Importance for School Counselors: The ASCA National Model is the primary resource available to school counselors that provides a unified outlook for a school counseling program and a guide for school counselors to create a school wide program. A comprehensive program helps organize a school counselors’ approach to meet the academic, social/emotional and post-secondary needs of students. Rather than providing interventions based on perception of needs of students, a comprehensive program utilizes data to determine how to prioritize program development and

 Importance for School Counselors: The scope of practice help school counselors understand their range of duties and responsibilities on a daily basis. A scope is a set of guidelines that school counselors use to establish boundaries on appropriate and inappropriate duties. There are many occasions where school counselors may encounter a request outside of their professional practice and duties.  Knowing what the scope of our professional duties and practices are helps keeps school counselors ethically accountable to themselves and students, as well as refer obligations that belong to an administrator or teacher to preserve the ethical standards of the school counseling profession.

Importance for School Counselors: The goal for school counselors is to promote student success in the three major domains of education: academic, social/emotional and career development. The purpose of a student being in school is to obtain the necessary knowledge and skills to succeed during school but also after. School Counselors need to align themselves with the goals of their school so that when developing a program, they can target the major areas of concern based on the data collected. There are many factors that impede a students ability to achieve academic success such as friendships, family issues, learning disabilities, poverty, discrimination and many other factors. School counselors need to work with students and school personnel to identify these factors and help alleviate them through direct and indirect services.

Importance for School Counselors:  School Counselors have a responsibility to help students, regardless of socioeconomic status or culture factors, acquire knowledge and skills necessary to obtain their post-secondary dreams. A general goal as a counselor is to help students obtain self-efficacy and the general belief that each student is able to be successful in their endeavors. We are responsible to helping students break down barriers that prevent them from accomplishing their goals.  Students need to know what post-secondary options are available and how to access them. This takes careful planning and collaboration with community partners especially to expose students to the world outside of school.

Importance for School Counselors: Social/Emotional development is a primary concern for school counselors to address in a school setting. Many disciplinary, academic and mindsets arebased on the social/emotional development of students. Students have difficulty learning if their mental health is not taken care of, and often times the mental and emotional health can impede a student’s ability to concentrate on academic and career development. Students need to feel safe in their learning environment and learn important mindset and behaviors to help them achieve in school and throughout their post-secondary career. Having a strong social/emotional development program that integrates concepts from SEL into the classroom and are collaborative in nature will promote the overall health and wellbeing of students and teachers.  Schools that implement counseling interventions in the social and emotional domain have seen an increase in stress tolerance, curiosity and positive peer relationships, executive functioning, academic achievement and reduction of stress ( ASCA, 2023).

Definition: The ASCA Mindset and Behaviors are a set of research-based standards that include the knowledge, attitude and skills students in primary and secondary education will need to acquire to achieve success in academic, social/emotional and career development outcomes (ASCA, 2021).   The two categories – Academic and Behavior- list specific learning objectives for school counselors to strive for when helping students set goals and acquire skills in the areas of academic, social/emotional and career development.  The mindset standards are geared toward the pscyo-social attitudes students have about themselves in terms of academic achievement and ability while the behavior standards are general skills that may indicate how successful a student  will be overall in life when encountering challenging academic, social, career and emotional situations.  

Importance for School Counselors: The ASCA Mindset and Behavior standards help school counselors use the objectives when providing direct and indirect services. These 36 standards are research based and can be applied to each area of a school counselors program development in the domains of academic, social/emotional and career development. School counselors can also use these standards to consult with teachers, school personnel and parents to be reinforced because they are not exclusive to a school setting but can be applied to situations outside of the school environment.   

Importance for School Counselors: Ethical Standards for School Counselors are extremely important because they keep counselors and students safe, as well as preserve the integrity, dignity, fidelity and professional responsibilities of the school counseling role. If there is a conflicting decision to be made, or a school counselor is unsure of how to navigate certain issue that arises, the ASCA Code of Ethics is the primary resource school counselors have to guide decision making. While it sometimes leaves the decision-making up to the counselor, most issues that we face can be found in the Code of Ethics in how to navigate.

