School Counseling – The Evolving Roles of School Counselors
Counseling plays a significant role in mental wellness and overall individual stability. In the modern healthcare landscape, where mental health illnesses are causing suffering to communities, school counseling is integral to learners’ wellness and contributes to the perpetuation of their academic success. This paper compares and contrasts school counselors and guidance counselors, highlighting their roles and what a school counselor’s vision statement would look like.
School Guidance Counselor vs. School Counselor
The term school guidance counselor and school counselors have historically been used to describe care professionals who provide counseling services to learners in school setups. Both are pivotal in ensuring learners’ emotional stability and wellness. However, the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) encourages the use of the term school counselors as it is more reflective of the role of these professionals. School guidance counselors and school counselors differ in scope and roles, highlighting the need to shift to school counselors.
To begin with, guidance and counselors are reactive, provide isolated services to select learner populations, measure the impact of their counseling work via perception and feelings, and have an ancillary role in school improvement processes (Zyromski et al., 2018). School counselors, on the other hand, are proactive and data-driven. In this respect, they focus on the social and emotional development of the learners by engaging them and addressing their day-to-day stresses to improve their quality of life and, consequently, their academic and career aspects. School counselors also offer counseling programs and services to all learner populations. They work with the teachers, learners, school administrators, and other stakeholders to ensure the overall wellness of the learners. This approach is particularly beneficial to the students as it may allow the identification of factors outside the learning environment that interplay in mental health problems among learners. It also provides a better guarantee of wellness to the learners by ensuring their stressors are addressed (ASCA, 2023). School counselors also measure the impact of their counseling work through behavior data, achievements, and attendance, which are integral to school improvement processes. Behavior data provides a more effective, efficient, and accurate source of tracking a student’s response to a therapeutic intervention and may help document aspects of their lived experiences that reflect their emotional wellness. This all-around assessment approach ensures that all aspects of the student’s suffering are exploited in their wellness journey. School counselors are also involved in developing, managing, and evaluating counseling programs. Additionally, they work as school leaders, allowing them to better integrate into the system and understand issues affecting the learners.
Per the highlighted roles, school counselors are ingrained into the normative school-associated improvement processes for learners. They are better positioned to support students by utilizing data-driven approaches to understand and address presenting mental health challenges affecting the students. This data-driven approach also enhances their effectiveness in improving student’s well-being. Likewise, their roles in the development, management, and evaluation of comprehensive school counseling programs allow them to tailor counseling services to suit students’ preferences and address unique challenges facing students from different schools. These all-around roles further encourage the use of school counselors, as opposed to guidance counselors in school counseling.
School Counseling Vision Statement
According to the American School Counseling Association, school counselors are tasked with designing and implementing school counseling programs that improve learning and behavioral outcomes. These programs should focus on the student’s beliefs, vision, and mission statements. Likewise, the program plans should integrate the annual student outcome goals, action plans, lesson plans, and use of time, among others (Morton Jr., 2019). Based on these provisions, a school counseling vision statement that I would use in my program is: To create a respectful, nurturing, and enabling environment for learners, where they feel valued to encourage their thriving and academic success through virtual and face-to-face interactions with the students, collaborations, and consultations.
The highlighted vision statement is skewed towards enabling the thriving of students in their academic journey. It is aligned with the ASCA position of improving the behavioral outcomes of students within the school setup. The vision also outlines some actions that can help the counselor attain the stated objective. Moreover, as evident in the vision and aligned with ASCA’s position on school counseling programs, virtual and face-to-face interactions between the counselor and the students are pivotal in ensuring students’ wellness. Through these engagements, I will be able to gather insight into pertinent issues affecting the students and address their emerging concerns, thus promoting their wellness. Besides, face-to-face engagement is specifically important in fostering camaraderie and providing clarity in interpersonal relationships between the counselor and the students (Stieger et al., 2023). This may, in turn, contribute to their effectiveness. Collaboration with the students is also crucial as it will facilitate the counseling process.
Conclusion
School counseling remains important in student’s emotional wellness. School counselors play a role in counseling learners in the school setup and contribute to the learners’ success in their academic and social lives. This highlights their significance in school setups.
References
ASCA. (2023). The role of the school counselor. The School Counselor and School Counseling Programs. https://www.schoolcounselor.org/getmedia/ee8b2e1b-d021-4575-982c-c84402cb2cd2/Role-Statement.pdf
Morton Jr., J. R. (2019). Visioning for your comprehensive school counseling program. Visioning for your Comprehensive School Counseling Program – American School Counselor Association (ASCA). https://www.schoolcounselor.org/newsletters/february-2019/visioning-for-your-comprehensive-school-counseling
Stieger, S., Lewetz, D., & Willinger, D. (2023). Face-to-face more important than digital communication for mental health during the pandemic. Scientific Reports, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-34957-4
Zyromski, B., Hudson, T. D., Baker, E., & Granello, D. H. (2018). Guidance counselors or school counselors: How the name of the profession influences perceptions of competence. Professional School Counseling, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2156759×19855654
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Question 
When you were in high school, or perhaps when your parents were in school, you may have had a guidance counselor. Today, most schools have school counselors. Why has the title changed? In this Assignment, you will compare and contrast school counseling roles as they have evolved as you look at guidance counseling and school counseling You will also consider how you intend to inhabit this role as a school counselor: Based on the American School Counseling Association (ASCA) National Model, you will consider what a professional school counseling vision statement looks like and how you will support students.
School Counseling – The Evolving Roles of School Counselors
Paper Instructions
Complete a 2- to 3-page paper with the following criteria:
- Compare and contrast the role, title, and scope of the School Guidance Counselor vs. the School Counselor. Include a description of the current roles of school counselors based on the American School Counseling Association (ASCA) and how school counselors support students.
- Based on ASCA, school counseling roles, and school counseling programs, create a school counseling vision statement that you would use in your program to support students’ Academic, Career, and Social/Emotional Development.