Chapter 2

Last week’s class discussion revolved around understanding more clearly what the roles of a school counselor truly is. The task that we are charged with is expansive and it makes me think of Nakia’s phrase from last week “wide but not deep”. We must be notable sources on many areas “academic, emotional/social and career development of students” (Dollarhide &Saginak, 2012, p.26). With a role this expansive it will certainly be a challenge to have a clearly defined roll. While reading Dollarhide’s text I began to realize that a clearly defined roll was a term that I may have to redefine. I like to think that something that is clearly defined has boundary lines, and very few grey areas. While thinking about this and the position of a school counselor I am anticipating there to be lots of role confusion as well as grey areas. Again, it is a good thing we have been encouraged from day one to be our own cheerleaders. 

In the McGannon article I was drawn to the distinctions between evaluation and research. As school counselors we are charged with ethical responsibilities that include evaluations of the programs we are doing. It is important to know that the programs we are continuing to use are effective and appropriate for the population they are targeted for. McGannon highlights the issues that while the evaluative piece is important it makes the generalizability of the results limited. While this information is crucial, it also adds a layer of confusion to our already clouded studies on counseling programs. It would be very hard to conclude that specific school counseling programs can be applied to multiple populations when the results are specific to a certain group. It is no secret that I have a learning disability, but my heart was warmed when the McGannon article described the positive benefits related to self-esteem for members who participated in group counseling. The National Panel for School Counseling Evidence Based Practices is something that without this article I would not have known about. I always wondered what the practice looked like for evaluating evidence-based practices and identifying rules for how to do this. In closing, it is increasingly imperative that as future school counselors we demonstrated evidence of effective practices. We need to be well versed in all things relevant to the school counseling field as well as other fields that are incorporated into the education field. Continued evaluation on the programs that we use can only move to increase our ability to be proficient productive counselors.

Dollarhide, C.T., & Saginak, K. A. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs: K-12 delivery systems in action. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

McGannon, W., Carey, J., & Dimmit, C. (2005). The current status of school counseling outcome research. Center for School Counseling Outcome Research, 2.