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I will complete my coursework in Guidance and Counseling at the close of the Summer 2018 semester and will graduate with my master's degree. I am lucky enough to already have a job lined up for the fall as a school counselor at Cedar Ridge High School in Round Rock ISD. I cannot wait to begin my career as a counselor and help to shape the lives of the students at my school.

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Counselor Conversation - Larry Sutton - Taylor ISD

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Counselor Conversation - Larry Sutton - Taylor ISD

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I spoke with Mr. Larry Sutton, a counselor at Legacy Early College High School in Taylor ISD, about major issues occurring in the field of counseling today with regard to the legal and ethical principals that counselors must follow. Below are five takeaways from this discussion.

1. Confidentiality remains one of the most important parts of the field because of the pressures that many counselors feel to divulge information to administrators or other school personnel when asked. Counselors can often be put in an awkward position between ensuring that they keep the trust of the student they are working with and maintaining a relationship with a principal who feels entitled to all of the information about their students in order to keep the school running as efficiently as possible.

2. Mental health issues have become a much larger focus in school as more and more teenagers are dealing with issues like depression and anxiety. Counselors must be aware of the warning signs of these mental illness and should have a plan in place to refer students to professional help when they feel it is necessary.

3. All counselors must understand how liability can affect their job and how they interact with students. It is imperative that counselors protect themselves from any liability should situations occur where students harm others or themselves. One major part of this is documenting all conversations with students and getting other counselors involved when issue appear to be bigger than originally thought.

4. Many districts are terrified of legal action against them and may sometimes fail to fully support their counselors as a way to avoid being sued. Several examples from the past few years in the state of Texas show that, now more than ever, school districts are willing to do almost anything to avoid being brought into the legal system. Because of this, they may leave counselors out to dry with regard to certain situations they may find themselves in. In one example, a district allowed a dangerous student, who had made threats against their peers and teachers, back on campus in order to avoid a lawsuit from the student's parents. This compromised the counselor’s position and desire to have the student placed on an alternative campus.

5. With the increased attention on school shootings in the United States, counselors are at the forefront of the discussion. Many believe counselors should be doing more to identify warning signs that may suggest that a student is capable of carrying out an attack on the school. Counselors must find a way to look for these types of issues while still adhering to FERPA laws and student confidentiality.

Sutton, L. (2018, June 6th). Personal interview.

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NPR Education: With Hundreds Of Students, School Counselors Just Try To 'Stay Afloat'

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NPR Education: With Hundreds Of Students, School Counselors Just Try To 'Stay Afloat'

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This article, written by Clare Lombardo, discusses a major issue in counseling; student - counselor ratios. The article explains that the average school counselor in the U.S. is responsible for working with 428 students, and in California that number is 760. The article goes on to discuss the growing need for mental health education and understanding in schools around the country, as well as the role that counselors play in helping students with these issues. With counselors responsible for so many students, it is a daunting task to ensure that each child they are responsible is getting all of the help that they need.

Lombardo, C. (2018, February 26th). With Hundreds Of Students, School Counselors Just Try To 'Stay Afloat'. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/02/26/587377711/with-hundreds-of-students-school-counselors-just-try-to-stay-afloat

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Yuridia Nava, a counselor at Riverside Polytechnic High School in Riverside, Calif., has been getting to work at 7 a.m. lately. It's class registration time, so she wants to be available before school for parents and students to come in with questions as they plan for the next year of courses, SAT tests, and college preparation.

Poly - as her school is known - employs six counselors for its 2,700 students, so Nava and her colleagues each work with about 500 teens. That's just above average. According to the most recent data, school counselors across the country manage caseloads of about 482 students each. In California, where Nava works, that average ratio is 760 students per counselor - the second highest in the nation. She says counselors there are just trying to "stay afloat" and get through each day. The American School Counselor Association recommends that counselors work with 250 students each, but just three states follow that advice.

Each time a school shooting occurs, the nation collectively asks: who is responsible for students' safety? Is it teachers? Parents? Lawmakers?

