Make personalized counseling more personal

You sit in your house office with a few other students who have been pulled out of class just like you. As you wait, a bright orange slip sits in your hands reading Personalized Counseling. As you read these words, you begin to wonder about their meaning.

Personalized Counseling is a time for the counselors to sit and talk with you about your classes, goals, schedule, and GPA. However, many other topics could be added to these sessions to make the sessions more personal. It may be important to know about your schedule and what classes you want to take in the future, but many students are struggling with issues such as stress, friend trouble, or any sort of mental health issues and don’t know how to ask for help.

It is understood that schedules are something that has to be talked about but that doesn’t have to be the session’s main focus. It is preached to us that mental health matters but the counselors don’t seem to have the time to discuss these issues. If we instead use a part of these personalized counseling sessions to talk about what is going on in students’ lives, maybe students would be more inclined to speak with them about their issues and get help to overcome them.

Each counselor has around 400500 students in their house office making talking to each one very difficult. Because of this, it would be beneficial for the administration to hire more counselors. Hiring additional counselors for the school would help make the experience actually “personalized.” Counselors would have fewer students and be able to get to know each one better. Their schedule might also be free enough to allow them to meet with students when students need them most. Each appointment would be less rushed and students might feel comfortable sharing what they are truly feeling and how things are going. In addition, more counselors would allow for only one student to be pulled out of class at a time. When being pulled out of class for your personalized counseling session, it feels very impersonal with two or three other students joining you. This makes students feel rushed while in their sessions, knowing that someone is waiting on them. In addition, the students waiting in the office are missing valuable instructional time, having to sit and wait for their personalized counseling session to begin.

Personalized counseling has helped students to have a better understanding of their schedule and what classes are offered, but by implementing a more personalized aspect to these sessions, it could help more students speak out about their mental health and become more comfortable with their counselors in order to do so.