ACA Blog

This weekend, I was reminiscing of what I was doing this same time last year. What popped into my mind was the following: Well, it was nearly half way through the school year and I could confidently say that things were in full swing. I conducted classroom guidance lessons for all of my second graders on tattling, which was identified area of need. I completed “at-risk conferences” with all of my 7th graders and their caregivers, when possible. I collaborated with an English teacher and have integrated my career exploration workbooks into her 7th and 8th grade curriculum. My intern has developed a keen understanding of how a school counselor functions and is working quite well independently.

This weekend my husband and I were watching our favorite morning show ‘Up with Chris Hayes’. I like this show because it makes me think. Each weekend intelligent, interesting, and well-informed people discuss the issues. I can almost feel my brain gaining density as I listen to the conversation. In the last segment of the show four fiction authors were the focus. Ayana Mathis, author of ‘The 12 Tribes of Hattie’, used the term ‘severely impoverished’ in making her point.

Storm clouds form at the onset of a rain storm. Generally that is a sign to prepare accordingly… Should you choose to ignore the signs then the consequences can be greater than the steps toward prevention.

This series of blogs is excerpted from a chapter of a book that I contributed to. It is being shared here in the hopes that it may help to provide some foundation for ideas in your area. Please excuse the formality of the writing.

Who is responsible for providing supervision for professional school counselors? Is it the responsibility of their site administrator? Or perhaps, a district level individual whose job entails overseeing various educational support professionals?

I heard this phrase nearly half a dozen years ago when I was working as a school counselor intern for a local school district. I was collaborating with a few school counselors in creating a presentation for the upcoming California Association of School Counselors’ (CASC) annual conference. Little did I know that this phrase would continue to resonate with me. When I think of continuous improvement, I think of counselors and educators in general. No matter what our specific role is, we should all be striving towards continuous improvement. So what would happen if we didn’t strive for such a thing? Well, I believe we would be stuck with status quo, in stagnant position.

Making the decision to pack up my entire life and move across the country from California to Florida was not so easy; I had lived in Southern California my entire life. My whole social network of friends, family, and colleagues were no longer at my fingertips. I would like to say that I knew my environment quite well and became known as the “Resource Queen” within my colleagues. Whether it was providing a parent a referral to access medical and mental health services or a fellow professional school counselor with an organization within their community, I seemed to usually have someone or somewhere to refer a person to.

When a student walks into your life to so share with you a secret, there is no telling what will come embedded in the story. The student starts to whisper the little tales gone by and suddenly a heavy load is place upon your shoulder. The story does unfold in pieces and in patches and then the client slows a while to wonder if to break the secret open. There is often such a struggle on weighing the pros and cons but when you live the patience and when you apply the art and craft of psychotherapy the client finds release. On helping a certain client to break her silence I ended up penning the process in the following poem:

This week I found myself mulling over the connection between counseling, culture and guns. Recently, a situation arose in our local elementary school where fifth grade student threatened to shoot another fifth grader with his gun. The child who issued the threat, aged 10, owned a gun. The gun was a present for his ninth birthday and was happily shown off to friends at his birthday party, much as a tech-savvy adult might show off their newest gadget.

Often times, I hear adults make statements such as “Oh, yea, I remember my guidance counselor” or “I never saw my guidance counselor; I didn’t need to.” And maybe this is just a pet peeve of mine, but I get irritated by this. Perhaps in the past the term ‘guidance counselor’ was appropriate. Students and even the general public held the belief that a guidance counselor was simply present to provide guidance and advice. A high school guidance counselor simply sat in their office and met with students who needed help deciding on classes to take. Or perhaps, a student in distress would see the guidance counselor to ask for advice about what to do. On the whole, the guidance counselor was available, if you sought out such a resource. In the early to mid-1900’s, a list of duties was identified for counselors. The 1950’s to 1970’s school counseling began to form a foundation for development of a program. Counselors were seen as a part of a system: the school system. By the 1980’s to 1990’s, developing, organizing, and managing a school counseling program began to cultivate.