Blog 9 Chapter 11 and Mason & McMahon (2009) Article

I was waiting for the vignettes to become more political and data based.  It is not surprising to me that in the vignette the school counselor was asked to provide data to back up what she does all day, especially when you are in front of a board and the administration and the staff along with their programs are on the chopping block.  When push comes to shove are jobs are always going to be put on the line because are jobs are not mandated, it isn’t stated in any law or amendment that each school public or private needs to have a school counselor.  Which is also why you see one counselor in an elementary building working with k-2 which is equivalent to over 600 students.  How can you affectively guide or counsel 600 people? The only way a school counselor gets their name and what they do out to all of those students is through classroom lessons and making themselves available in the hall ways, during lunch and at bus times.

After looking at the leadership self evaluation we took in class, I can see why I had given myself higher marks then the person who graded me.  They don’t see me everyday, they don’t see how I handle emergency and crisis in the school setting, and they don’t see how I micromanage a household.  They only see me in the graduate school setting, and that’s okay because I know my capabilities and when I excel.  I wasn’t given bad marks just more 4’s then 5’s, which is understandable given the above lack of knowing me outside of college classes.

I believe that leadership is essential for all school counselors along with collaboration.   Mason & McMahon (2009) described the leadership skill set as advocacy, collaboration, and systemic change and to assume a certain degree of leadership.  Mason & Mahon (2009) wanted to assess leadership practices of school counselors, and to analyze the relationships among demographics, experience, training, work setting, and leadership practices (Mason & Mahon, 2009).  This article was interesting and full of information, the various definitions of leadership was interesting to see.  It seems as though this is a common problem across the educational board, concrete definitions of what, when, where, how and who.  I think that the ASCA National Model has done a great job of being more specific as to what school counselors are responsible for, which in turn helps us to inform others like the administration or the board of the school district.

Reference

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

Mason, E. C., & McMahon, G. (2009). Leadership practices of school counselors. Professional school counseling, 13(2), 107-115.