The Role of the School Counselor
After completing graduate school and working as an admissions counselor at a neighboring university, I accepted a position as a guidance counselor in an urban school district. A few weeks into the school year, I was in love with the students, but I soon realized there was a barrage of ambiguity around the role of the school counselor. 
When I started as a counselor my principal made it very clear that he wanted to create a strong college culture, and given my background in admissions, naturally I was able to make a quick impact within the first few months of school. I was invited to serve as part of the School Leadership Team and the School Improvement Team. I have now come to recognize that this is not the “normal” experience for many counselors. I assumed that all counselors served as part of the school’s administrative team, and advocated for the continued growth and sustainability of a college and career readiness culture supporting the success of ALL students.
Despite this clear mandate from my boss, I found that as a school counselor there was no real “job description”. It was even unclear as to who I was actually mandated to report to. Was it the principal or the Director of Counseling at the district? My principal had a specific vision for how he wanted to utilize counselors, while my district supervisor for counselors had another agenda, and my fellow counselors themselves had a very different perspective on their role based on what they’d learned in graduate school and throughout their practicum experience.
This ambiguity inevitably led to counselors carving out their own niche, with many focusing on those things they enjoyed. In my district, there were counselors who served more of a clinical role, conducting group therapy sessions for students or working specifically with special education students, and others who carried out duties unrelated to counseling altogether, such as serving as testing coordinator, manning lunch duty, and substituting classes.
This year February 7th -11th marked National Counselor Appreciation Week. This week of celebration is sponsored by ASCA and designed to focus public attention on the unique contribution of professional school counselors within U.S. school systems. ASCA is a major organization that supports the school counseling field and has made great strides in developing core standards for counselors and outlining a set of shared practices for the profession. I was very excited to join listen in on a webinar, through the MetLife Foundation’s KCollab project, hosted by Peggy Hines and Karen Crew of Ed Trust on the “Transformative Counselor” and how counselors can ensure college and career readiness.
Ironically, as we celebrate National Counselor Appreciation Week this year, counselors are being laid off or warned of pending layoff in school districts across the country. Is it any wonder why -- given the confusion that exists amongst principals and counselors regarding appropriate roles and duties -- in many districts counselors are offered up as sacrificial lambs when its time for layoffs and budget cuts?
Here at College Summit we embarked on a partnership with the MetLife Foundation to engage school counselors, administrators, teachers and student peer leaders collaboratively in building college-going cultures in schools and in serving the advisory needs of all students.
Through the course of this partnership we have been able to develop a set of training modules and materials intended to educate principals within our partner schools on how to leverage and utilize skills and resources integral in driving strong college-going cultures within every aspect of their school environment. As we prepare to introduce these administrative supports to our College Summit principals, we recognize the possible opportunity to develop additional resources that would train principal-counselor teams. Effectively leveraging the collective knowledge and skills of a principal-counselor team could have a dynamic impact on high school college-going culture, and compliment the works of organizations like ASCA and Ed Trust in the transformative counselor movement.
Please share your thoughts and feelings about the role of school counselors and redefining how principals and counselors collaborate in effort to build college-going cultures by commenting on this post.
