Introduction
The changing education demands have attracted the need to revisit the existing standards of professional practice in counseling at the HISD- Houston Texas School. A new approach that reflects the best practice in an understandable way is needed to respond to the current issues that tamper with students’ wellbeing. According to Hatch and Chen-Hayes, the current research indicates that quality-counseling programs can have lasting effects on a student’s welfare (38).
They can also protect a student from embarking on drug abuse and violence. Quality school counseling can improve students’ performance both within and outside the classroom setting. However, this article suggests a needs-based model that focuses on the challenges that learners encounter in schools today. Therefore, this paper will act as a guide to the administrators at HISD- Houston Texas School. It offers ways of improving the school’s counseling program.
The School’s Counseling Program
The school’s counseling approach should be based on the developmental model that rests on the premise that all students develop in a sequential way towards self-actualization and self-advancement (Barna and Brott 100). The developmental approach is anchored on the belief that students pass through general phases of academic, career, and social enhancement. Therefore, school counseling models should be designed to cater for such demands.
Interventions to improve the School’s Counseling Program
The intervention measures offer the medium upon which school counselors steer the healthy content of the school counseling approach. The initial response should involve the school’s counseling curriculum. The prospectus offers enhancement and organized lessons and activities in the class setting to evaluate and address students’ growth in terms of academic performance, career, and social realms (Bostick and Anderson 430).
The personal student planning intervention approach forms the second stage. This approach entails activities that aim at helping each learner to build and evaluate his or her academic, career, and personal objectives. Personal planning helps students evaluate various aspects such as educational pathways through the assistance of a professional counselor.
Counselors at this stage act as personal advisors to the students. They make appraisals to gauge the students’ development. The counselors come up with a general guide that supports fundamental skills for self-actualization, career choice, personal planning, and independent judgment.
The third stage is the response service that ensures that students have access to information and advice whenever necessary. School counselors should develop interventions to address students’ challenges that not only result in poor performance but also hinder career and social growth (Young and Kaffenberger 69). Counselors should discover impediments to intellectual progress and realize the obstacles that learners encounter every day.
Therefore, they should supplement students’ effort to eradicate the obstacles via individual or group counseling. The fourth intervention should encourage cooperation within and outside the school fraternity. This approach should attempt to bring together the students, counselors, parents, teachers, and community agencies to alleviate challenges that hinder academic, professional, and social growth.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Appropriate school counseling program has various benefits to the students, teachers, parents, and the entire community. The main strength is the improvement of functional communication among the members of the school fraternity. Counselors have a good understanding about the students.
Thus, they provide good leadership and support for student needs. Counselors help to come up with a flexible curriculum that accommodates the needs of all learners. First-class counseling services help in facilitating student self-awareness and academic improvement (Pyne 91).
Good counseling supports the growth of skills to bolster students’ success. Additionally, students build skills in socializing with others within and outside the institution. On the other hand, even as the benefits of needs-based programs such as ASCA are gaining recognition, the implementation process is slow. Counselors’ attitudes are hard to change. The increased consultation due to school bureaucracies slows the process, hence compromising the quality of the output (Pyne 89).
Collaborative-Consultative Model
Collaborative model is a consultation style that is more popular among counselors and students today (Ametrano 156). In the collaborative style, the counselor works with other experts as partners to build a comprehensive understanding about the student.
The counselor focuses on creating rapport with an identified student. In the collaborative form, the school counselor may involve the parents or other members of the school fraternity as co-experts in establishing factors that may be barriers to academic, career, and personal growth. Most students prefer this model because they feel part of the process since they are involved in the decision-making process.
Campus Need and Intervention
Academic success is one of the main needs for students. Academic challenges such as poor performance might lead to stress, frustration, low self-esteem, and insecurity regarding one’s capability to prosper in school. In an effort to address this issue, the school counseling program needs a multi-layered approach, including three tiers of intervention, to help the students. At the first tier, the intervention is universal in nature.