Some suggest that school counselors, who work with students on academic and personal levels, play a part. But those folks are often stretched too thin - and lack resources like money, support, and time.

And time is one thing that counselor Yuridia Nava doesn't have a lot of.

One day earlier this week began with a parent meeting. Nava spent the next three periods with students-reviewing their goals, talking about their interests, and discussing the classes that they need for next year. She'll be meeting with students for registration all month.

After Nava advised students interested in going to the police academy, she visited a teacher who recently lost a loved one. Back at her office, the counselor checked with students involved in a school leadership program, met with two more students about their weekends, and sat down with a family registering their teen at Poly for the first time.

One student, who checks in with Nava daily, dropped by her office. Another came by to tell Nava she'd been feeling unsafe at home. After Poly's thousands of students headed home, Nava sat down for another parent meeting, then met with staff members to go over safety measures at school.

All of that happened before 4 p.m.

But even Nava, a finalist for the American School Counselor Association's School Counselor of the Year award in 2017, says that she and other counselors could do even more.

"Our caseloads put such a hindrance on what we're capable of doing," she says.

School counselors like her work with school nurses, school psychologists, and school social workers to make sure that students struggling in and out of school get the help that they need. But all of these staff work with huge caseloads. According to the National Association of School Psychologists, school psychologists work with about 1,400 students each across the country.

Though the national conversation often turns to mental health after mass shootings, school counselors and other support personnel work with students on their mental health every day. And, for some, the temporary focus on mental health is frustrating when their own roles in schools are so underfunded.

To them, it's especially important to get the facts correct: " There are statistics that show that people who have diagnosed mental illnesses are not more likely to commit these mass shootings. That's factual," says Jill Cook, assistant director of the American School Counselor Association. According to a statement from the National Association of School Psychologists released last week, "To conclude that the presence of an issue like depression predisposes someone to commit this type of violence perpetuates an incorrect stereotype and maintains a stigma that often creates a reluctance to seek treatment."

Nava's role includes helping her students seek this treatment for any mental health concerns. If students need long-term interventions, she'll refer them to outside sources, like therapists or psychologists. School shootings make big headlines - and amplify the attention on student mental health - yet two-thirds of all gun deaths result from suicide.

Spending face-to-face time building relationships with students is key to establishing a healthy school environment, where kids feel comfortable coming to counselors with their worries-whether they're about school safety, happiness, or day-to-day classroom concerns.

That's a challenge for counselors with so many kids to look after - and so much on their schedules each day.

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With Hundreds Of Students, School Counselors Just Try To 'Stay Afloat'

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Yuridia Nava, a counselor at Riverside Polytechnic High School in Riverside, Calif., has been getting to work at 7 a.m. lately. It's class registration time, so she wants to be available before school for parents and students to come in with questions as they plan for the next year of courses, SAT tests, and college preparation.

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Major Issue in School Counseling: Mental Health

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Major Issue in School Counseling: Mental Health

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One issue with legal and ethical implications that school counselors are dealing with more and more is the mental health of their students. While statistics show a downward trend in issues like teen pregnancy and drug or alcohol abuse, the amount of teenagers who are experiencing mental illnesses like depression has grown to an all time high.

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A Qualitative Examination of School Counselors' Training to Recognize and Respond to Adolescent Mental Health Issues

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A Qualitative Examination of School Counselors' Training to Recognize and Respond to Adolescent Mental Health Issues

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https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1012315

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The Hechinger Report: School counselors keep kids on track. Why are they first to be cut?

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The Hechinger Report: School counselors keep kids on track. Why are they first to be cut?

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This article discusses a recent initiative in Colorado to provide more funding for school counseling positions. The long-term goals of this plan are to reduce drop-out rates, increase the amount of students attending college, and close the achievement gap in the state. In 2016, participating schools reported that their average graduation rates increased from 65% to 80% and these schools saw an increase in students filling out their FASFA materials. However, the article states that Colorado is the exception in an educational climate that is quick to get rid of counselors as soon as there are budgetary issues present.