Importance for School Counselors:  A School Counselors mindset towards students can contribute to the well-being of that student and distinguishes the counseling profession from all other professions in the school. The mindset standards require an inclusive perception of all students and encourages students to succeed by promoting positive, productive and hopeful thoughts toward and about students. The Mindset standards help shape how a school counselor perceives its responsibility to help students and serve the community. The Behavior standards are action based and puts the guiding principles of the mindset into action. There are three components to behavior standards: Professional foundation, Direct and Indirect student services and planning and assessments ( ASCA, 2019). Within these standards are tangible and applicable components that school counselors use to build, manage and assess a successful counseling program.

Importance for School Counselors: Direct Services are the foundation of building relationships with students and helping support their academic, social/emotional and career development goals. Direct services are what school counselors spend most of their time doing and take precedence over most of their other  professional duties. Direct services can include things like providing one-on-one support for students; teaching lessons in classrooms; running small groups; helping students navigate post-secondary options; helping students establish the appropriate mindset and behaviors to be successful and help with career navigation and development. Direct services are also giving assessments and making observations to further collaboration efforts with school personnel to provide the necessary support to students.

Definition: Indirect services are those which are provided on behalf of the student but not directly to the student and typically involve interactions with community partners, stakeholders, school personnel and families. Indirect services are the program build and design.  Indirect services involve consultation about the student’s academic, social/emotional, behavioral, mental and career needs; collaboration with school staff to meet needs; and referrals to community partners to support the needs that school counselors, staff and family members do not have the capacity to support.

Importance for School Counselors: Indirect services is the foundation for building a school counseling program. This is where the planning stage happens and data is assessed to see what areas of growth the students and school could benefit in. Although most of a counselors time is spent on direct services, indirect services fills in the rest. In the ASCA School Counselor Competencies and Standards, one of the Standards mentioned is Indirect and Direct services, making it part of the professional development that school counselors need. Indirect services provide school counselors with additional support to help students access resources and opportunities in and out of school.

1.       Every student can learn, and every student can succeed.

2.       Every student should have access to and opportunity for a high-quality education.

3.        Every student should graduate from high school prepared for postsecondary opportunities.

4.        Every student should have access to a school counseling program.

5.       Effective school counseling is a collaborative process involving school counselors, students, families, teachers, administrators, other school staff and education stakeholders.

6.        School counselors are leaders in the school, district, state and nation.

 School counseling programs promote and enhance student academic, career and social/emotional outcomes.

 In the ASCA Ethical standards (2022), it states that school counselors are “leaders, advocates, collaborators and consultants” that work to ensure each student has equitable access to a quality learning environment as well as create systemic change to ensure outcomes are achieved. School Counselors identify a need in students and the school and work with stakeholders to meet that need. School Counselors approach each student with a belief that they are autonomous and able to meet academic goals, social, emotional and post-secondary goals.  An advocate is someone who not only shows students how to be resourceful in meeting needs through communication and collaboration, but also teaches students the skill of self-advocacy.

Target Grade: Middle School- 6th Grade

M 4: Self-confidence in ability to succeed

M 5: Belief in using abilities to their fullest to achieve high-quality results and outcome

B-SS 8: Advocacy skills for self and others and ability to assert self, when necessary

B-SMS 1: Responsibility for self and actions

B-LS 7: Long- and short-term academic, career and social/emotional goals.

The goal is for students to understand what courage means and how it can be applied in each domain of academics, social/emotional learning and career development. Students will develop self-confidence in their ability to succeed in hard situations. Courage is a value that is accessible to everyone and at many points in our life will it be necessary to use and understand. This overall goal is to create a positive school culture and build self-efficacy within the student to stand up for what they believe in and not be afraid to fail or attempt something out of fear of failure or discrimination.

Accommodations such as participation in lesson or drawing a way to display courage are necessary. This topic is also one that will need to be reiterated throughout the school year- it's not a one and done subject. One other component to this lesson to engage parents at home is to keep a courage log that both student and family can complete together.

