Worth the Squeeze

Your School-Based Counseling Program: The Juice is Worth the Squeeze

By Dylan Meikle, Vicki Gardner. and Franko Cifizzari

Counselors, like other mental health professionals, provide social and emotional support to individuals and communities across the globe. In this article, three experienced international school counselors share how collaboration, role clarity and attention to sustainable practices can result in comprehensive and highquality counseling services that safeguard, strengthen and grow communities.

Leveraging counseling What can counseling do for your school? The sky could be the limit. Schools which find themselves resource-rich enough to hire a counselor, or even multiple counselors, should be critically aware that this is an intentional investment which can (and will) provide significant outcomes for your school community. But the real magic happens when the right elements are planned for, addressed and understood by school leaders, faculty, community members and counselors themselves.

who are our school counselors? Ever considered the pool that we recruit our international school counselors from? Some are ex-educational professionals, such as homeroom teachers, who retrained for a new career within their school setting. This is not dissimilar to how administrators in schools are also typically ex-teachers. Many school counselors though, are specially trained from outside the school context and are rooted in the counseling field, rather than being ‘educators first’. Consider the unique and valuable voices these colleagues bring to your school: is it time to give your counselors another look?

Beyond ensuring that your human resource concerns (e.g. qualifications) are satisfied, the number one attribute to look for in your school counselor is an ability to play well with others. A history of success when it comes to building and maintaining professional and supportive relationships is key. Counselors frequently need to switch gears as they come in contact with a multitude of personalities and people throughout the day. Flexible, relaxed and compassionate people make for great counselors in a school setting. Counselors frequently deal with sensitive matters and issues, therefore they must also build and maintain trust in the schoolhouse. Counselors need to exercise judgement and know to loop in their principal and other stakeholders when an issue is escalating. Advanced communication skills are therefore obviously also a must. Responsiveness can make or break an emerging crisis. Mistakes can be made, and reflective practitioners are the ones that bounce back.

Building a program that finds balance School-based counseling services should strive for balance in both delivery and structure. Strong support for our international communities can be achieved when counseling programmes are sustainable and running smoothly.

As Mary Hayden indicates, international school counseling models “... have taken upon themselves more roles and responsibilities than would ever be considered reasonable to expect of a school in a national system, in terms of support for the wider family as well as for the child”.1 As such, counselors can easily become stretched in many directions at once, with overextension in one area resulting in the potential neglect of others. A well-balanced counseling practice may closely resemble a tertiary care model; which includes primary interventions with all students (e.g. in-class lessons, assemblies), secondary targeted interactions with some students (e.g. small group interventions), and specific tertiary interventions with few students at a 1:1 level (e.g. individual counselling and family support).

Should counsellors teach? In a school setting, counselors are typically assigned a teaching responsibility. Ever wondered why? Teaching specialized content is a natural part of a counseling model in which proactive counseling, in the form of classroom lessons, constitutes a ‘primary intervention’. And it’s important. Counselingdriven curriculum content offers schools an area of focus that may otherwise be neglected in our in our academically and inquiry driven schools.

In recent years a renewed interest and urgency around proactively teaching child safeguarding content, as well as a progressive content around important social and safety issues (e.g. teaching consent2), has led to counselors being more accountable and everyone increasingly aware that counselor’s unique contributions make a difference.

Counseling is now everyone’s business In our experience, social and emotional curriculum has historically been easy to bump down otherwise worthy ‘to do’ lists. But incidents of such benign neglect are rapidly changing. Notable and leading schools are starting to invest heavily in resources and curriculum. Redesigned social and emotional workshops have been recently launched by the IBO. Progressive institutions are writing school mission statements and strategic goals drawn from elements frequently tied to the counseling curriculum. Values education, perhaps once underserved in international schools3, is now being repositioned as a priority for schools, and counselors should be ready to contribute.

What expectations do you hold with your counseling team when it comes to professional development? We recommend these quality resources, as immediate pathways to improving school culture.

Quality Training: Responsive Classroom CASEL Social Thinking ISCA Model Level 1 Training Mindfulness in Schools Related IBO Workshops Online Resources: Responsiveclassroom.org CASEL.org socialthinking.com zonesofregulation.com amaze.org viacharacter.org

The work done by The International School Counseling Association (ISCA) can be a perfect starting point for your school. Whilst elements of this model, which is drawn from the American counseling standards, may not precisely fit your school context, it is a solid foundational piece to consider. Additionally, ISCA’s training is high-quality and can serve as a useful touchstone for school counselors who find themselves working in isolation in small schools.

Role clarity drives success A confident school counselor will advocate for the needs of students, teachers and parents, and you should reasonably anticipate that they will advocate for their own roles too. Rarely can a counselor go it alone in a school context, but with whom should they connect?

As with other specialist role definitions, responsibilities need to be clearly defined and communicated. This includes supporting student’s social and emotional welfare, caring for families, and case management of students

1 Hayden M 2006 Introduction to International Education, London SAGE p.26. 2 Emelina Minero 2019 Teaching Consent to Elementary Students edutopia.org 3 Bates R, (ed.) (2011) Schooling internationally: globalization, internationalism, and the future for international schools New York NY Routledge p.107 4 See Light’s Retention Scale, via www.graderetention.net