Gonser, S. (2018, May 31st). School counselors keep kids on track. Why are they first to be cut?. Retrieved from http://hechingerreport.org/school-counselors-keep-kids-on-track-why-are-they-first-to-be-cut/

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Editor's note: This story on school counselors is part of Map to the Middle Class, a Hechinger Report series exploring how schools can prepare young people for the good middle-class jobs of the future.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Mariano Almanza was overwhelmed. With an English paper due at the end of the week, an anatomy packet to complete, and an ever-growing pile of math assignments, the 18-year-old was at a breaking point.

"It was just an insane amount of work; I couldn't handle it and the stress level was beyond anything I've ever experienced," Almanza said. "I left class and came straight to Miss Mack and just burst out crying," he added.

Miss Mack, as she is known to students at Coronado High School, is Colleen McElvogue, one of the school's six counselors and the chairperson of its counseling department.

"Miss Mack looked at me and said: 'Don't worry, we're going to get through this.' I stayed in her office for a whole class hour and we just talked through everything," Almanza recalled. "Since my parents didn't get much education, it's hard to talk to them about my schoolwork and applying to college, or how to plan my time and get everything done. But Miss Mack, I can come to her for just about anything."

McElvogue has the time to spend an hour with Almanza, as well as attend to her caseload of 230 students, because Colorado is betting that a big investment in counseling can improve educational outcomes for its low-income students. Since 2008, it has spent almost $60 million to hire an additional 270 counselors and provide professional development training at 365 low-income middle and high schools throughout the state, via grants from the Colorado School Counselor Corps.

"When there's a budget cut, counselors are the first to go."

David Hawkins, executive director for education content and policy for the National Association for College Admissions Counseling.

Aimed at curbing dropouts, improving graduation rates and sending more kids to college and other postsecondary programs, the corps is designed to offset a growing achievement gap in this relatively affluent but increasingly diverse state. Closing that gap and getting kids to continue their training after high school is especially important here: 74 percent of jobs will require post-secondary education by 2020. The state estimates that its population of working adults will be 43 percent non-white by 2040; by 2050 Hispanics will make up 35 percent of its population. But today, just 20 percent of Hispanic adults in Colorado hold a college degree. State officials see the corps as a means to expand opportunities for the growing numbers of first-generation students and a way to offset the threat of a labor shortage.

Colorado's labor and demographic profiles mirror those in the rest of the country: Jobs that require only a high-school diploma are disappearing, and, while more people nationwide are going to college, Latinos rank behind whites and African-Americans in high school graduation and postsecondary attainment.

So far, the results of Colorado's commitment to counseling are promising. As of 2016, the most recent year for which data is available, graduation rates among participating schools had risen from 65 percent to nearly 80 percent, while dropout rates declined. Enrollment in high school career-and-technical programs doubled. Completion rates for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid increased to 54 percent, compared to 48 percent for the state, and the share of students taking college-level courses grew to 74 percent, compared to 48 percent at non-funded schools.
Related: Out of poverty, into the middle class

But Colorado's counseling initiative is far from the norm nationwide. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends that a school counselor's caseload be limited to no more than 250 students. However, the national average is 482 students per counselor. Counselors in Arizona are spread the thinnest, with an average of 924 students each; California ranks second, with 760 students per counselor. As of the 2014-15 school year, Colorado's student-to-counselor ratio was 383-1, a marked decrease from a 2007 level of 500 students per school counselor.

Investing in school counseling as a tool for helping students climb out of poverty, meanwhile, is not high on the White House agenda. In its 2018 fiscal year budget, the Trump administration proposed deep cuts to the Student Support and Academic Enrichments block grant program, a federal program that earmarks a portion of its spending to help school districts pay for counseling, mental health programs and drug and violence prevention. Congressional leaders disagreed: The omnibus spending bill they passed in March included a $700 million bump to SSAE, bringing the grant to $1.1 billion. Still, that was short of the $1.65 billion originally authorized for the program in 2017.

When deciding how education dollars ought to be spent, politicians rarely consider counseling a high priority, said David Hawkins, executive director for education content and policy for the National Association for College Admissions Counseling. One exception to this political disinterest, he noted, was Michelle Obama's Reach Higher initiative, which brought national attention to school counselors and the positive impact they have on kids.

