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School Counselors

The idea of a School Counselor was brought to light more than one hundred twenty years ago (Gysbers, 2017). School Counselors have gone by different titles and have had many different responsibilities over the years. When I was in grade school, for example, they were called Guidance Counselors. I will explain in this paper the evolution of the school counselor briefly, why the title Guidance Counselor is no longer valid, and finally, how I see myself in the role of School Counselor.

The Evolution of School Counselors

In the early 1900s there was an Industrial Revolution. Children and adults all worked together in the new industries. Schools decided that they needed to be involved in the training of students for the new jobs. Originally, the people who oversaw the guidance in the training were teachers and administrators. Gradually, the role was given to a hired professional who had a few years of schooling. As the role progressed, schools became aware that not only did these professionals need to oversee vocational matters, but also educational and social-emotional matters. The professionals gained the title of Guidance Counselors (paraphrase, Gysbers, 2017).

The Title of Guidance Counselor

Because of the scope of responsibilities of the Counselor, it was seen that the term Guidance Counselor only encompassed the vocational part of the services. Guidance Counselors were given the title School Counselor because they help shape the programs the school offers to support the students. The School Counselor’s responsibilities now are to assess the student or a situation, gather information on the student or situation, provide counseling, oversee placement of students, and follow up with students. Vocational Counseling is only a small part of what School Counselors do now (paraphrase, Gysbers, 2017).

How I See Myself as a School Counselor

As I said above, when I was in grade school, School Counselors were called Guidance Counselors. When I was eight years old, my parents divorced and from then on I moved back and forth between the two. Each time I went back to my dad, he lived in a new place. I had many emotional problems growing up and I do not remember any support from Guidance Counselors. At one school a Guidance Counselor put me in special education because she thought that I had problems learning when the actual problem had to do with my emotional problems and the fact that I missed some things moving from one school to the next.

As a School Counselor, I will get to know my students and try to truly understand them. I will do everything I can to make my office a safe haven for them where they can come and talk with me about anything without fear. I am a huge fan of Carl Rogers and Person-Centered Therapy. While I know I will not have a lot of time for actual therapy, I will still incorporate his goals when working with students.

I struggled a lot with bullying when I went to school. Between the bullying and being behind in credits because of moving so much, I ended up dropping out of high school. I tried the alternative school which was where they put me in a cubicle, gave me my textbooks and a list of assignments, and I was on my own. That did not work for me. As a School Counselor I would like to make a program that will help to eradicate bullying and incorporate Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills into it. Also, I would like to propose other alternatives to high school such as the online learning that came out of this current pandemic. In teacher education I learned that every student is unique and has his or her own way of learning. We can go farther as school professionals to help every student be successful and reduce the dropout rates.

When the role of School Counselor was first implemented it was primarily vocation-based. Now, a framework for a program has been put together to encompass all the needs of the students. We have come a long way in supporting the education and well-being of a student. But I feel there is a lot more we can do. I look forward to being in the thick of things and building programs that support student success.

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Personal Philosophy of School Counseling

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Personal Philosophy of School Counseling

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I believe that all students have the ability to succeed if given the proper tools and boundaries in which to do so. Albert Einstein said, “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Every student is unique in his or her own way and not everyone can be a success in the same way. A school needs to teach students different ways to achieve success and also allow the students to explore themselves and ways they can be successful.

A school counselor should get to know as many of his students as he can. Even just standing in the hallway during passing time and visiting with as many students as possible can help him get to know the students. Creating a safe and non-judgmental place for students to come and talk is also a great way for him to get to know students. Knowing students and what they need is the first step to being able to advocate for students. Then a counselor should follow through with advocating for students by using the means and programs available to him and if the means or program is not currently available, he should work to create them. As always, a counselor should follow the ethical standards set by the American School Counseling Association. Ethical standards guide school counselors by setting boundaries that protect the counselor as well as the students.

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Reflection on Harvard Implicit Bias Tests

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Reflection on Harvard Implicit Bias Tests

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I took two Harvard Implicit Bias Tests for this assignment. These tests were difficult for me as I have trouble with coordination. Having taken these tests before, I knew that I would not agree with the results. It is hard enough for me to get my fingers coordinated to press one button for one thing and another button for another during the first section or sections and then they change it. My thoughts after taking this test is that they count your errors and the time it takes you to press a button and score from that. It has nothing to do with your thoughts on the people, words or objects.

