Blog #9

            I really liked the Chapter in the text and I also liked the accompanying article. What I truly enjoyed was the fact that the two seemed to be connected in the information that they presented. What I mean by this is that the article seemed as if it was used to help create the chapter within the Dollarhide & Saginak (2012) text. I say this because the required readings both contained similar citations and the article even contained a citation to a previous Dollarhide article on counseling. All in all they both worked together to help change the perceptions that I had on what exactly it means to be in a leadership position as a counselor.

            My preconception of what it means to be a leader as a school counselor existed prior to joining this program. Heck, even still, without sounding too introspective I think that my perception remained that way up until reading this chapter and article. My belief on what it meant to be a leader as a counselor was that I was to inherently lead children as I would be an authoritative figure in the school setting. Thus I would set a good example for them, show them what it meant to be an outstanding member of the school/community, and to a lesser extent help them with their problems. With that last aspect I’ve always seen it as the primary role of the job, in my opinion, but I didn’t see it as “leading” per se. Ideally I thought I would achieve all of this simply through just counseling them and implementing a guidance program that promote personal/social, academic and career development. After reading the chapter I see how that does indeed come into play but I also see that I was overlooking some aspects. Essentially I was focusing on the pre-conceived notion of what it means to be a counselor and how that is being a leader. However, I was ignoring what we have learned all semester about additional counselor roles because these roles play a part in counselor leadership too

            The book was basically able to simplify the fact that everything that we do is in some way, shape, or form leadership. Moreover, that all those roles and how they come into play in leadership can be classified into three aspects; Advocating, Consultation, and Coordination. All of these with the present and future orientation of achieving positive goals.

            When we advocate we serve as leaders because we are helping and bettering the individuals for whom we are advocating.  Persons that we will advocate for will primarily be at the individual level via students but as counselors we can also advocate for the family, school or local community systems in an effort to improve the present and future outlooks of our students. This touches on/equates to my idea of “helping students with their problems.” Even more so if they’re unaware of them. An excellent example of this in the text was multicultural competence/advocacy.

When we consult we are immediately placed into the expert role in hopes that our expertise can help solve the issue at hand. This alone makes us a leader. We are brought in pre-emptively and reactively in hopes to solve a problem that it is believed that teachers cannot handle on their own. Additionally, the fact that the role of consultation is to help in advocating for the client also makes us a leader.

Finally, when we coordinate our comprehensive guidance programs this serves in a leadership role. With accountability backing our guidance program we can continue to be the “expert” in this situation inherently placing us into a leadership role. Additionally, in installing such a program we aim to implement change to show our students how to be outstanding members of a cohort and eventually society. This touches on/equates to my idea of modeling for them and teaching them what it means to be an outstanding member of the school and community.

So while my initial thoughts on being a leader as a counselor were “correct” to an extent they were very basic in nature and missed a wide array of/oversimplified the leadership roles.

            I would like to close this Blog with an interesting note. I found it intriguing how the “Leadership” chapter could very much apply to the conversations we had last week. Perhaps this is because they dealt with advocacy and consultation. With the Chapter 10 vignette we talked about advocating for students who did not feel like the “young” teachers were doing an adequate job. This certainly places you in a leader role in two ways; a leader for the students and a leader amongst your coworkers in bringing about systematic change to fix this situation. I think that example perfectly demonstrated leadership through advocating and consultation. I also believe the conversation sparked by Nakia, Ami and myself last week also is very much related to this week’s topic. We, as a class, got into talking about waiting to implement your comprehensive program after a year in the school to not ruffle feathers and most (if not all) of the class agreed. The Mason (2010) article seemed very much to corroborate this as it showed younger/newer counselors, even with ASCA training tend to doubt themselves as leaders but their coworkers might feel this way too. However, unlike the article I believe that this shows leadership in and of itself by displaying some leadership qualities listed on Page 191 in the text; diplomacy/tact, cooperation, tolerance for stress, and broadmindedness.

All in all I thought this was an excellent chapter and I very much looked forward to writing this blog.

Dollarhide, C.T., & Saginak, K.A. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs (2nd

            Ed.). New York:   Pearson, Inc.

Mason, E. (2010). Leadership practices of school counselors and counseling program

implementation. NAASP Bulletin, 94 (4), 274-285. DOI: 10.1177/0192636510395012