But in many quarters, the school counseling profession appears to suffer from an image problem. In a 2016 poll, just 6 percent of respondents rated school counselors as a top priority for education spending. "When there's a budget cut, counselors are the first to go," said Hawkins. He points to the major reductions the Philadelphia school system made to its counselor rolls, along with its teaching corps, when the district faced a budget crunch in 2013.
Related: School counselors increasingly are missing link in getting kids to college
At the beginning of the 2017 school year, William J. Palmer High School, housed in a squat brick building in downtown Colorado Springs, enrolled about 2,170 students, according to state data. As the year progressed, the school lost about 44 students, who dropped out or transferred. (Palmer's dropout rate is on par with the rest of the state and somewhat lower than other schools in the district.)

Last year, Palmer's counseling department - a team of nine, a luxuriously large department thanks to Colorado Counselor Corps funding - began digging into the data to learn why and when the school was losing students. A more short-staffed counseling department might have ignored the dropout rate since it aligns with statewide dropouts and could also easily be attributed to the school's large homeless population - there are three shelters nearby and students often move to other neighborhoods and schools. But the Palmer team was able to go deeper and determine that students began falling behind in tenth grade. "So that's where we decided to target our efforts: Fresh out of ninth grade, see if we could get our kids caught up and re-engaged so they could overcome that gap before reaching a crisis point where they can't finish high school," said Aubrey Ranson, who chairs the school's counseling department.

The program, now in its first year, serves 11 students, all of them Hispanic. Students take a weekly study skills class, which is designed to help them regulate their emotions, become self-advocates and build a relationship with a counselor. "It's hard to keep watching these kids coming in here and failing," said Ranson. "We know they're smart enough, but what are the issues? Is it teacher conflict, is something happening at home, are they at the right type of high school?"

Ranson admits that being able to research the cause of a problem and then adopt a program to address it, while important, is a rare opportunity in the world of school counseling. With seven counselors serving 290 students each, and an eighth focusing on college-and-career counseling, Palmer has a deep bench. "Having nine counselors here is a total game-changer," she said.

That flexibility also helps her offer Palmer's seniors extra attention to help them find their way through one of the most byzantine challenges they'll face upon graduation: paying for college. In a windowless classroom on a recent weekday, Ranson scrawled numbers on a whiteboard: $25,000 (average annual cost of college); $10,000 (tuition); $10,000 (housing); $2,500 (books); $2,500 (personal needs).

"No one knew how to quantify it before, now they're like: 'I see the benefit, now how do I get another counselor on staff?'"

Cory Notestine, counseling services facilitator for Colorado Springs' District 11.

"You're in this class because you're going to need the time and the space to apply to at least 50 private scholarships to get even close to being fully funded," she told the class.

"Oh my god, why am I even trying to do this," said one student, dropping his head to his desk. Several classmates chuckled.

The class, Advancement Via Individual Determination, AVID for short, aims to level the academic playing field for first-generation seniors in Colorado Spring's District 11 by providing instruction in financial literacy and advanced study skills and encouraging students to enroll in more challenging classes and earn college credits. Nationwide, AVID trains 70,000 educators yearly to provide academic and social support to low-income, first-generation students from elementary school through college. Colorado Spring's District 11 began enrolling teachers in AVID training in 2005.

Related: Jobs in cybersecurity are exploding. Why are women locked out?

School counseling received a substantial overhaul with the 2003 publication of the ASCA National Model, a framework for counseling that was designed to bring clear standards to the field. Before this, said Jill Cook, ASCA's assistant director, school counseling was handled very differently in different schools and it wasn't always based on student needs or rigorously evaluated.

ASCA does not track how many schools and districts employ its model, but Cook said it is being used in schools in all 50 states. "[I]n places like Colorado, where their business and industry owners were clamoring for a better-prepared workforce, they've seen the impact," she said.

