Individual counseling: approaches and effectiveness

¶ … individual counseling in schools take into account the current political, social, and economic climate of the country and community. The war in Iraq, the economy and soaring gas prices, and racism are issues that affect students even when they are unaware of the details of such issues. When students gain maturity and insight in later grades, counselors need to respond with increased willingness to address difficult topics to see how students are responding. In addition to helping individual students deal with the crises they encounter in daily life, school counselors can also learn about global trends in youth culture. Through their interviews with students, counselors can learn a lot about how youth are perceiving the world, how they are responding to it, and what measures can and should be taken to redress any problems.

Burnham & Hooper (2008) examined trends in schoolchildren fears, based on self-reports. The authors hypothesized changes in what students feared most after the war in Iraq. Although the research is flawed, school counselors can learn much from the Burnham & Hooper (2008) study. For example, when counseling individual students it would be most helpful to inquire about whether or not the student has any family members currently stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Likewise, the counselor might inquire about possible deaths or injuries that occurred because of the war or because of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Students who are affected by the war personally, because of injuries or feared injuries to family members, might need special attention throughout the school year. Counselors should pay extra attention to students who have lost family members, because trauma may impact academic performance as well as social skills.

Students who declare their fear of terrorism or of actually being attacked by terrorists indicate the harmful potential of a culture of fear. Perpetuated by the media, a culture of fear encourages students to mistrust the world and to expect negative events to happen. Students might also inherit their fears and worries from their parents or peers. Counselors might want to examine the possibility that the students most afraid of terrorism are those who might harbor irrational prejudices against persons of Muslim descent. Any sign that students are developing biases toward their classmates can be addressed if not redressed by counselors with compassion. Likewise, students who experience discrimination because of current world events might need extra care and attention on the part of school counselors.

The Burnham & Hooper (2008) report inspires future research on the impact the economy is having on American school children. Parents who are strapped for cash because of gas prices, mortgage payments, and rising costs of consumer goods will be passing on their fears and anxieties to their children. Moreover, those parents might need to deprive their children of luxuries they would otherwise expect from sporting gear to video games. Students experiencing the indirect brunt of the sagging economy are likely to feel a complex range of emotions that might affect their academic performance. School counselors meeting individually with students are encouraged to examine global and nationwide political, economic, and social issues.