5 page paper
budsimpson
5page.docxRunning Head: COUNSELLING PROGRAM ASSESSMENT
COUNSELLING PROGRAM ASSESSMENT 2
Counselling Program Assessment
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliation
Thomas Horace Rogers School Counseling Program Assessment
Thomas Horace Rogers School is among the top-rated schools in America, and it is both a primary and secondary public school their main color is white and orange. The school is located on 5840 San Felipe Dr in Houston, Texas. The schools perform better in terms of their grades, and that is evident since it is among the well-recognized school in the United States. The school is categorized as a public high school, and according to journals and magazines, it is ranked among the top 25 best performing public schools in the Houston area. The number of students in T.H Rogers School ranges from 929-950 according to 2016 statistics. From the school management perception, they love parents or even guardians always getting involved in their children’s academic teachings.
T.H Rogers School has two counselors for both middle school and elementary school DR. La Dora Matthews is in charge of the counseling department in the middle school while DR. Karen Martinez is in charge of the elementary school counseling department. Both the two counselors in T.H Rogers School work towards offering the students psychological care that will boost them in terms of their academic levels. The counselors also teach students that equality is important which has played a significant part in promoting equality in the school regardless of race, gender or social status.
Alignment with ASCA
Generally, school counselors can be defined as certified educators in school counseling. Their roles are specifically to educate students concerning their academic careers, their emotional and social lives to improve their academic success. School counselors can be found in all levels of schools including elementary school, high schools as well as middle or junior schools (Kourkoutas & Giovazolias, 2015). According to research school counselors play a vital role in schools in terms of maximizing student's success. They work with students to help them overcome the troubles they are undergoing through that hinder their success academically.
American School Counsellor Association developed the school counseling program to help students, administrators, parents as well as teachers and the community in general. According to ASCA policies, counseling programs should be applied in a student educational program, school counselors, on the other hand, should collaborate to help the student perform better academically or socially. T.H Rogers School has proved to apply for the ASCA counseling program in their school effectively (Carey & Martin, 2017). Their counseling program involves peer meditation counseling, guidance lessons, individual counseling, small groups counseling, referrals, and consultation, IAT as well as parent events.
During peer meditation, counselors train students on how to handle conflicts between themselves positively and peacefully. During guidance lessons, the T.H Rogers school counselors give students guidance lessons addressing their emotional and social needs for them to develop academic success and be ready for further education success as well. Today’s school counsellors are different compared to the past where they would sit around in office chairs handling or rather making programmes for students who wanted to drop out in schools or handling school applications (Tiffany Chenier 2019). In the contemporary world school counselors play a different role including the fact that they are involved in education systems. T.H Rogers School counselors are beneficial to students since they help them make decisions academically; they help students emotionally as well as socially. Besides, school counselors also help students become more productive in preparing them for tomorrow’s future.
During individual counseling in T.H Rogers School the counselor's counsel students especially those that are undergoing difficulties that are impacting them negatively academically. Generally, in schools’ students face a lot of problems some problems are even dragged along from their respective homes. The challenges can affect a student's emotionally and socially which can be reflected from their academic performances in schools. Among the common problems resolved by school, counselors include a student having low learning capabilities, a student from low-income family may also have a problem socially comparing her life with other students. Also, a student may have experienced abuse either emotionally or even sexually and finally when a student has a specific addiction he or she is trying to overcome. In those cases, a school counselor will effectively collaborate with the student, parents, the concerned teachers, medical professionals as well as the school leaders to help the student by identifying and addressing the problem.
In small groups, T.H Rogers counselors typically try and respond to students concerns. The concerns may be related to their studying skills, their connections with friends as well as changes and many more. Currently, the school has introduced a new program whereby the 5th-grade executive group has to meet at least once in a week planning on how they should rehearse time and organization managing skills. Counselors have in plan for upper elementary students to get involved in conversation café which is a small group that is meant to encourage them and improve their self-esteem, their critical thinking as well as support them to practice positive communication. During referrals, counselors give community agencies referrals especially for those families that are dealing with chaos, violence as well as chronic illnesses. In consultation, the counselors meet up with parents intending to discuss their academic performances. The counselor generally acts as a student advocate. During IAT the counselors create teams which support administrators, parents students made up of teachers as well as other school stakeholders. In parent events, this is when the counselor's department hold informational sessions and parent workshops countering to various needs of the school community (Castro et al. 2015).
The whole program of ASCA aligns with T.H Rogers School counseling program since they aim to improve student’s success in all angels. The counselors equally believe in all students’ potential to be successful. Also, the counselors align with the policy which mentions that privacy should be honored by adhering to the ethical standards since they have individual counseling. Also, in T.H Rogers counseling programme, the counselors provide counseling to students who need long term counseling sessions. Also, another way the school counseling department aligns with ASCA is by offering IAT counseling services whereby the counselors have chosen to offer support to administrators’ students and even any involved stakeholder of the school generally, T.H Rogers School most programmes align with the ASCA policies.
Recommendations for Improvements
Assessing T.H Rogers School counseling programs, there are basic areas which from a personal perspective need improvement to make sure that the schools counseling and guidance programmes effectively give students the counsel they need to imply a positive impact in their academic and social lives. The problems or rather challenges were identified during an interview with DR. Karen who is the head department in counseling of the elementary school. One of the challenges is gender issues, most of the students especially male students prefer opening up to a counselor who is of the same gender as the students and considering that both elementary and middle-class counselor are both females then it becomes a challenge. There DR. Karen mentions in the interview that it is only fair of the administration of T.H Rogers School looked for a solution which would be involving male counselors in the counseling department for both elementary and middle-class students.
The second challenges DR. Karen mentioned during the interview are suicide. Students who undergo emotional abuse or physical abuse end up opting for suicide to end the pain which has happened not only once in T.H Rogers Schools says, Dr. Karen. Bullying or any abuse should be discouraged at all angels and the best thing a counselor is to notice any unusual behavior from a student and communicate to the students of the concern. In this case best to connect the student with his or her parents as well as the community resources that will encourage the student to get rid of the self-harm thoughts, ideas as well as feelings.
Conclusion
T.H Rogers School is among the few schools that offer to counsel to their students often which is a good thing since students no longer have to make decisions on their own since there are counselors to help them in that. Even though there are a few areas they need to improve on the counseling has brought great change for the students in T.H Rogers. Other schools should embrace such a culture since the whole community at large also benefits from the counsel including teachers, parents and the administration at large.
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References
Carey, J. C., & Martin, I. (2017). Policy research on school-based counseling in the United States: Establishing a policy research agenda. In International Handbook for Policy Research on School-Based Counseling (pp. 399-415). Springer, Cham.
Kourkoutas, E., & Giovazolias, T. (2015). School-based counseling work with teachers: An integrative model.
Werner-Seidler, A., Perry, Y., Calear, A. L., Newby, J. M., & Christensen, H. (2017). School-based depression and anxiety prevention programs for young people: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical psychology review, 51, 30-47.
Tiffany Chenier 2019, T.H Rogers School, Retrieved from https://www.houstonisd.org/Page/56344
Castro, M., Expósito-Casas, E., López-Martín, E., Lizasoain, L., Navarro-Asencio, E., & Gaviria, J. L. (2015). Parental involvement on student academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Educational research review, 14, 33-46.
Maree, J. G. (2015). Barriers to access to and success in higher education: Intervention guidelines: Part 2. South African Journal of Higher Education, 29(1), 390-411.