Colorado Springs' District 11, which serves 28,000 students of whom 31.1 percent are Hispanic and 7.6 percent African-American, has made a concerted effort since receiving Counselor Corps funding in 2014 to identify achievement gaps, set goals and measure counselors' impact. Once counselors started tracking the effects of their work, administrators and principals began taking notice, said Cory Notestine, counseling services facilitator for District 11. "No one knew how to quantify it before, now they're like: 'I see the benefit, now how do I get another counselor on staff?'" In spite of an increasingly diverse and high-poverty population, the district is seeing the needle move on academic achievement, college persistence rates, and FAFSA applications, as well as decreased postsecondary remedial education rates.

McElvogue, the chair of Coronado High School's counseling department, has worked at the school for 13 years. During that time, the department has grown from four to six counselors serving the school's 1,298 students. Her caseload has dropped from more than 400 students to 230. Today, her department, which adopted the ACSA model in 2015, focuses on three areas: academic counseling, career counseling and social-emotional counseling. In spite of a smaller caseload, more staff and access to software like Naviance to help guide students toward careers, McElvogue said the job of career counselor remains enormously challenging. "We wear so many hats, we try to do everything well, but there's constantly so much coming at us: Are we informed enough, are we doing enough?"

Depends who you ask. Almanza, the son of a Colorado Springs waitress and a shop owner, is the Coronado senior with whom McElvogue, aka Miss Mack, spent an hour on a recent weekday. An aspiring immigration lawyer, he says she's doing a pretty good job helping him get his life on track.

"After our talk, Miss Mack gave me a Post-It note that says:

I can and I will.

I believe in you,

Miss Mack

"I keep it in my jacket pocket," Almanza said. "Right here near my heart."
This story about school counseling was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger's newsletter.

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School counselors keep kids on track. Why are they first to be cut?

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Colorado has spent almost $60 million since 2008 to hire an additional 270 school counselors and provide professional development training at 365 low-income middle and high schools throughout the state. The program is aimed at curbing dropouts, improving graduation rates and sending more kids to college.

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Addressing Student Mental Health Needs by Providing Direct and Indirect Services and Building Alliances in the Community

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Addressing Student Mental Health Needs by Providing Direct and Indirect Services and Building Alliances in the Community

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Due to increasing rates of mental illness in teenagers today, school counselors must be prepared to handle situations involving students who experience depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, and other mental illnesses. It is the responsibility of school counselors to learn more about these issues and the symptoms associated with them in order to make informed decisions about what is best for the student and who to refer them to for professional help. Counselors may be the first ones to notices these symptoms when parents are unaware of what to be looking for and teachers only see the students for a short time each day and in an academic setting. It is up to the counselor to ask the important questions of the student and get them talking about how they are feeling in order to find out any issues that may need to be addressed (Kaffenberger & O’Rorke-Trigiani).

Counselors have an ethical duty to look for these warning signs in all of their students and must help them find mental health professionals to work with in order to make positive changes happen. If counselors ignore these warning signs or trivialize them, it is possible that a student could harm themselves or others, putting the counselor at risk. The counselor could be asked to discuss why they did nothing to help the student, why they did not get others involved, or why they did not talk to the parents about concerns that they were having (Walley & Grothaus, 2013). In an age where school shootings are becoming more common than ever, counselors must be ready to look for any mental health issues in their schools as a means of preventing these instances from occurring.

As a future school counselor, one scenario that I may face that relates to this topic is if a student comes into my office, speaks about feeling depressed, and mentions that they have considered taking their own life. It would be my duty to get the parents involved right away and not let that student out of my sight until they were with another counselor or their parents. If these steps were not taken, and something happened to the student, it is possible that I could be held liable. Districts have their own procedures on how to handles these situations but it is up to the counselor to make sure that they protect themselves from any legal action by following the laws as they are written.

References

Kaffenberger, C., & O'Rorke-Trigiani, J. (2013). Addressing student mental health needs by providing direct and indirect services and building alliances in the community. Professional School Counseling, 16(5), 323-332.

Walley, C. T., & Grothaus, T. (2013). A Qualitative Examination of School Counselors' Training to Recognize and Respond to Adolescent Mental Health Issues. Journal of School Counseling