(1) School Counseling Program:
Candidates who complete the program are accomplished school counselors and educational leaders who have the knowledge, ability, and cultural competence to develop and deliver a school counseling program that is comprehensive, demonstrates continuous improvement and advances the mission of the school. Candidates:
Comprehensive School Guidance Plan
The purpose of a Comprehensive Guidance plan is to ensure that the school is doing what it can to provide developmental and systematic support equally to all students to facilitate academic, career, personal, and social development and achievement and support participation throughout the larger community.
Comprehensive guidance and counseling programs are designed to provide an array of interventions and supports for students that address whatever interferes with a student’s ability to participate in the learning process, prevents their learning, or their success.
In the Foundations of School Counseling course we were given the opportunity to create our own Comprehensive School Guidance Plan (CSGP) to better prepare us to be Professional School Counselors and to ensure we had the skills necessary to implement a CSGP in the schools we will be working at as Professional School Counselors in the future.
My group created a fictitious school which we named – Timber Valley Middle School to use for our project. We then set about creating an advisory board, conducting needs assessments, and then evaluating the data to see where focusing our attention would be most beneficial. We utilized actual school data from a real school where one of our group members worked, and created an entire Comprehensive School Guidance Plan for the class just as we would have working as real Professional School Counselors! At the end of the quarter we presented our CSGP to a mock school board and successfully proved the need for our CSGP and the benefit of having school counselors.
Feel free to peruse the Comprehensive School Guidance Plan below, or take a look at the Prezi that went along with our CSGP by clicking on the word Prezi. (The Prezi was created by Jessica Laux Winfrey, but used by each member of the group for their portion of the presentation)
Candidates who complete the program are accomplished school counselors and educational leaders who have the knowledge, ability, and cultural competence to develop and deliver a school counseling program that is comprehensive, demonstrates continuous improvement and advances the mission of the school. Candidates:
Comprehensive School Guidance Plan
The purpose of a Comprehensive Guidance plan is to ensure that the school is doing what it can to provide developmental and systematic support equally to all students to facilitate academic, career, personal, and social development and achievement and support participation throughout the larger community.
Comprehensive guidance and counseling programs are designed to provide an array of interventions and supports for students that address whatever interferes with a student’s ability to participate in the learning process, prevents their learning, or their success.
In the Foundations of School Counseling course we were given the opportunity to create our own Comprehensive School Guidance Plan (CSGP) to better prepare us to be Professional School Counselors and to ensure we had the skills necessary to implement a CSGP in the schools we will be working at as Professional School Counselors in the future.
My group created a fictitious school which we named – Timber Valley Middle School to use for our project. We then set about creating an advisory board, conducting needs assessments, and then evaluating the data to see where focusing our attention would be most beneficial. We utilized actual school data from a real school where one of our group members worked, and created an entire Comprehensive School Guidance Plan for the class just as we would have working as real Professional School Counselors! At the end of the quarter we presented our CSGP to a mock school board and successfully proved the need for our CSGP and the benefit of having school counselors.
Feel free to peruse the Comprehensive School Guidance Plan below, or take a look at the Prezi that went along with our CSGP by clicking on the word Prezi. (The Prezi was created by Jessica Laux Winfrey, but used by each member of the group for their portion of the presentation)
(a) Know the history, philosophy and current trends in school counseling and educational programs;
Foundations of School Counseling
One of the core classes for the School Counseling program at PSU is COUN 596 - Foundations of School Counseling. This course was led by Dr. Lisa Aasheim who is the School Counseling Program Advisor at Portland State University. The purpose of this course was to prepare us to be successful Professional School Counselors and tailored specifically to provide us the information and skills necessary to do so.
Throughout the course we covered Oregon’s Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Framework, the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) National Model, Oregon Department of Education resources, as well as the history and philosophy behind school counseling.
The syllabus for this course can be found under the Graduate Studies page.
Foundations of School Counseling
One of the core classes for the School Counseling program at PSU is COUN 596 - Foundations of School Counseling. This course was led by Dr. Lisa Aasheim who is the School Counseling Program Advisor at Portland State University. The purpose of this course was to prepare us to be successful Professional School Counselors and tailored specifically to provide us the information and skills necessary to do so.
