Effective Counseling In Middle Schools

It is important for school counselors to implement program interventions based on the needs of the students. A needs assessment was conducted at Hawaii Academy of Arts and Science (HAAS) with seventh grade students to determine possible interventions that could support the current sixth grade students’ academic needs as they transition to middle school next year. Based on the data, classroom guidance lessons in the areas of organization, self- and time-management, test taking and homework strategies, and study skills are being implemented to support closing the academic gap with the sixth grade students.
This paper provides a plan for the implementation of the guidance lessons using effective counseling processes and an appropriate timeline. …show more content…
Research has suggested that during the transition to middle school, students can experience academic decline (Kim, Schwartz, Cappella, & Seidman, 2014). On the other hand, research has shown that if students are prepared, academically motivated, and show positive social-emotional behaviors in school, they will have better academic success and have more post-high school opportunities (Kim, Schwartz, Cappella, & Seidman, 2014; Rowell & Hong, 2013; Stone & Dahir, 2016). The guidance lessons that are being implemented help to reduce personal barriers that students face and prepare them for academic success in middle school by supporting growth of their skills that can enrich their academic development. For example, the sixth grade students only have one teacher and are not used to scheduling work from multiple teachers. Thus, one of the guidance lessons will help students to improve their organizational skills, which can help to reduce their personal barriers and enhance their academic performance by helping them to organize and complete assignments from multiple teachers on time. Throughout the guidance lessons students have the opportunity to understand what skills they have, what skills they need to improve, and different strategies for growth of their skills. While the guidance unit supports …show more content…
The sixth grade students are going through a lot of developmental changes. As these students enter into early adolescence, their emotions can often override reasoning ability, they are experiencing rapid physical development, and are often concerned about their peers’ approval (Henderson & Thompson, 2011). On top of all of these changes they have to transition to the middle school, where there are new expectations. Therefore, the implementation of the guidance lesson unit can support the growth of their current skills and improve on others in order to reduce the barriers that all of these changes can present. The guidance lesson unit includes six lessons that last about 45 minutes. The lessons will be implemented twice a week for three weeks, with an exception for one class due to a conflict in the schedule so they will have two weeks with guidance lessons twice a week and two weeks with guidance lessons once a week. Guidance lessons will be implemented on April 10, 12, 19, 24, and 26; May 1, 3, 8, 10, 15, and 17. The lessons will be held from 10:00am to 10:45am for one class and 1:30pm to 2:15pm for the other class. The pre- and post-assessment will be given to each class during their first and last guidance lesson. However, each guidance lesson will also include the collection of process and perception data as