Blog 5 Chapter 6

Chapter 6 opened with what seems to be a school counselor’s nightmare, the school-counseling program lacks a clear philosophical basis, mission, and organizational structure (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2012, pg. 86).  It seems that the school counselors district wide need to come together and figure out a plan of action, a delivery method and consistency across the board.  I believe that the districts decision to provide funding to educate the school counselors in a comprehensive school counseling training was the district acting accountable for what was going on.  Hopefully the school counselors’ learn programs through the trainings and delivery systems can be modified to fit the schools students and needs of the district. 

The Results Based Model targets the academic, career, and personal/social domains, and “integrates the program into the educational experience of each student” (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2012, pg. 95).  This delivery approach seems like it will benefit the school, administration, students, parents and community.  However, to know for sure, there will need to be data collected before and after the program that they choose begins.  And by data I don’t mean feelings about the counselors from the students or parents, but raw data like grades, absenteeism, and behaviors.

While reading the article “Initiating Leadership by Introducing and Implementing the ASCA National Model” it was very apparent that schools were in danger and school counselors were not even considered to be apart of the solution.  This to me is terrible considering we have spent a lot of our time learning Solution Focused Model, and that helping is what we want to do.  We as school counselors want a positive end result just like the teachers and administrators, we need to be given a chance to show our value.  In this article they discussed the national crisis of the 1980’s and how there was a lot of talk about school reform and A Nation at Risk.  It seems to me that they realized there was a huge problem and school counselors wanted to help, the development of the ASCA National Model helped a great deal.  The model gave a foundation for school counselors to follow, a framework to base their theoretical orientation off of. 

Because of the past there are negative connotations regarding school counselors, we only see bad children or we play head games with the children.  School counselors want to give every child a chance to be great and they want to be able to teach guidance lessons to further the education process in an emotionally and mentally acceptable way.  However, our job is really cut out for us we are entering a world where most of the school counselors in the area are veterans, they have 20+ years experience and are set in their ways.  Most of which are not using the ASCA National Model and there fore when or if we obtain a job we will have to start from scratch developing the model and teaching it to the administration.

Reference

Dollarhide, C. T., & Saginak, K. A. (2011). Comprehensive school counseling programs, k-12 delivery systems in action. Pearson College Div.

Schwallie-Giddis, P., ter Maat, M., & Pak, M. (2003). Initiating leadership by introducing and implementing the ASCA National Model. Professional School Counseling, 6(3), 170-173.