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School counselor

Education occupation of guidance and counseling

  • 15 min read
  • 7 chapters

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Purpose

Professional school counselors ideally implement a school counseling program that promotes and enhances student achievement. A framework for appropriate and inappropriate school counselor responsibilities and roles is outlined in the ASCA National Model.

School counselors are employed in elementary, middle, and high schools, in district supervisory settings, in Counselor Education faculty positions (usually with an earned Ph.D. in Counselor Education in the USA or related graduate doctorates abroad), and post-secondary settings doing academic, career, college access/affordability/admission, and social-emotional counseling, consultation, and program coordination. Their work includes a focus on developmental stages of student growth, including the needs, tasks, and student interests related to those stages.

Professional school counselors meet the needs of students in four basic domains: academic development, career development and college access/affordability/admission, and social-emotional development (Dahir & Campbell, 1997; Hatch & Bowers, 2003, 2005; ASCA, 2012). Knowledge, understanding and skill in these domains are developed through classroom instruction, appraisal, consultation, counseling, coordination, and collaboration. For example, in appraisal, school counselors may use a variety of personality and career assessment methods (such as the Self-Directed Search [SDS] or Career Key [based on the Holland Codes]) to help students explore career and college needs and interests.

Schools play a key role in assessment, access to services, and possible referral to appropriate outside support systems. They provide intervention, prevention, and services to support students' academic, career, and post-secondary education as well as social-emotional growth. The role of school counselors is expansive. School counselors address mental health issues, crisis intervention, and advising for course selection. School counselors consult with all stakeholders to support student needs and may also focus on experiential learning, cooperative education, internships, career shadowing, and entrance to specialized high school programs.

Methods

The four main school counseling program interventions include school counseling curriculum classroom lessons and annual academic, career/college access/affordability/admission, and social-emotional planning for every student; and group and individual counseling for some students.

School counselor interventions include individual and group counseling for some students. For example, if a student's behavior is interfering with his or her achievement, the school counselor may observe that student in a class, provide consultation to teachers and other stakeholders to develop (with the student) a plan to address the behavioral issue(s), and then collaborate to implement and evaluate the plan. They also provide consultation services to family members such as college access/affordability/admission, career development, parenting skills, study skills, child and adolescent development, mental health issues, and help with school-home transitions.

School counselor interventions for all students include annual academic/career/college access/affordability/admission planning K–12 and leading classroom developmental lessons on academic, career/college, and social-emotional topics. The topics of mental health, multiculturalism (Portman, 2009), anti-racism, and school safety are important areas of focus for school counselors. Often school counselors will coordinate outside groups to help with student needs such as academics, or coordinate a program that teaches about child abuse or drugs, through on-stage drama.

School counselors develop, implement, and evaluate school counseling programs that deliver academic, career, college access/affordability/admission, and social-emotional competencies to all students in their schools. For example, the ASCA National Model includes the following four main areas:

  • Foundation (Define as of 2019) – a school counseling program mission statement, a vision statement, a beliefs statement, SMART Goals; ASCA Mindsets & Behaviors & ASCA Code of Ethics;
  • Delivery System (Deliver as of 2019) – how school counseling core curriculum lessons, planning for every student, and individual and group counseling are delivered in direct and indirect services to students (80% of school counselor time);
  • Management System (Manage as of 2019) – calendars; use of data tool; use of time tool; administrator-school counselor agreement; school counseling program advisory council; small group, school counseling core curriculum, and closing the gap action plans; and
  • Accountability System (Assess as of 2019) – school counseling program assessment; small group, school counseling core curriculum, and closing-the-gap results reports; and school counselor performance evaluations based on school counselor competencies.

The school counseling program model (ASCA, 2012, 2019) is implemented using key skills from the National Center for Transforming School Counseling's Transforming School Counseling Initiative: Advocacy, Leadership, Teaming and Collaboration, and Systemic Change.

School Counselors are expected to follow a professional code of ethics in many countries. For example, In the US, they are the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) School Counselor Ethical Code, the American Counseling Association (ACA) Code of Ethics, and the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) Statement of Principles of Good Practice (SPGP).

Role confusion

School counselors have constantly reported being burdened with tasks not related to the emotional, social, and academic support of their students, such as clerical activities, serving as substitute teachers, or conducting disciplinary actions. This has led to role confusion, the phenomenon of school counselors losing sight of the roles and responsibilities they were trained to do. Role confusion arose as a result of the lack of a clear definition for what the day-to-day role of a counselor is in various school settings before ASCA in 2012. Even after ASCA guidelines were published, many counselors were unable to shift their roles and responsibilities to match these guidelines and continued their roles as they were prior.

Role confusion has also been attributed to general overwork of counselors, as even if they know what they can do, they do not have the time or resources to serve their students. ASCA guidelines recommend a 250:1 ratio of students to school counselors, yet figured from 2014-2015 school year show that on average, schools have a 482:1 ratio of students to counselors.

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