I ask them, if you worked at a college in admissions, what would you think of your grades?  Would you allow yourself to attend your college?  Often, for some of the students a light bulb goes on. 

Next, when I ask them who they can talk to, they respond,”my …teacher..?”  Then begins the goal of shifting the students’ perspectives; to see their teachers as allies instead of enemies.