All students at every level deserve the best education possible, and they need and want attainable expectations that can be achieved and then raised. Students deserve to learn something new every single day, while practicing what they already know in order to achieve mastery.  This deservedness includes all grade levels, all academic achievement levels, all behavioral levels, and all emotional levels of students.  Teachers, counselors, and administrators can and should be the exemplars for their students in terms of modeling good behaviors, leadership, communication, collaboration, and organization and should maintain strong personal attributes like integrity, empathy, simple kindness, and a love of learning (Ohio, 2023).

School Counselors should literally teach empathy and kindness along with coping skills to all stakeholders in the school.  They should also advocate for the following: a counseling program in which the counselor doesn’t have non-counseling duties (at least not so many that it completely interferes with the counseling); safety for students and families; equitable technology; accessibility and inclusion; closing learning gaps through consistent collaboration and communication; adhering to standards; college and career awareness; and a positive school culture (ASCA, n.d.).

The counselor in the school should be the representation of everything that is good.  This is awe-inspiring work, moreso than any other title in education.  When we nurture the hearts of students and their families, as well as colleagues and ourselves, everyone has a reason to smile (Nurtured, 2023).  To have a comprehensive guide in place to reference every possible scenario and what the expectations are in order to maintain integrity as a School Counselor is quite helpful and impressive (ASCA, n.d.).

Nurtured Heart Institute.  (2023). Home – Nurtured Heart Institute. https://nurturedheartinstitute.com/
Links to an external site.  

Ohio Standards for School Counselors. (2023, February). education.ohio.gov. https://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Career-Tech/Career-Connections/School-Counselors/School-Counselor-Standards-and-Evaluation/SchoolCounselorStandards.pdf.aspx
Links to an external site.

Walden Canvas. (n.d.). https://waldenu.instructure.com/courses/66949/pages/week-5-learning-resources?module_item_id=1896141

I utilized the following 5-point Linkert Scale for agreement questions:

 1  -Strongly Disagree                                  2 -Diagree                                       3  -Neutral                                         4 -Agree                                             5 -Strongly Agree

I utilized the following 5-point Linkert Scale to rate my skills and level of comfort after each statement about what a school counselor should be doing:

 1  -Very Poor                                     2 -Poor              3  -Neutral                                        4 -Good                                        5 -Excellent

After coming out of stellar years of service and wearing so many hats, I did not think I could have marked very poor or even poor in ANY category.  For crying out loud, I am 53 years old.  But honesty is also one of my strong suits, so I will begin the deep dive into community communications, organized data collections, appraisals and overhaul of the whole counseling system in our school, and so forth.  

I greatly look forward to continued re-evaluation by means of this self-assessment tool, as well as discussions with my evaluators and peers surrounding the results.  I believe that with both professional goals and guidance from those who have been in the field, I can grow in my counseling competencies every day.

American School Counselor Association (2019). The ASCA national model: A framework for school counseling programs (4th ed.). Alexandria, VA: American School Counselor Association