Post #14

I had mixed feelings about some of the findings and suggestions in the article we read this week.  Dahir, Burnham, and Stone (2009) found that high school counselors were the lowest ranking of all levels on School Counseling Priorities, School Setting Perceptions, Personal-Social Development, and Program Management, while achieving the highest scale scores on the Career and Postsecondary Development subscale.  They suggest that based on these findings, “high school counselors would benefit from a stronger understanding of the value of classroom guidance, group counseling, and work with students around issues embedded in the personal-social development standards” (Dahir et al., 2009, p. 191).  I would tend to disagree with the first two suggestions, while agreeing with the third.  Based on my shadowing and interviewing experience with high school counselors, I believe that high school counselors are aware of the benefits of classroom guidance and group counseling, but high school teachers may not be.  The high school counselor I interviewed explicitly said, “It is very difficult to get into classrooms to teach guidance lessons [in the high school].  Teachers are very hesitant to share their instructional time due to all of the standards and time constraints they are dealing with.”  She suggested that one way around this issue is to collaborate with teachers and co-teach lessons that address both guidance needs and the core curriculum.  The high school schedule and teachers’ hesitation to release students from class also makes planning small group meetings a difficult task.  For instance, the students who might participate in a grief group would most likely be assigned to different lunch periods and flex periods.  Those times are essentially the only part of the day when students are not involved in direct instruction, so finding a way to accommodate the students who might benefit from participating in a group during the school day becomes an especially arduous (although not completely impossible) task.

As for the third suggestion that high school counselors would benefit from working with students around issues embedded in the personal-social development standards, I would say that I had similar findings when evaluating the curriculum of 3 high school guidance programs for our CSCP project.  As I researched, it quickly became evident to me that if high school guidance programs covered personal-social development issues at all, most of them did so within the first two years of high school.  After those first two years, nearly all of the curriculum is focused on academic and career development.  However, I would argue that when preparing students to transition out of high school and into the great big world of college and careers, the school’s role is about much more than simply academics.  Students need to be prepared to think independently and rationally when making decisions.  They need to feel confident on their own two feet.  They need to know that friendship transition can and will happen.  They need to learn how to navigate relationships with complete strangers in a shared-room situation.  Perhaps these are things that high school guidance programs believe are adequately addressed in the first two years of the high school curriculum, or perhaps high schools rely on colleges to take over in educating students on such topics during freshmen orientation, or perhaps they believe that life experience will be the best teacher.  Whatever the case may be, if I am a high school counselor someday, I would find it beneficial to distribute needs assessments to upperclassmen which would cover topics in the personal-social domain.  I may also be interested in polling former students through web-based surveys to determine if they found any areas of their high school’s guidance program to be lacking as they look back on their experience in high school and transition into the world of work or college.

Reference

Dahir, C.A., Burnham, J. J., Stone, C. (2009). Listen to the voices: School counselors and comprehensive school counseling programs. Professional School Counseling, 12 (3), 182-192.