First off, I am glad that Dollarhide and Saginak (2012) devoted a chapter to curriculum delivery for comprehensive school counseling programs. This is one area that I feel may present some challenges for me as a future school counselor. I say this because I have never been a teacher and have never had the opportunity to implement a particular area of a curriculum. Although I work in a school; my classroom is run differently than any other classroom in the building. We have our own curriculum that it tailored to meet the needs of our specific students and is overseen by an outside group of consultants. With that being said; delivering a guidance curriculum lesson to an entire classroom seems somewhat scary to me. It appears that there is a lot of work that goes into incorporating a lesson into a classroom. For one; we will need to work closely with teachers and other stakeholders who are on board and want to see the comprehensive school counseling program succeed. Through every chapter; I am constantly reminded of the major components of the ASCA National Model; such as, collaboration, coordination, delivery systems, and outcomes.
I felt that Dollarhide and Saginak (2012) did a nice job of outlining the curriculum delivery process and offered helpful suggestions for future school counselors. One area that stood out to me was the section of assessing barriers to learning. Dollarhide and Saginak (2012) state that “students do not learn well when they are not able to focus--when events from their community, families, school, or classroom interfere with their ability to attend to learning” (p. 143). I am not putting blame on teachers by any means; however, when teachers have thirty plus students in their class it becomes difficult to know what types of challenges individual students may be facing. Most of the time when people hear the word “learning” they immediately think of teachers; however this is not always the case. This is where school counselors come into play. Students who are faced with a plethora of barriers to learning may seek out a school counselor to discuss these issues. Counselors can then take this to teachers and collaboratively work together to try and break down some of these barriers. I actually got to witness a similar situation when I shadowed a high school counselor a few weeks ago. A student was sent to her because of some issues that were occurring in the classroom. After meeting with the student for just a few minutes; it turns out that she was facing some pretty serious issues within her home life. Her parents were fighting and her mom had packed everything up to move out. After learning this information it is no wonder that the student was having trouble focusing in class. The counselor then met with the teacher, and together they formulated a plan to help the student. It was truly an amazing process from start to finish. If counselors can meet with students and then collaborate with teachers; maybe more barriers to learning could be broken down. Instead of placing blame on the students or teachers; it is important to try and understand the whole story instead of jumping to conclusions.
Continuing with the collaboration theme; counselors can use this tool to prepare guidance lessons within the curriculum. Using the concept of multiple intelligences; counselors have the ability to think outside the box and collaborate with teachers to create lessons where the teachers may already be covering the same information. This idea goes along with what Dollarhide and Saginak (2012) call curricular integration; “meaning that the developmental curriculum supports the academic standards and benchmarks of learning” (p. 147). This process will not only help collaboration efforts; but it may also help counselors define their roles within schools. If counselors; educators, and other key stakeholders were all on the same page; a comprehensive school counseling program could run more effectively and meet the needs of all students.
It is easy to see how the concepts discussed in the chapter could be applied to middle school counseling which was discussed in Akos’s (2005) article. Middle school can be a tough time for adolescents because there are numerous changes occurring physically, emotionally, and socially. There may even be more barriers to learning because of all the transitions occurring during this phase of life. However, this time period may offer counselors and educators with a unique opportunity to implement certain intervention and prevention programs for academic, career, and personal/social development. I say this because according to Akos (2005); “middle school students tend to become planful and idealistic, are able to examine gray areas in moral discussions, and build important and complex social structures” (p. 96). Counselors and educators can work together to deliver guidance curriculum that is unique to the developmental age; and can provide lessons that are educational and preventative in nature to reach a wide range of students in the academic, career, and personal/social domains.
Akos, P. (2005). The unique nature of middle school counseling. Professional School Counseling, 9(2), 95-103.
Dollarhide, C. T., & Saginak, K. A. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs. (2nd ed.). New York: Pearson, Inc.
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