School counselor
A school counselor is a certified/licensed professional that provides academic, career, college readiness, and social-emotional support for all students. There are school counselor positions within each level of schooling. By developing and following a school counseling program, school counselors are able to provide students of all ages with the appropriate support and guidance needed for overall success.
Purpose
Professional school counselors ideally implement a school counseling program that promotes and enhances student achievement. A framework for appropriate and inappropriate school counselor responsibilities and roles is outlined in the ASCA National Model.School counselors are employed in elementary, middle, and high schools, in district supervisory settings, in Counselor Education faculty positions, and post-secondary settings doing academic, career, college access/affordability/admission, and social-emotional counseling, consultation, and program coordination. Their work includes a focus on developmental stages of student growth, including the needs, tasks, and student interests related to those stages.
Professional school counselors meet the needs of students in four basic domains: academic development, career development and college access/affordability/admission, and social-emotional development. Knowledge, understanding and skill in these domains are developed through classroom instruction, appraisal, consultation, counseling, coordination, and collaboration. For example, in appraisal, school counselors may use a variety of personality and career assessment methods to help students explore career and college needs and interests.
Schools play a key role in assessment, access to services, and possible referral to appropriate outside support systems. They provide intervention, prevention, and services to support students' academic, career, and post-secondary education as well as social-emotional growth. The role of school counselors is expansive. School counselors address mental health issues, crisis intervention, and advising for course selection. School counselors consult with all stakeholders to support student needs and may also focus on experiential learning, cooperative education, internships, career shadowing, and entrance to specialized high school programs.
Methods
The four main school counseling program interventions include school counseling curriculum classroom lessons and annual academic, career/college access/affordability/admission, and social-emotional planning for every student; and group and individual counseling for some students.School counselor interventions include individual and group counseling for some students. For example, if a student's behavior is interfering with his or her achievement, the school counselor may observe that student in a class, provide consultation to teachers and other stakeholders to develop a plan to address the behavioral, and then collaborate to implement and evaluate the plan. They also provide consultation services to family members such as college access/affordability/admission, career development, parenting skills, study skills, child and adolescent development, mental health issues, and help with school-home transitions.
School counselor interventions for all students include annual academic/career/college access/affordability/admission planning K–12 and leading classroom developmental lessons on academic, career/college, and social-emotional topics. The topics of mental health, multiculturalism, anti-racism, and school safety are important areas of focus for school counselors. Often school counselors will coordinate outside groups to help with student needs such as academics, or coordinate a program that teaches about child abuse or drugs, through on-stage drama.
School counselors develop, implement, and evaluate school counseling programs that deliver academic, career, college access/affordability/admission, and social-emotional competencies to all students in their schools. For example, the ASCA National Model includes the following four main areas:
- Foundation – a school counseling program mission statement, a vision statement, a beliefs statement, SMART Goals; ASCA Mindsets & Behaviors & ASCA Code of Ethics;
- Delivery System – how school counseling core curriculum lessons, planning for every student, and individual and group counseling are delivered in direct and indirect services to students ;
- Management System – calendars; use of data tool; use of time tool; administrator-school counselor agreement; school counseling program advisory council; small group, school counseling core curriculum, and closing the gap action plans; and
- Accountability System – school counseling program assessment; small group, school counseling core curriculum, and closing-the-gap results reports; and school counselor performance evaluations based on school counselor competencies.
School Counselors are expected to follow a professional code of ethics in many countries. For example, In the US, they are the American School Counselor Association School Counselor Ethical Code, the American Counseling Association Code of Ethics, and the National Association for College Admission Counseling Statement of Principles of Good Practice.
Role confusion
Some school counselors experience role confusion, given the many tasks they are expected to perform. The demands on the school counselor to be a generalist who performs roles in leadership, advocacy, essential services, and curriculum development can be too much if there is not a clear mission, vision, and comprehensive school counseling program in place. Additionally, some school counselors are stretched too thin to provide mental health support on top of their other duties.The role of a school counselor is critical and needs to be supported by all stakeholders to ensure equity and access for all students, particularly those with the fewest resources. The roles of school counselors are expanding and changing with time As roles change, school counselors help students prosper in academics, career, post-secondary, and social-emotional domains. School counselors reduce and bridge the inequalities facing students in educational systems.
Types of school counselors
Elementary school counselor
counselors provide academic, career, college access, and personal and social competencies and planning to all students, and individual and group counseling for some students and their families to meet the developmental needs of young children K–6. Transitions from pre-school to elementary school and from elementary school to middle school are an important focus for elementary school counselors. Increased emphasis is placed on accountability for helping close achievement and opportunity gaps at the elementary level as more school counseling programs move to evidence-based work with data and specific results.School counseling programs that deliver specific competencies to all students help to close achievement and opportunity gaps. To facilitate individual and group school counseling interventions, school counselors use developmental, cognitive-behavioral, person-centered listening and influencing skills, systemic, family, multicultural, narrative, and play therapy theories and techniques. Sink & Stroh released a research study showing the effectiveness of elementary school counseling programs in Washington state.
Middle school counselor
counselors provide school counseling curriculum lessons on academic, career, college access, and personal and social competencies, advising and academic/career/college access planning to all students and individual and group counseling for some students and their families to meet the needs of older children/early adolescents in grades 7 and 8.Middle School College Access curricula have been developed to assist students and their families before reaching high school. To facilitate the school counseling process, school counselors use theories and techniques including developmental, cognitive-behavioral, person-centered listening and influencing skills, systemic, family, multicultural, narrative, and play therapy. Transitional issues to ensure successful transitions to high school are a key area including career exploration and assessment with seventh and eighth grade students. Sink, Akos, Turnbull, & Mvududu released a study in 2008 confirming the effectiveness of middle school comprehensive school counseling programs in Washington state.
High school counselor
counselors provide academic, career, college access, and personal and social competencies with developmental classroom lessons and planning to all students, and individual and group counseling for some students and their families to meet the developmental needs of adolescents. Emphasis is on college access counseling at the early high school level as more school counseling programs move to evidence-based work with data and specific results that show how school counseling programs help to close achievement, opportunity, and attainment gaps ensuring all students have access to school counseling programs and early college access/affordability/admission activities. The breadth of demands high school counselors face, from educational attainment to student social and mental health, has led to ambiguous role definition. Summarizing a 2011 national survey of more than 5,330 middle school and high school counselors, researchers argued: "Despite the aspirations of counselors to effectively help students succeed in school and fulfill their dreams, the mission and roles of counselors in the education system must be more clearly defined; schools must create measures of accountability to track their effectiveness; and policymakers and key stakeholders must integrate counselors into reform efforts to maximize their impact in schools across America".Transitional issues to ensure successful transitions to college, other post-secondary educational options, and careers are a key area. The high school counselor helps students and their families prepare for post-secondary education including college and careers by engaging students and their families in accessing and evaluating accurate information on what the National Office for School Counselor Advocacy calls the eight essential elements of college and career counseling: College Aspirations, Academic Planning for Career and College Readiness, Enrichment and Extracurricular Engagement, College and Career Exploration and Selection Processes, College and Career Assessments, College Affordability Planning, College and Career Admission Processes, and Transition from High School Graduation to College Enrollment. Some students turn to private college admissions advisors but there is no research evidence that private college admissions advisors have any effectiveness in assisting students attain selective college admissions.
Lapan, Gysbers & Sun showed correlational evidence of the effectiveness of fully implemented school counseling programs on high school students' academic success. Carey et al.'s 2008 study showed specific best practices from high school counselors raising college-going rates within a strong college-going environment in multiple USA-based high schools with large numbers of students of non-dominant cultural identities.