Blog 3

The vignette at the beginning of Dollarhide and Saginak’s (2012) chapter really hit home with me (p. 51). Not because I’ve been in a gang or anything, but one of my friends and coworkers has shared a lot of the same issues as Ty. I learned about a lot of the trials he went through when I worked with him in Multicultural Counseling. He often expressed that his mom struggles with money and needs help, he hates working at our job, and he just wants to go to college so that he can move up in life, even if he doesn’t know what he wants to accomplish with a degree. Ty’s story was strikingly similar. I like to think that after learning about the different ways to counsel people in an urban environment, I would be able to be the relaxed but knowledgeable person that Ty would need. My problem with this vignette is that I don’t feel that “I’ll talk to mom about it” is the be-all end-all of the problem at hand. If Ty’s mom is pressuring him to help with money, does she seem like the type of person who will be available and/or willing to talk to Mr. Paulson about her son’s wellbeing? I would hope that she would, but I’m not sure that’s realistic.

                I think that taking the “new direction of practices” for counselors, as described in Walsh, Barrett, and DePaul’s (2007) article is crucial to the changing role of the school counselor. As we saw in class last night (aside from the strength of the evidence), there is intertwining in the counselors role in dealing with career, academic, and social development. Because of this, it is important not to let families like Ty’s (or at least the family that I projected for Ty) deter a counselor from working with urban or under-privileged children. I think another important point made by the article is that changing the role of the counselor to benefit people in urban environments is a slow process, but an important one (p. 6). Although we may be working with teachers who don’t subscribe to the treatments we provide or parents who don’t seem as dedicated to their children as we are, we must continue on that we can change the school in order to benefit the over achievement of all students.

Dollarhide, C.T., & Saginak, K.A. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs (2nd Ed.). New York:   Pearson, Inc.

Walsh, M. E., Barrett, J. G., & DePaul, J. (2007). Day-to-day activities of school counselors: Alignment with new directions in the field and the ASCA national model®. Professional School Counseling, 10(4), 370-378.