Chapter 1

            When I started to read this book, I felt some kind of relief when looking over the personal qualities of a school counselor.  I feel as if I have the qualities of a school counselor but when I read the title of the section, I thought what if some of the qualities listed do not match with mine.  I could always learn something new but for some reason I was anxious to see if my own personal qualities matched with what Dollarhide and Saginak (2012) had in the textbook.  I read the qualities of creativity and imagination, flexibility, courage and belief, passion, and commitment to diversity and social justice.  I can honestly say I do have all of those qualities, however if I would have read this a year ago I would have said otherwise.  I think the position I am in now as a GA of housing has really helped be to gain some of these qualities such as commitment to diversity and social justice and courage.  The experiences that I have been through have really helped me to gain some of these qualities but I feel that the major one for me is passion because if someone doesn’t have passion for the job they are going for, then they are not going to really care about what they are doing, which in this profession could really hurts students. Everyone should have a passion for what they are doing in life.

Dollarhide and Saginak (2012) go on to talk about the philosophies of school counseling and they are absolutely right when they describe that we cannot just simply look at school counseling as it is today.  We must look at the whole picture of what school counseling is now and how it came to be.  History is very important in today’s world even though most students do not believe so.  Why we write history down is so we do not make the same mistake twice.   Dollarhide and Saginak (2012) gave a great analogy in the text about opening a book to the middle and not knowing the characters of the book at all.  They say there is so much more to understanding the past so that we can develop the whole story and to fully understand.   When going over the philosophies of school counseling, I found that each one built up to what school counseling is today.  Guidance/careers emphasis, mental health emphasis, and developmental guidance all make up and create comprehensive school counseling programs (CSCP).  It is very interesting to see that happen to school counseling.  It looks like they just kept giving school counselors more and more work to them over the years.  It’s not a bad thing because all fields grow over time and change but looking over the CSCP and what I know about school counselors today, this profession is very busy.   It is going to be a challenge to make sure I cover and complete everything but for myself that won’t be too hard because I have a passion for this profession.

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