About School Counseling

School Counseling

Missouri School Counselors and their school counseling programs strive to closely follow the American School Counselor Association's National Model and the Missouri Comprehensive School Counseling Program Manual. The model provides guidelines to serve students in three domains of their development, which are academic, career, and social/emotional. We serve our students in four different ways, which I have outlined below.

Classroom Guidance

As a school counselor, I am responsible for teaching a curriculum to ALL students that is preventative in nature. I am in the classroom with each class at least one time per month, and sometimes more. I teach students skills such as goal setting, time management, conflict resolution, and stress management. Other topics in our counseling lessons include digital citizenship and safety, self awareness and esteem, respect for diversity, friendships, career awareness, social skills, and decision-making skills.

Responsive Services

Responsive services are those services typically associated with counseling. While I do not provide long-term counseling as a school counselor, I do meet with students individually who may be struggling in school due to academic or social/emotional obstacles. For students who may need extra support outside of short-term counseling in the school, I can provide a list of referral agencies so students and their families can have local options to receive further services. If you would like me to meet with your student, please feel free to contact me at my provided contact phone number and/or email address.

Another responsive service I provide is small group counseling. Small counseling groups are meetings with about 4-8 students and me, during which we complete engaging activities together so students can share their experiences with students in similar situations and build healthy relationships with each other. While all students can benefit from a small group because of the close friendships created, I will be offering small groups based on the needs of our students. Common small counseling group topics are family changes (divorce/separation), grief, anger management, anxiety/stress, and many more. If you are interested in your student participating in a small group, please contact me. After I receive feedback from parents, students, and teachers regarding the needs of our students, I will begin schedule this quarter’s small groups.

Individual Planning

Another service the school counselor provides is assisting students to achieve their individual goals. A large component of this service in school counseling is typically geared toward career awareness, planning, and development for ALL students. Therefore, I will be providing individual planning services within my counseling curriculum in terms of career awareness and planning.

I will teach the six career paths, as well as education and training needed to pursue jobs within those career paths. Most importantly, I will be working with students in self awareness to begin to self-evaluate what their interests and strengths are and what resources are available to help them research careers more in depth at the middle school, high school, and post-secondary levels.

While I will teach self and career awareness to ALL students in my counseling curriculum, I will also meet individually with some students who are in need of extra support to achieve their academic, behavior, or attendance goals. These students will be referred to me by teachers or parents/guardians, and I will provide an individualized plan to facilitate their success.

System Support

Finally, I provide indirect services on behalf of my students. These indirect services require me to work closely with all school stakeholders, including teachers, school staff, parents, guardians, and community members. I consult and collaborate with teachers, administrators, parents, and guardians to ensure we have the best plan and interventions in place for every student’s healthy academic and social/emotional development. I also seek relationships with community members, such as local businesses, organizations, and agencies, to partner with our district and building so our students and families have local access to resources in our community.

Another part of system support is the supporting of my school counseling program and myself. I regularly attend professional development conferences, workshops, and trainings related to school counseling and education so I can consistently evolve my methods and techniques and my school counseling program to best fit the needs of our students.