Blog Entry #2

After my meltdown last week about not understanding a comprehensive school counseling program this week I am definitely feeling much better. After this week’s readings and how much they corroborate some of my recent pre-practicum articles I think that I have a more than decent understanding of a comprehensive school counseling program. All of these readings made mention of ASCA tenants of improving the achievement of students at an academic, social and career/vocational level which I was already aware – but not sure – of when we were in class last week. Then there are the obvious aspects that people tend to overlook such as in-class instruction, group counseling/instruction, individual counseling sessions, and consultation with stakeholders. As well as being an advocate and leader. But the primary thing I was truly unaware of until this week’s reading were the need to be a researcher through being data driven using evaluation. The McGannon, Carrey, & Dimmit (2005) article definitely was enlightening in this regard detailing how even if your program is effective, without data you cannot advocate how effective it is and whether or not it is hitting on those three goals (academic, social and career). Moreover, it made it clear that if your program isn’t hitting the target goals or you are just running your program simply because it appears to work then you can rely on the emergence of the various groups listed towards the end of the article. You can always look to them for other generalizable programs that you can potentially implement at a basal level to bring about change in where your school actually is having issues. Despite all this, as the article said, you’re still going to have to be remedial/responsive regardless of how successful your program is at being preventative and proactive in aligning with the ASCA mandates.

As for the text, I can tell I am going to thoroughly love these case studies. They’re doing an excellent job of shaping a negative portrayal of a counselor or school system that is failing to adhere, not only to NCLB but to an ASCA model which we’re finding out are very much aligned with one another. Seriously, in that situation I probably would have been out of a job due to my anger. From Chapter 2 of the Dollarhide & Saginik (2012) text, I liked the 8 tenants proposed by UCLA because I full-heartedly agree that each other should be professed for an individual to lead a fulfilling development from childhood to adulthood. What was very interesting to read was the way schools can systematically kill a child’s enthusiasm over a 12 year period and the role we MUST play in collaboratively working to prevent that. I also enjoyed the concept of developmentally appropriate education as some of its constructs fall in line with social-emotional learning programs. The Stafford & Hill study within the Whiston & Sexton (1998) review was a study I was interested in although I’m worried that it is a bit outdated given it’s nearly two decades old. But I did enjoy that the Whiston article was filled with lots of examples of potential evaluation methodologies.

Finally, something I really liked gaining an understanding about from this week’s readings was learning the difference between the two types of research. Despite finding several counselors online that utilize “Bucket Filler” and “Character Trait” education curricula I’ve only been able to find one or two action research/evaluations on the two whereas I’ve been able to find a lot of articles about generalized research on social-emotional learning programs. All in all, I felt a lot better about this week’s readings in comparison to last week’s.

Dollarhide, C.T., & Saginak, K.A. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs 

         (2nd Ed.). New York:   Pearson, Inc.

McGannon, W., Carey, J., & Dimmit, C. (2005). The current status of school counseling

outcome research. Center for School Counseling Outcome Research, 2.

Whiston, S. C., & Sexton, T. L. (1998). A review of school counseling outcome research:

Implications for practice. Journal Of Counseling & Development, 76(4), 412-426.

doi:10.1002/j.1556-6676.1998.tb02700.x.