Ripped from the Headlines: Schools Only Keep Hiring Counselors, but Students’ Stress Levels...

A colleague of mine posted this article from edsource.org on his LinkedIn account, and after reading it, I had plenty to say. I posted those first thoughts on LinkedIn but thought it may be worthy of my time (and yours) to post a slightly more well-developed set of ideas on the topic in the CKQ.

There are a number of different angles to cover in this article. The first is that, despite hiring a significant number of counselors, social workers, and psychologists at the district level, California counselors in particular are still having an extremely difficult time keeping up with the needs of their student populations.

This covers things like stressors at school, violence at school, difficulty at home or with parents, applying to college, bullying (cyber or in-person), student poverty or homelessness, drug abuse, and any other student stressor you can conjure up (several others are mentioned in the article).

Despite California’s efforts, the ratio of students to counselors is still alarmingly high: 622 to 1, according to the article. That places California 48th in the nation (ahead of only Arizona and Michigan). Now, this isn’t surprising, given the enormous size of California’s population, but when we stop to think about what OUR expectations are of, in particular, school-side counselors, we can come to an obvious conclusion that this problem isn’t going away anytime soon and different methods are needed, beyond hiring more counselors, to solve these and many other problems schools and their constituents face.

So when you say someone is a school counselor, what is your expectation of their job? Class programmer, college advisor, disciplinarian, general advisor, intermediary between student and parent(s), intermediary between the school administration and the student (or parent), graduation checker, and more. This is frankly an impossible set of tasks to complete for any one person, especially when you consider just how many students, across four grade levels, that counselor is responsible for keeping tabs on.

What else can be done, without hiring more counselors, to help the student population negotiate the stressors they encounter on a daily basis (not to mention the traumatic stuff like school shootings and the like)? There are schools piloting programs that have ‘safe spaces’ on campus, where students can go and simply remove themselves from stressful environments, speak with a mental wellness counselor, take in serene sounds/views, etc. Other schools have opened ‘wellness centers’ with a specific focus on mental health. Other schools have posting easy-to-find access to information on mental health and hotlines to speak with crisis counselors. These are good first steps and I look forward to seeing the results of these efforts once they have been analyzed. But I also think there is something to be said for reaching out to the general public and the private sector for additional help. This has been a specific sticking point in my industry for some time now.

Let’s go one step further. When you say ‘school counselor’ that individual likely has a PPS (Pupil Personnel Services) degree to meet the qualifications of the position they hold (certainly true at a public high school). This is a Master’s level degree that is focused on many of the areas mentioned in the list to the left of this paragraph. However, of all the classes completed as part of the PPS degree, with almost no exceptions, there is only ONE class dedicated to the college counseling part of the job. So, your belief that all school counselors are trained to be college counselors is just not true. Give them a break (they deserve one)!

The bigger issue, as I see it, when it comes to the college counseling part of the school counseling job, is that so few of these counselors can or will utilize outside professionals to be ‘in more than one place at one time.’ Sometimes this is just a stubborn counselor who believes they are protecting kids from ‘outside predators’ who are only in it for the money. Other times, it’s a district administrator or superintendent that is protective of the school community and is trying to protect the jobs of his/her employees. If we are being honest, neither of these is a good enough reason to prevent outside help from aiding those overtaxed counselors do more than one job at a time.

There are many resources, both online and in-person, that can be brought to bear for little or no school/district money. There are many qualified, vetted, and experienced professionals who can represent the mouthpiece of the school counselor competently and professionally, all the while representing the interests of the school and district AND provide a different voice for families to learn from.

So few schools take advantage of these opportunities. If they did, PPS-holding counselors could focus more of their time where it needs to be – helping the students who are at the greatest risk of failing out of high school, harming themselves, or their fellow students.

If you would like to access the original article, please follow this link: https://edsource.org/2019/schools-keep-hiring-counselors-but-students-stress-levels-are-only-growing/620281