Blog 10

I found the vignette at the beginning of chapter 9 in Dollarhide and Saginak’s (2012) text to be particularly relevant to my recent experiences. For instance, when I shadowed an elementary school counselor a few weeks ago, she told me that she rarely eats lunch in the faculty room because often the teachers are complaining and gossiping, which she likes to stay away from.  This struck me as interesting, because in Donna’s situation, she sees this “gossip” as an opportunity to interact with teachers about ways to solve school-wide problems collectively. I feel that Donna, while she had good intentions to communicate with the teachers, was a little too passive aggressive when they somewhat accused her of perpetuating the school’s drug problem. I know that my own tendencies in situations like this may be too aggressive, so I sought to determine a happy medium. Instead of passively suggesting that we all be educated, I feel that Donna could have utilized her space in that conversation by telling the teachers specifically that the first step, especially if it is being “heard” that she is not doing her job correctly as a school counselor, is to let her into their classrooms to engage the students in positive choice-making.

                This vignette (p. 141) also seemed relevant to the Wiki that our group is making. We are making calendars and planning lessons that sometimes involve classroom time, and that depends on teacher cooperation. Because of this, our group made a point to say that we would be giving the teachers months of “warnings” (for lack of a better word) that we would need a specific amount of time in their classroom on a specific day.

                I also found Akos’s (2005) article on middle school counseling interesting because that is an age level that I have never shown any interest in. My apathy strikes me as odd, because I have noticed that people usually tend to gravitate toward the field that they were either helped the most or helped the least and for me, middle school fits into both of those categories. I was part of a grief counseling group at my middle school, but I also felt  that it was one of the worst periods of my life—a period when I could have used a school counselor’s presence. Instead of working to fix that problem, however, I shy away from even thinking about working in a middle school.  Akos does well to point out the important aspects of middle school (i.e., transitioning, puberty) and provides specific programs in the framework of the ASCA National Model.

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.