A professional school counselor is required to have teaching experience as an instructor and should be able to relate and understand the dynamics of the classroom and school setting before taking the coursework leading to a school counselor certification.
The profession of school counseling requires continuous professional growth and development and thus the school districts are to provide in-service training for school counselors. A fully certified school counselor is expected to carry out eight basic responsibilities, competently in a professional and accountable manner.
Program Management: Counselors are required to collaboratively plan, implement and evaluate a comprehensive developmental guidance program. There are four components to this program; guidance curriculum, responsive service, individual panning and system support. The counselors collaborate with all to ensure that a balance is maintained between all the components so as to meet student, community needs, priorities and objectives to effectively support the total educational program.
Guidance: Counselors assist the students to develop and apply skills to maximize their educational, career, personal and social growth during school years and beyond, they do individual planning and provide appropriate activities that will help development.
Counseling: When students have developmental needs, personal concerns, or problems that might affect their continued educational, career, personal or social development, counseling is provided.
Consultation: Counselors provide professional expertise to faculty, staff, administrators, parents, and their community members to help understand individual behavior and human relationships, this task of the counselors helps in increasing effectiveness of education and promotes student success.
Coordination: One important task of the counselor is to bring people and resources in the home, school, district, and community to support students' optimal academic success, career, personal and social development
Student Assessment: Counselors interpret standardized test results and other data to take decisions to help students' development.
Professional Behavior: Through continuous efforts the counselors are required to maintain professional competence to maintain collaborative inter-professional relationships.
Professional Standards: Counselors are required to adhere to professional standards in all components of comprehensive development guidance and counseling program.
Now as a school administrator, the first step will be to employ adequate, qualified number of counselors, the American School Counselor Association recommends a student to counselor ration of 1:250 and the Texas School Counselor Association recommends 1:350, this is an important factor to ensure the quality and efficiency of the program.
The program development cycle in Chapter V provides a clear structure as to, how to effectively develop and implement the program. The main components are organizing, planning, designing, implementing and evaluating.
Organizing: The most important component in the successful implementation program is to commit to action; this should be made by the administrative and counselor leaders, the vision and goal should be clear to study the need and bring about the required change. After having committed to action, the next step would be to identify the leadership both at the district and school level having representatives from all stake holders, for the successful implementation of the program.
Planning: The process of planning involves studying the program model, including the content areas that specifies the relevant content for the local needs, the Texas Comprehensive, Developmental Guidance and Counseling Program model suggests seven content areas as the foundation for the program. Some of the content areas are in building up self-confidence, motivation to achieve, decision making, goal-setting, planning, communication skills and responsible behavior.
Designing: The next stage in the process is to design the program, by establishing the desired program design taking into consideration(demographic date, student achievement data and student conduct data), publish the program framework, plan a smooth transition to the desired program and finally develop and implement a master plan for changed implementation.
Implementation: At this stage a closer look at the program is required to see for any improvements and them the priority should be set. The counselors job description should be made clear, provide staff development for counselors, teachers, parents, administrators and all others involved in the process to encourage growth. The performance of the counselors is a crucial factor in the successful implementation of the program.
Evaluation: Like in the implementation of any program, evaluation of the program is critical to the success of the program, evaluation should include the changes made, the program design, the implementation and the professional staff. Evaluation will provide insights to modifications and required changes and also what is working well that does not require change.
The ultimate purpose or goal of a school administrator is to ensure that all students are successful, thus one should use all the resources and provisions available, thus I would strongly support the implementation of a comprehensive, developmental guidance and counseling program and implement it using the model provided above.
Evaluation is a critical component for the success of any program, evaluation brings in effectiveness, productivity and ensures accountability from all involved with the program. The process of evaluation helps in determining the value of the program, its activities and the staff in order to make informed decision and make necessary actions to the future implementation.
Chapter VI provides a process of evaluation that includes eight steps; stating the evaluation question, determining the audiences/uses for the evaluation, gathering data to answer the questions, applying predetermined standards, drawing conclusion and finally considering the context, making recommendation and acting on the recommendations. These steps clearly provides a systematic approach for an effective evaluation of the program.
The process of counseling is to assist the teachers and other staff in the integration of instructional and school objectives, thus there should be a collaborative effort among all involved in the program to evaluate the success of the program.
The evaluation will help determine the impact of the program on students, faculty, parents and on the overall school climate. The purpose and scope of evaluation can be summarized as follows:
· Will help know if the program is accomplishing the intended goals
· Evaluation helps identify what remains to be accomplished
· Evaluation will help identify effective components and also eliminate or improve less effective components
· Adapt and refine the guidance and implementation process
· Evaluation will help in determining professional development and staffing needs
· critically see if some additional resources are required and also provides accountability information to educator and the community.
The success of any program will depend on the will of the leadership and the consistent, systematic way in which the whole process is organized, planned, designed, implemented and evaluated. As an administrator I strongly believe that "no stone should be left unturned" everything possible should be done to see that our students are successful as this would decide the future of our country.
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