The first test I took was physically abled people versus physically disabled people. The test consisted of pictures of physically abled people as well as physically disabled people. It began by showing pictures of each kind of person and I had to press one of two buttons for each kind of person. Then it gave me good and bad words, such as glorious and glad and nasty and annoy, and I had to press a button reserved for each. Then they mixed types of people and good or bad words once with good words associated with physically abled people and vice versa. Last they had good words associated with physically disabled people and vice versa. My results were that I moderately prefer physically abled people. I disagree with these results.

The second test I took was like the first only it used pictures of white people and black people and also weapons and harmless objects. My results were that I associate black people with weapons and white people with harmless objects. I disagree with these results. One issue I had with this test was that the pictures were black and white and until I learned the pictures, I was not sure if I was seeing a black or white person in some pictures.

I am not a perfect person and I have misjudged people. But I try very hard not to judge people by the color of their skin or by their abilities or disabilities. There is always room to improve on everything, however I feel these results are invalid for me.

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All students deserve the opportunity to be successful in their own ways and to not be judged by any differences in learning, personality, or appearance.

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I believe that overall, I did well with the assessment. Without actually being on the job and doing these things, I cannot say how well I will do because it depends on the way things are done at the school I will work at in the future. Each school has its own policies and procedures. Each person could, theoretically, interpret things differently and I will have to adapt to the people I work with and the institution I work for to some extent. I will also bring my own views and possibly shift views of others.

I can say that there are two areas I will need to work on. First is leadership. While I am fairly confident in my ability to be a leader, I have not been given a chance to lead beyond leading small groups and individual sessions in pre-practicums and residencies in school. I have been researching different leadership styles that have been written about and also different great leaders in history and currently.

Second, I cannot say I know a lot about organizational structure and policies in education whether at school, city, state, or federal levels. This is something I will have to research more. When I start looking at specific schools in which to work, I will study their structure and policies and dig deeper when I am actually hired on.

As far as everything else goes, I am excited to collaborate with my future coworkers to create a welcome and safe environment in which students can learn and grow. I know the ethical standards and they are not just general standards set forth by the American School Counseling Association, but many are things that I morally follow on my own. While leadership is new to me, the other Mindsets listed in the Professional Standards and Competencies are things that I have believed since before I even began my education in education and now school counseling. School counseling embodies everything I have ever wanted to do with my life in service to others.

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Created in 2003, the Recognized American School Counselors Association (ASCA) Model Program (RAMP) is the designation given to schools for using the ASCA Model Program in their schools. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a three-tiered framework used to gain academic, behavioral, and social success for students. According to the authors of this article titled RAMP and PBIS: “They definitely support one another,” having PBIS in place first helps to get RAMP in place.

The only limitation of this study was that the sample size was so small. To achieve RAMP status, a school must have “90% of the possible points from 12 rubric areas.” Only 700 schools have the designation. PBIS schools make up 23,000 of the schools in the United States. The article does not say how many schools have RAMP and PBIS, however all participating school counselor’s schools have both. Only 10 school counselors participated. So, it is not a representative sample.

RAMP is very data driven, so having experience working with data in PBIS helps to understand the data that goes into RAMP (Goodman and Grothaus, 2016). The authors did a survey for their study and found that many school counselors felt that RAMP and PBIS work well together (Goodman and Grothaus, 2016). One participant said, that RAMP is a framework that helps to promote PBIS in the school. Another participant said, RAMP has even made him a better counselor (Goodman and Grothaus, 2016).

Both RAMP and PBIS help to support a positive school environment as well as promotes a school-wide common language. PBIS “becomes a part of what you do and not one more thing,” one participant said. Because PBIS is what you do, it makes it easier to be more specific with establishing the goals of RAMP. Both RAMP and PBIS work best when they are a group effort and everyone’s strengths are put to good use.

I chose this article because the school I substitute teach for uses PBIS. I will be passing this article along to the school counselors in hopes they will consider adding the ASCA National Model. Only a few counselors surveyed could not say exactly how RAMP impacted PBIS, however they can see overall that it has. Most participants attributed the interconnections of the two programs to the data and the goals. Both programs support a positive school environment and a common language and brings out the best in everyone involved.

References

Goodman-Scott, E., & Grothaus, T. (2018). RAMP and PBIS: “They Definitely Support One Another”: The Results of a Phenomenological Study (Part One). Professional School Counseling, 21(1), 119-129.