A behavior that could be added is B-SMS 2: Self-Control and Self-Discipline because there are alternative ways to react to situations that promote successful outcomes. The goal is to reduce escalation, conflict and outbursts which are reactionary and ineffective for learning more productive communication skills. Practicing self-control will target the outbursts and impulsivity to react rather than respond rationally. Practicing self-discipline will lead to more successful outcomes and less disciplinary referrals to choose a more humble and logical way to respond.

The Pre-Assessment is supposed to gauge how to recognize ways that feelings relate to actions and build self-awareness of ways negative feelings overwhelm a student and their counterparts’ whole self. There is no pre-test question that mentions having accountability for reactions or impact towards others which is part of taking responsibility for self and others. For instance, there could be a question such as “ I understand how my feelings impact others”.  Furthermore,  the response of ‘Not Sure” is vague and hard to collect data on. I would stick to a likelihood scale which answers are more “ Like me, Not like me” or use the Likert Scale responses listed without “Not Sure”.

For the behavior standards, the students were to learn effective coping skills and responsibility for self and action.  The students completed  a feelings check in system and watched a story of a person whose feelings impacted their behavior.  The students were to think critically about a time when they felt intense feelings, how they reacted and the outcome. This exercise brought personal awareness to the student on alternative ways to respond, as well as taking responsibility for how their feelings and behavior impacted others. The only criticism is that there weren’t any new coping skills introduced, but rather a reflection of the coping skills students already know.

Students at this developmental level care about what their peers think, so having the students work together to problem solve; different tasks; and witness their peer’s perspective on how to react to certain situations is appropriate. The lesson provided felt more elementary than middle school level.

American School Counselor Association (2021). ASCA Student Standards; Mindsets and Behaviors for Student Success. Alexandria, VA: Author.

American School Counselor Association (2019). ASCA School Counselor Professional Standards & Competencies. Alexandria, VA: Author.

A. (2023). The School Counselor and Academic Development. The School Counselor and Academic Development - American School Counselor Association (ASCA). https://www.schoolcounselor.org/Standards-Positions/Position-Statements/ASCA-Position-Statements/The-School-Counselor-and-Academic-Development

Curry, J & Milsom, A. (2021). Career and College Readiness Counseling in P-12 Schools (3rd ed.). Springer Publishing LLC. https://online.vitalsource.com/books/9780826186744

The school counselor and Career Development. The School Counselor and Career Development - American School Counselor Association (ASCA). (2024). https://www.schoolcounselor.org/Standards-Positions/Position-Statements/ASCA-Position-Statements/The-School-Counselor-and-Career-Development

The School Counselor and School Counseling Programs. The School Counselor and School Counseling Programs - American School Counselor Association (ASCA). (2023). https://www.schoolcounselor.org/Standards-Positions/Position-Statements/ASCA-Position-Statements/The-School-Counselor-and-School-Counseling-Program

American School Counselor Association (2019). ASCA School Counselor Professional Standards & Competencies. Alexandria, VA: Author.

American School Counselor Association (2021). ASCA Student Standards; Mindsets and Behaviors for Student Success. Alexandria, VA: Author. https://www.schoolcounselor.org/getmedia/7428a787-a452-4abb-afec-d78ec77870cd/Mindsets-Behaviors.pdf

Purswell, K. E. (2019). Humanistic learning theory in counselor education. The Professional Counselor, 9(4), 358–368. https://doi.org/10.15241/kep.9.4.358

 School counselors collaborate with teachers, parents, community members, and specialty faculty to support the student and educator in best practices. Teachers will often reach out to counselors about a student who they notice is struggling and request the counselor to do an observation. The counselor could provide an observation of both student and teacher. If there appears to be a significant barrier reoccurring with the student obtaining success, then the counselor will reach out to the parent to discuss personal values on how to help the student achieve. Community resources are especially important because school counseling is both broad and limited to the services we can provide. The student may need intensive cognitive, emotional or behavioral health help that requires a referral to outside agencies.

Therefore, the ASCA Ethical standards help counselors make decisions that honor the fidelity of the school counseling relationship while also making data informed decisions of best practices.  ASCA Ethical standards describe the purpose of the document to provide directions for counselor duties, responsibilities and roles, as well as information on how to respond to certain situations and people outside of the counselor-student relationship.