Throughout the course we covered Oregon’s Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Framework, the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) National Model, Oregon Department of Education resources, as well as the history and philosophy behind school counseling.
The syllabus for this course can be found under the Graduate Studies page.
b) Prepare action plans and school counseling calendars that reflect appropriate time commitments and priorities in a comprehensive developmental school counseling program.
Action Plans and Calendars
Action plans and calendars are important aspects of any comprehensive guidance plan, and essential in helping school counselors to appropriately managing their time and balancing their priorities.
Shown below is the calendar created for the CSGP created in the Foundations of School Counseling course.
Action Plans and Calendars
Action plans and calendars are important aspects of any comprehensive guidance plan, and essential in helping school counselors to appropriately managing their time and balancing their priorities.
Shown below is the calendar created for the CSGP created in the Foundations of School Counseling course.
(c) Understand the relationship of the school counseling program to the academic and student services program in the school.
Understanding that as a school counselor I am supposed to be a leader and a collaborator promoting equity and rigorous educational experiences for every student, while supporting a safe learning environment and ensuring the human rights of everyone in the school community were safeguarded through culturally relevant programs, I worked diligently with administration and staff to better understand the students and to reach them.
In counseling meetings with the administration, I shared information from training's I had attended such as Shared Hope Internationals Preventing Domestic Sex Trafficking training. I spoke about what I had learned and shared handouts that could be used in identifying victims of domestic sex trafficking, working with any students who had been identified for having involvement in sex trafficking, and another hand out to identify those behaviors common to pimps, so the staff could be more aware of the potential risks facing our students.
(Please, click on the highlighted text to be taken to the documents I provided. )
I also shared training and handouts I had received from the course I attended on Motivational Interviewing with administration and some teaching staff in support of several students who were struggling both academically and behaviorally in class. The MI information was helpful in getting a teacher to re-frame their interaction with a student, to better understand how the students multiple diagnoses were impacting their classroom experience, and also in re-framing the students approach to class. The result was a change in the relationship between the student and the teacher which benefited the classroom experience for both, and lead to better grades for the student.
(d) Develop, design, implement, monitor and evaluate a comprehensive developmental school counseling program including an awareness of various systems that affect students, school and home.
In the creation of the Comprehensive Guidance Plan my group created in the Foundations of School Counseling course had to take into account all the factors that contributed to students being truant and all the systems in the community that impacted them positively or negatively as well.
In my internship these factors were just as relevant on a daily basis to all of the students in the schools, having created a Comprehensive Guidance Plan was extremely helpful in being aware of the various systems that affect student on a daily basis.
Understanding that as a school counselor I am supposed to be a leader and a collaborator promoting equity and rigorous educational experiences for every student, while supporting a safe learning environment and ensuring the human rights of everyone in the school community were safeguarded through culturally relevant programs, I worked diligently with administration and staff to better understand the students and to reach them.
In counseling meetings with the administration, I shared information from training's I had attended such as Shared Hope Internationals Preventing Domestic Sex Trafficking training. I spoke about what I had learned and shared handouts that could be used in identifying victims of domestic sex trafficking, working with any students who had been identified for having involvement in sex trafficking, and another hand out to identify those behaviors common to pimps, so the staff could be more aware of the potential risks facing our students.
(Please, click on the highlighted text to be taken to the documents I provided. )
I also shared training and handouts I had received from the course I attended on Motivational Interviewing with administration and some teaching staff in support of several students who were struggling both academically and behaviorally in class. The MI information was helpful in getting a teacher to re-frame their interaction with a student, to better understand how the students multiple diagnoses were impacting their classroom experience, and also in re-framing the students approach to class. The result was a change in the relationship between the student and the teacher which benefited the classroom experience for both, and lead to better grades for the student.
(d) Develop, design, implement, monitor and evaluate a comprehensive developmental school counseling program including an awareness of various systems that affect students, school and home.
In the creation of the Comprehensive Guidance Plan my group created in the Foundations of School Counseling course had to take into account all the factors that contributed to students being truant and all the systems in the community that impacted them positively or negatively as well.
In my internship these factors were just as relevant on a daily basis to all of the students in the schools, having created a Comprehensive Guidance Plan was extremely helpful in being aware of the various systems that affect student on a daily basis.