Blog 3: Role Confusion

I found the Walsh, Barrett, and DePaul (2007) article interesting because it classified the day-to-day activities of school counselors into a number of roles that I had not really considered as top priorities. Prior to reviewing this article, I had assumed that student contact time was critical, and any activity which increased individual student contact time would be considered most beneficial for students. Instead, the authors propose a three-prong approach to service delivery which involves the following: 1)approaching school counseling from a programmatic perspective, 2) developing collaborative practice among teachers, other school leaders, parents, and community organizations and members, and 3) focusing on prevention on advocacy. In this way, counselors are providing more "indirect services, such as consultation with a parent or teacher," and providing fewer "direct services, such as individual counseling and crisis management" (2007, p. 373). According to the research, a number of schools benefitted from this model of guidance service delivery, which resulted in better supports for student learning and development. Additionally, the majority of principals interviewed indicated that the activities of their counselors resulted in various improvements, from increased family and community engagement to increasing the number of prevention and intervention services available for students in their schools. Dollarhide and Saginak (2012) elaborate on some recommendations for service delivery even further by outlining the six qualities of comprehensive school counseling programs, which include the following attributes: holistic, systemic, balanced, proactive, infused into the academic curriculum, and reflective. Many of these qualities, particularly such terms as holistic and and systemic, are related to the ASCA model described above. Dollarhide and Sagniak describe all of these qualities in more detail in the chapter while providing specific examples, which I found especially useful, but many of these detailed descriptions focused on examples of individual student interventions, which seemed to deviate somewhat from the recommendations outlined in the Walsh, Barrett, and DePaul article. For example, the Domains/Activities/Partners model (DAP) highlights the primary activities of school counselors as counseling, educating, consulting and collaboration, and leadership, coordination, and advocacy, while concluding that counseling is the most essential activity out of all of these roles. This seems to contradict some of the recommendations outlined in the ASCA model detailed in the Walsh, Barrett, and DePaul article, leaving me somewhat confused in the end about what my top priorities should be in my future role... Dollarhide, C., and Saginak, K. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs: K-12 delivery systems in action, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Walsh, M., Barrett, J., and DePaul, J. (2007). Day-to-Day activities of school counselors: Alignment with new directions in the field and the ASCA national model. Professional School Counseling, 10, 370-378).