At the conclusion of Dollarhide and Saginak’s (2012) chapter
on the ASCA National Model, they ask whether the outline of the ASCA National
Model that they’ve given has been comforting or intimidating to us. I definitely felt a combination of
both. The intimidation factor mostly
relates to the expectations placed on our profession as school counselors. There is a lot of thought and planning that
will go into our academic year.
Everything that we do must be intentional and fit within the framework of
the Model. However, having the Model as
a template is also comforting. As a
person who identifies more as a developer than a designer, I love having a
foundation to start with. I hate it when
someone gives me a blank piece of paper and tells me to write about whatever I
want. I like the guidelines that the
Model provides. I also like knowing that
if all school counselors practice according to the Model, more students will be
receiving the same equitable services within their school districts and even
across state lines. Similarly, I
appreciated and identified with the themes of the National Model: leadership,
advocacy, collaboration, and systemic change.
These are all words that I am passionate about embodying in my
work. I particularly want to discuss
collaboration in more detail, as it is something that can be difficult to
achieve, yet is vital to the process of systemic change. As Dollarhide and Saginak point out through
the use of a quote by Richard Long Harkness, committee work is not often something
that people find valuable. Working with
people who have different backgrounds, opinions, and needs can feel like a
train going nowhere and accomplishing nothing.
People don’t always agree on what steps to use in order to reach a
common goal or outcome. However, there
is also value in group work. First, having
multiple perspectives within a group can lead to a more comprehensive and effective
program. Second, as my grandmother would
often say, “Many hands make light work.”
The more people we have on our team working toward the same goal, the
more students we can effectively reach than we would have been able to working
alone.
While
I’m on the topic of effective programs, I’d like to also address the findings
about Strengths-Based School Counseling (SBSC) as discussed in the Galassi,
Griffin, and Akos (2008) article. According to this article, a SBSC focuses on
strengths promotion rather than problem prevention or reduction, however,
problem prevention/reduction is often accomplished through strengths
promotion. Recently, I asked a
practicing school counselor whether or not her school’s proactive approach to
guidance curriculum had resulted in less reactive referrals. She responded that she still felt like she
spent a good deal of time focusing reacting to students’ urgent needs. More or less, she said, “Students are still
going to have crises arise in their lives that we need to be prepared to deal
with, and no amount of proactive programming can prevent that from happening.” However, I believe that a counselor from a
strengths-based perspective would be inclined to help students search for
assets that they already possess that will help them through the crisis. In this way, a strengths-based approach seems
very compatible with a solution-focused one, and I could see myself using both
in my future work with students.
References
Dollarhide, C.T., & Saginak, K. A. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs:
K-12 delivery systems in action. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Galassi, J.P., Griffin, D., & Akos, P. (2008). Strengths-based school counseling and the
ASCA national model. Professional School Counseling (12), 2, 176-181.
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