Role of a school counselor
History
Beginning our journey, let us explain that the education field, which is closely related to that one of school counseling, has undergone and is still going through several reforms within the last decades. In fact, because the nation feared that the US was falling behind academically and the Nation at Risk Act was initiated, school counselors were sought to be “sociopolitical instruments to achieve national goals” (Erford 2011 as cited in Reiner, S., & Hernández, T. J., 2012). A clear example of their immense responsibilities in the 1950’s, according to the NDEA, was to identify students talented in mathematics and sciences to launch the nation to the moon (as cited in Reiner, S., & Hernández, T. J., 2012). …show more content…
Nevertheless, the question is how do school counselors know what to do in the present day? In an attempt to answer this, ASCA (2003) and Brott & Mayers 1999, & Scarbarough 2002 stated that even though different agencies tried to define the roles of a school counselor, research indicates that the actual functions of these individuals do not reflect what has been identified as best practices. The role of school counselors is heavily influenced by the interaction of non-counseling individuals within the school system to whom they are directly accountable to (Culbreth, J. R., Scarborough, J. L., Banks-Johnson, A., & Solomon, S., 2005). Usually, the non-counseling individuals have their own agendas and little knowledge of the school counseling profession (Paisley & Borders, 1995); leaving the counselors with internal and external struggles. They face the reality that absolutely does not coincide with the focus of their training in the counseling profession. In an interview with A. Rodriguez and M. Chambers, the school counselors at Forest Hills Elementary, both of these, women of different decent and ages, they reported that their job description did not match their present duties and the training that they had been exposed to (Personal communication, 2016). Also, in the survey done by Powers & Boes (2013) in which they asked a few simple questions regarding what tasks the teachers considered to be important for school counselors and what areas they felt these needed to be more involved in; the results were as follows: 61% felt that academic/career counseling is typically a job duty, 56% reported that personal counseling is a job responsibility, and 37% found that administering student assessments was a task. Twenty-seven percent
History
Beginning our journey, let us explain that the education field, which is closely related to that one of school counseling, has undergone and is still going through several reforms within the last decades. In fact, because the nation feared that the US was falling behind academically and the Nation at Risk Act was initiated, school counselors were sought to be “sociopolitical instruments to achieve national goals” (Erford 2011 as cited in Reiner, S., & Hernández, T. J., 2012). A clear example of their immense responsibilities in the 1950’s, according to the NDEA, was to identify students talented in mathematics and sciences to launch the nation to the moon (as cited in Reiner, S., & Hernández, T. J., 2012). …show more content…
Nevertheless, the question is how do school counselors know what to do in the present day? In an attempt to answer this, ASCA (2003) and Brott & Mayers 1999, & Scarbarough 2002 stated that even though different agencies tried to define the roles of a school counselor, research indicates that the actual functions of these individuals do not reflect what has been identified as best practices. The role of school counselors is heavily influenced by the interaction of non-counseling individuals within the school system to whom they are directly accountable to (Culbreth, J. R., Scarborough, J. L., Banks-Johnson, A., & Solomon, S., 2005). Usually, the non-counseling individuals have their own agendas and little knowledge of the school counseling profession (Paisley & Borders, 1995); leaving the counselors with internal and external struggles. They face the reality that absolutely does not coincide with the focus of their training in the counseling profession. In an interview with A. Rodriguez and M. Chambers, the school counselors at Forest Hills Elementary, both of these, women of different decent and ages, they reported that their job description did not match their present duties and the training that they had been exposed to (Personal communication, 2016). Also, in the survey done by Powers & Boes (2013) in which they asked a few simple questions regarding what tasks the teachers considered to be important for school counselors and what areas they felt these needed to be more involved in; the results were as follows: 61% felt that academic/career counseling is typically a job duty, 56% reported that personal counseling is a job responsibility, and 37% found that administering student assessments was a task. Twenty-seven percent