The intervention procedures are intended to offer learning for all students. This tier presumes that students will adopt these styles and that they will not need special interventions (Pyne 89). The second tier is seen as advanced prevention that targets students who are identified as vulnerable to learning difficulties. For example, when student assessment reveals that some learners are more likely to develop reading difficulties, the counselor might introduce supplemental reading aid.
The third tier involves special concerns to address the demands of a smaller portion of students who are going through problems. For instance, at tier 3, a student’s writing performance might fall substantially below that of his or her fellow students, regardless of the intervention. Such student requires increased writing support from the teacher, including regular checks on his or her progress.
Goals of the Program and Implementation
The school counseling program should aim at assisting students to realize their potential towards healthy growth based on academic, career, personal, and social growth. Academic advancement should entail gaining skills, knowledge, and attributes that foster effective practices in school. Besides, such skills help students to attain skills and models to achieve success and understanding of the world outside school.
Academic goals advance the idea that students should attain or surpass the community and national expectations. Career development goals help the school counseling body to establish the basis for the attainment of skills, knowledge, and attributes that help students to have a smooth transition from learning institution to the employment sector (Hatch and Chen-Hayes 40). Career development plans enable students to build career objectives through their involvement in a detailed program of career sensitization.
Personal and social advancement goals help the school counseling body in offering the basis for individual and social development as learners move from the school setting to seek employment (Young and Kaffenberger 72). Social growth adds to academic and career success by ensuring that learners appreciate themselves and other colleagues.
Additionally, through social development, students acquire effective communication and interpersonal skills and that they grow to be useful members of the society. Therefore, the administration has the role of ensuring that the recruited counselors are capable of uplifting the general welfare of students.
Evaluation
Evaluation is a crucial aspect of a counseling program to enhance accountability. Evaluation assists in identifying the value of the approach, its progress, and participants to facilitate the decision-making process. An evaluation method should seek to determine the magnitude of the changes generated because of counseling programs (Young and Kaffenberger 73).
The program should meet the expected standards where the progress will be reflected in students’ performance. The evaluation method should also investigate if the students have increased competence in all developmental areas. Lastly, the evaluation method should study how effective the counselors appear when performing their roles..
Conclusion
Counseling should be more preventive and developmental in addressing the educational, career, and social needs of a student. Even though counselors and the school fraternity acknowledge the essence of a needs-based model, they realize that the implementation is hard and that it needs cooperation from all stakeholders.
This dynamic is due to the socio-economic and political aspects that keep on reshaping the school counselors’ role. However, as HISD Houston Texas program changes to reflect the philosophy of a needs-based ASCA program, counselors will be in a position to achieve the social, career, and academic demands of all students.
Works Cited
Ametrano, Irene. “Teaching Ethical Decision Making: Helping Students Reconcile Personal And Professional Values”. Journal of Counseling & Development 92.2 (2014): 154-161. Print.
Barna, Jennifer, and Pamelia Brott. “Making the Grade: The Importance of Academic Enablers in the Elementary School Counseling Program”. Professional School Counseling 17.1 (2013): 97-110. Print.
Bostick, Dee, and Ron Anderson. “Evaluating A Small-Group Counseling Program—A Model for Program Planning and Improvement in the Elementary Setting”. Professional School Counseling 12.6 (2009): 428-433. Web.
Hatch, Trish, and Stuart Chen-Hayes. “School Counselor Beliefs about ASCA National Model School Counseling Program Components Using the SCPCS”. Professional School Counseling 12.1 (2008): 34-42. Print.
Pyne, Jaymes. “Comprehensive School Counseling Programs, Job Satisfaction, and the ASCA National Model”. Professional School Counseling 15.2 (2011): 88-97. Print.
Young, Anita, and Carol Kaffenberger.”The Beliefs And Practices Of School Counselors Who Use Data To Implement Comprehensive School Counseling Programs”. Professional School Counseling 15.2 (2011): 67-76. Print.