Post 5

I think that Chapter 6 very much served to hammer home the point that came into my mind from the Chapter 5 blog I posted last week. It also corroborated what my interviewee on Tuesday morning stated in that a lot of practicing counselors don’t consciously think to themselves “I am adhering to Standard 1.A.1 of the National Model” but rather that if they are serving a student either emotionally/socially, academically, or career-wise through an established delivery system then they are hitting a standard at some basal level and certainly doing their job. In this way you’re more than likely falling in line with the ASCA National Model to an exuberant degree.

Perhaps I was wrong to do so but the link I clicked actually contained two separate articles and I read and wrote about both of them. While I certainly enjoyed the second article more the first one was not without its own merit.

The first article corroborated a lot of what I did for my literature review over the Spring semester and during the Summer. Just about every single thing that I read had the same common themes that are present within the ASCA National Model. However, none of them ever referred to the National Model despite fulfilling all of the criteria. It kind of reinforced my belief that most counselors are engaging in these activities and so when I hear stories from some of the cohort’s interviews for the Research Project about Counselors who aren’t at least corroborating with the National Model I become confused. I mean I can see how an older counselor might now know about the Model but to not do things that fall in line with it like the various delivery systems listed in the book just seems near impossible to me and yet… there it is in plain sight. However, a lot of the time I can see people overlooking the accountability aspect of the model because it’s something I had almost never really considered even when being aware of data recording procedures. Either way the methods/ideas presented on how to implement the Model in a district that doesn’t do so currently is certainly a good model to utilize and reminds me of the RAMP conference Nicole brought up in class. What the article also pointed out to me was that we kind of get National Model attention in more than just this course. Beforehand we had all taken Group as well as Theory I where we practiced at least 2 forms of delivery. But we were also often times encouraged in those classes to think about our personal philosophies and platforms which are essentially the bases for our comprehensive models.

I absolutely loved the second article and think that it is something that can help with my group – the Elementary one – for our CSCP. It kind of corroborated my beliefs about ways to effect academic achievement. I had thought that social and career interventions could be looked at as having a positive effect on academics but didn’t know if there were really any empirical findings to say that this counted. But seeing this it made me very happy. When I think of academic achievement and the role of a counselor I think of what inherently happens when a disruptive or misbehaved child is able to remain in the classroom and no longer interrupts their peers’ learning as well. So I’m glad to see this is factual rather than something I just imagined in my head because honestly for my CSCP academic portion all I could think of was PSSA Pep rallies. Overall, the second article highlighted that small group interventions can serve as the empirical findings for evidence-based practice which definitely puts a smile on my face.

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