Wake Up Counselors: Here's how they can restore " counseling" services for troubled teens

Secondary school counselors can restore personal and group counseling to their mission by  adopting a differentiated staffing model. In most schools counselors are assigned to students by grade and alphabetical order of surname irregardless of their counseling skills, strenghts and weaknesse. In this outdated model the counselor supposedly is able to handle " all" the needs of students on his or her list. At least that's what the  school public relation brochures state.However the reality in today's schools is " counseling" students for class placement, college admissions and financial aid, , discipline , and managing the school's mandated testing programs is the number one priority. Personal and group counseling and launching intervention programs to help the increasing number of troubled  teens takes a back seat or is not offered at all by counselors.

This is a flawed  system that has for too long left teens in need of help to  search elsewhere. Unfortunately the counselor's office in today's schools is often not a go to place for help. And it has left many counselors who are well trained in personal and group counseling stuck in a quasi-adminstrative role.  We need to free these counselors who want to be personal counselos to do what they do best and let counselors who prefer to be quasi adminisrator's free to do scheduling for classes, college admissions, disciplining, and testing . Both groups serving an important and valuable functon.

A differentiated staffing model then would assign specific counselors to  a role with the primary mission of offering personal counseling, thus creating many open doors and  clear pathways for students, parents, and staff in need of help and intervention.  A helping and intervention delivery system that would include the following elements; individual counseling, group counseling, parent counseling, training teachers as helpers and advisors, training students as peer helpers,  training support staff as helpers, creating clear pathways for referral to community health, law enforcement, mental health, religious, recreation, alchohol/drug rehabilitation agencies. And most important serving as close advisors to school administrator's regarding student well-being.

This model offers guidance and counseling programs the opportunity to stay current and be a major player in helping teens successfully navigate through  the many risks they face in today's complex world.  Assigning counselors by grade and alphabet may have worked in the large high school counseling model conceived in the 1950s, but it is now a model impeding the personal intervention services counselors now need to offer. I urge counselor leaders to hear this wake up call  not only for their students and colleagues but also for themselves and their own survival.

In closing I urge counselors to remember that the original mandate for the guidance and counseling movement in the 1950s was for both " guidance" AND "counseling." Unfortunately many counselor leaders have have overtime abandoned the " counseling " element of their mission and settled for the quasi -administrator role. The growing personal needs of students, parents, and educators in today's school community now require that " counseling" be restored. I argue that if this wake up call is ignored counselors will become dinosaurs. And we know what happened to them!

For more information regarding new models for guidance and counseling programs see my article, " Taking Inventory of Your Guidance Program," Oct. 1999 issue of Schools in the Middle, my book, Students in Trouble: schools can help before failure, pg. 90-122, Rowman & Littlefield, http://www.rowmaneducation/, com, and my new book, May, 2012, Wake Up Counselors: Restoring Counseling Services for Troubled Teens. Also by Rowman and Littlefield.