Week 2 blog

            I reflected quite a bit while reading this week’s reading assignments and on how the school counselor can be a support to students, teachers, parents, and the community to create positive and proactive change.  I am starting to realize just how arduous of a task this all could prove to be some day. 

            First, I thought about how information from chapter 2 could shape a counselor’s role in helping to create an effective school.  As Dollarhide & Saginak (2012) state on p. 21, an effective school is characterized by “a caring environment with an emphasis on holistic development.”  I would agree that many secondary schools struggle to meet this goal.  In my experience it seems that there is less “buy in” to building a safe and welcoming community from both students and teachers.  Secondary teachers tend to be more focused on delivering the curriculum, and not so much on “teaching from the heart.”  While there are many schools that work to create a safe and caring environment, sometimes teachers are unwilling to do what is necessary to place social and emotional concerns as a priority. I was reminded of one of the qualities of effective counselors: courage and belief.  It truly takes courage to convince an entire faculty to promote an emotionally & socially nurturing environment, let alone to teach them how to make this happen.

            I thought that both articles were a nice resource to give us at least a starting point for programming when we are counselors.  It is true that counselors (as well as teachers!) do not have a lot of time to spend keeping up on research, so research reviews such as these are imperative. I had several thoughts while reading these articles, particularly the Whiston & Sexton (1998) article. The article emphasized the need for a more preventative approach to counseling, which, as they assert, may decrease the need for remediation in the long run (Whiston & Sexton, 1998).  I wonder, what would more preventative and developmental activities look like?  I have an easier time envisioning this in the elementary setting, where it is more practical for counselors to do lessons and activities in the classroom setting.  At the elementary level, teachers tend to be more flexible.  They are typically with the same group of students all day, and if they don’t get to something in their plans, it isn’t a major issue for them to push it back a day.  Elementary teachers also tend to be more attuned to doing non-curricular activities to promote social and emotional wellness.  In regards to secondary teachers, they have a strict curriculum to follow, and with 140+ students in about 6 to 7 classes per day, they are more rigid about “moving things along” and keeping their classes on the “same page.”  Aside from career activities, I have never seen counselors at the secondary level do any classroom interventions in which they themselves go into a classroom to do a lesson or activity.  I truly wonder what this would look like.  Would it be effective for counselors to work “behind the scenes” to provide teachers with lessons and activities that promote social and emotional wellness in students?  Do they go into particular classes to do activities?  The only experience I have with counselors providing lessons/activities is with my school’s Character Education program that started last year.  While character education sounds like a great preventative measure, the implementation is not effective.  All teachers teach a smaller (15-20) group of students a pre-planned lesson dealing with some sort of characteristic (i.e. honesty, persistence, respect, etc.).  It is done one Friday afternoon per month at the very end of the day.  While I, personally, love doing this type of thing (I teach social skills, and quite enjoy doing so), many teachers have no experience with the structure and implementation of these types of lessons.  I hear teachers and students complaining about Character Ed more than they praise it.  There has got to be a better way to execute such a program, but it all comes back to lack of time and willingness of administration and faculty.  In addition, I have heard teachers say that they wish they had training on how to most effectively execute Character Ed, but again, lack of time tends to prevent this. 

            Overall, I am left wondering what the most effective counselors do to reach all students preventatively and successfully at all levels, and how do they convince administrators and teachers that what they do is necessary for the development of student success?

References

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

Whiston, S. C., & Sexton, T. L. (1998). A review of school counseling outcome             research: Implications for practice. Journal Of Counseling & Development,             76(4), 412-426.