Comprehensive guidance and support services meet the needs
of young adolescents
Explain:
The 13th characteristic of
effective middle schools is that “comprehensive guidance and support services
meet the needs of young adolescents” (This We Believe, pg 37). Most schools
offer related service providers and have counselors, psychologists or social
workers but what makes them a part of an effective middle school is that they
are readily available to the students who need them and can help students with
their academic and social lives and their lives both in and out of school.
Counselors are typically responsible for coordinating student guidance and
support services, however they can also involve special education teachers,
speech pathologists, and any other teacher which a student may have a close
relationship with. Additionally, guidance can come in many forms. It can be
participating in classroom activities with the student, planning for
transitions, helping with peer mediation, or teacher to student mediation,
meeting with parents, and offering regular small group or 1:1 guidance
sessions.
Describe:
One example of a school which has
provided exemplary guidance to their students is Caley Elementry School. Support
services are typically organized and lead by the school counselors and Caley
Elementry School had a wonderful school counselor, Barbara Micucci, who
effectively took this role and went above and beyond. As the characteristic
describes, she was available to the students when they needed her, and helped
them work through classroom problems, problems with their peers and even issues
they may be facing at home. What made the support she offered so comprehensive
though is that she actively reached out to parents to work with them. After
reviewing school records she noticed trends in the discipline of male students.
She gathered a reading group of parents and school administers to collectively
read the book Raising Cain which discusses issues that adolescent boys face. As
a result of the reading she was able to further educate parents and her colleagues
as well as make parents aware of the magnitude of influence male role models
can have in their children’s lives. She then went another step, to organize a
night for male students and any male role model they had to interact doing activities.
Because of her commitment to her students and her ability to reach them in a
multifaceted way she was awarded counselor of the year by the American School Counselor
Association.
The description of reasoning for her
award can be found through the link below:
Analyze:
Barbara Micucci’s excellence in counseling has been recognized, however it is also important to remember that comprehensive guidance and support services typically cannot be effective without a whole team effort. Even a spectacular counselor can only have good, in-depth relationships with some many students, staff members and parents. In order to ensure that all of the students within a school have the support that they need, counselors need to work with a team and delegate responsibilities. The way in which these are divided are often evident based on staff’s specialties but nevertheless it is important that everyone works together in order to provide the student the most comprehensive support possible. Additionally it is essential that schools support for their students goes beyond the guidance of one counselor as often school counselors are busy and cannot meet the specific needs of each student at every moment.
Apply:
At my current school I believe we
have excellent counselors, however I am not sure we provide comprehensive
guidance and support services. Unfortunately I don’t think every student at my school who
assumes special responsibility for supporting them academically and socially.
Almost all (but not all) students at my school are receiving counseling, and
many of our counselors are fantastic and do serve as mentors and provide
guidance but this is not enough. This is primarily because each of our
counselors has huge caseloads and so they often just don’t have the time to
devote to each child that they really need. The counselors are responsible for
picking students up for counseling on a regular basis, but often the times in
which students need to see them, and need help coping with something, they are
not available. As This We Believe highlights
counselors should not be the only ones responsible for being mentors, but
teachers even more so struggle to find time to meet with students 1:1 because
of their even more structured schedules.
It is not possible for adults to be available whenever students require, however if the students where divided up amongst the
school staff (including related service providers, teachers, paraprofessionals,
etc) in a district 75 setting it is likely we could have less than a handful of
students placed with each staff member. I think it would be fantastic if there
could be 30 minutes in the school day for staff to meet in small groups with
their handful of students to check in. It would be beneficial to help them make
friends/know adults outside of their classes, have an appropriate time to
chit-chat, discuss issues going on at home, discuss issues in their classroom
and at school in the presence of a small group, with an adult who is more
formally their advocate. It is hard to give up 'academic' time for things like
this but I believe it could be an interesting experiment with potentially
extremely beneficial results.
Knowing this many never be possible, I
therefore believe that it should be the responsibility of all school staff
(teachers, related service providers, administration, office staff,
paraprofessionals, etc) to reach out to students and develop mentoring
relationships even if they are informal. In fact these informal ones may end up
being the most beneficial to the students because they most reflect real life.
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